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There is something different about this virus. The idea that viruses become less harmful as the years go by is based on an evolutionary pressure. If a virus ki

There is something different about this virus. The idea that viruses become less harmful as the years go by is based on an evolutionary pressure. If a virus kills its host before it has the chance to spread, then it has an evolutionary pressure to evolve into a less harmful variant. The difficulty with this coronavirus is that it can spread asymptomatically AND it takes up to a week before you notice any symptoms. That's a problem, this virus has less of an evolutionary pressure to evolve towards a more benign variant. Imagine if it were to kill 100% of its hosts after 10 days, if you don't get a single symptom in the first 5 days while you're still able to transmit it, this virus will have barely any evolutionary pressure to evolve towards a more benign form. Still, the less a virus kills the more it is able to spread, a virus's ultimate goal is to make as many copies of itself as possible. There are plenty of viruses that have not gotten more benign over time, HIV for example. Everything considered, I do personally believe that over the longer term 10-30 years, the disease caused by sars-cov-2 ancestors will be less bad than they are now, taking into account vaccination and our immune systems getting used to this newest virus as well.

tomhoward 5y ago
> Imagine if it were to kill 100% of its hosts after 10 days, if you don't get a single symptom in the first 5 days while you're still able to transmit it Sure, but as you say, this is an imaginary scenario, not the reality. In reality, it's symptomless/benign for most people for 5-7 days, then in some people it becomes symptomatic, and in relatively few cases - of impaired/frail people (or occasionally people who seemed "healthy" but had some hidden vulnerability) - it becomes severe and potentially lethal. But that last part is due to the fact that it is novel and takes time/effort to fight off, not because it has some magical quality that makes it sit dormant in your system for 5+ days before it wakes up and says "surprise, you're suddenly nearly dead". HIV is a totally different kind of virus, so comparisons to it are mostly unhelpful. Whereas plenty of coronaviruses and other respiratory viruses have become endemic and mostly-benign before. There's no reason to believe the rate of severe cases won't decline (more quickly than 10-30 years) once more people's immune systems become attuned to it.
floxy 5y ago
>The difficulty with this coronavirus is that it can spread asymptomatically Can someone point me to the latest information on asymptomatic transmission of covid-19? Last I had seen asymptomatic transmission wasn't likely: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19802-w https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19802-w

tomhoward 5y ago

> Imagine if it were to kill 100% of its hosts after 10 days, if you don't get a single symptom in the first 5 days while you're still able to transmit it Sure, but as you say, this is an imaginary scenario, not the reality. In reality, it's symptomless/benign for most people for 5-7 days, then in some people it becomes symptomatic, and in relatively few cases - of impaired/frail people (or occasionally people who seemed "healthy" but had some hidden vulnerability) - it becomes severe and potentially lethal. But that last part is due to the fact that it is novel and takes time/effort to fight off, not because it has some magical quality that makes it sit dormant in your system for 5+ days before it wakes up and says "surprise, you're suddenly nearly dead". HIV is a totally different kind of virus, so comparisons to it are mostly unhelpful. Whereas plenty of coronaviruses and other respiratory viruses have become endemic and mostly-benign before. There's no reason to believe the rate of severe cases won't decline (more quickly than 10-30 years) once more people's immune systems become attuned to it.

floxy 5y ago

>The difficulty with this coronavirus is that it can spread asymptomatically Can someone point me to the latest information on asymptomatic transmission of covid-19? Last I had seen asymptomatic transmission wasn't likely: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19802-w https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19802-w