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Trench warfare is responsible for evolving a deadly 1918 Spanish Flu virus. Soldiers with minor symptoms remained where they were, not coming in contact with m
by slumdev 6y ago
Trench warfare is responsible for evolving a deadly 1918 Spanish Flu virus.
Soldiers with minor symptoms remained where they were, not coming in contact with many other people.
The very sickest soldiers were transported by train, where the infected many other people, to hospitals, where they continued infecting many other people. It was our own attempts to care for the soldiers that caused the deadliest strains to spread and continue evolving.
- lazide 6y agoThose conditions allowed more infections to happen, and eventually one of them was more deadly. ANY situation that results in more infections will result in more mutations (as it is a property of the viral replication mechanism), and increase the odds that one of them will be more successful in infecting and spreading - with the possible side effect of host death. What some folks are proposing in this thread (uncontrolled community spread so it will 'mellow out') is an even more massive expansion of that due to the quite visible ability for COVID to be infectious in patients with no symptoms for long periods of time, which Influenza has not been able to pull off.