>The ability of a virus to kill is not a positive for fitness, and over the long run is in fact a negative evolutionary influence. I think the Keynes quote is,

>The ability of a virus to kill is not a positive for fitness, and over the long run is in fact a negative evolutionary influence. I think the Keynes quote is, for once, appropriate here: "In the long run, we are all dead." Your argument seems to be that as a virus with a longer incubation is fitter, that if someone released the virus in the article, it would quickly mutate into this 'fitter', less lethal version. I think you misunderstand the evolutionary process. I suspect that if the virus was released, because it is already so contagious, it could infect most of us within 10s of human-to-human transmission generations (especially if any of the early spreaders had a large number of contacts, or was well connected). In that scenario, there's not going to be sufficient generations for the evolutionary adaptation to manifest. (10s of human-to-human generations is vastly more virus copying generations; this doesn't matter, as the evolutionary effect in favor of less lethality occurs at a human level). So, your argument would make sense to me, if we were considering the chances of a virus like this one naturally occurring; but that's not what the article is about. >I suspect the world would go full "madagascar" ("shut...down...everything!") if deaths reached more than 10 million. Epidemics tend to either burn out, or grow exponentially. Exponential growth has strange consequences. For something like an airborne and highly contagious flu, by the time 10 million people have died, it is way too late for any containment; at that stage maybe 1B are already infected. Even by the time even 10,000 people have died, I would guess its too late for containment. We live in a very 'small world' these days, and that really changes this sort of discussion.