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Everything I've heard about how viruses evolve says that they get milder within the host population. The host's resistance keeps increasing as the virus mutates
by goodluckchuck 5y ago
Everything I've heard about how viruses evolve says that they get milder within the host population. The host's resistance keeps increasing as the virus mutates and the population is exposed to the new mutations, and over time this allows the virus to diverge from other populations... where the virus isn't spreading.
E.g. diseases can evolve in Europe then spread to Native American populations. Evolve in bats, or apes, then spread to humans.
Now that this virus has shown that humanity has become one population... and it will spread everywhere if we let it... we should let it.
If we do strict testing, vaccination, etc. and prevent international travel, and otherwise fiercely prevent the virus from spreading across populations, then we'll have just created a situation where the virus could mutate to become harmful.
As long as we do nothing we're safe.
- munk-a 5y agoIt's absolutely horrific to bring up Native American populations considering the estimates on population loss range from 25% to 90% with most folks erring toward the 90% end of the range. As terrible as COVID has been we're no where near the level where - as a middle aged person with kids and parents[1] - it's expected that you'll be the only one to survive out of your extended family. Estimates about the fatality of COVID put it way below the small pox epidemic in North America but that's an absolutely terrible example to draw on. 1. Assume your parents had two children - you both married and had two kids - that's ten people so choose one to survive (obviously epidemics don't actually work this way, but I've found it's the clearest way to demonstrate proportional mortality rates.