5 ms·

This isn't some final strain so let's all hurry up and get it. The more people that get any variant increases the likelihood of new variants and we don't get to

This isn't some final strain so let's all hurry up and get it. The more people that get any variant increases the likelihood of new variants and we don't get to pick what they do. We need to stop thinking about this as a pandemic that will end and start thinking about it as an endemic disease that is never going away. Soon, you'll be getting your annual covid shot along with your flu shot. It is going to continue to kill immuno-compromised people for a very long time. Our lungs are definitely our weak spot (just look at the elderly mortality rates for pneumonia, 20-30%).

drexlspivey 5y ago
It is most likely pretty close to the final strain, viral mutations are optimizing for high transmission and low severity (to not kill the host and maximize infections) and this one is pretty close to the global maximum.
- sjg007 5y ago
  Why do people parrot this nonsense?
  - engmgrmgr 5y ago
    people are easily influenced by others who they admire, even if they have no idea what they’re talking about. athletes, politicians, investors, artists, etc.
- engmgrmgr 5y ago
  Evolution isn’t programmed, it’s a function of survival. If there’s a highly infectious virus with a huge lead time to develop deadly symptoms, that’s more than enough to spread “optimally”
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  > viral mutations are optimizing for high transmission and low severity (to not kill the host and maximize infections The selection pressure that sometimes selects for weaker strains is large amounts of viral hosts dying, causing the stronger strains to literally die out in the corpses they create. People aren't dying in droves because of COVID. There is little evolutionary pressure to select for weaker variants of the virus.