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Originally Posted by BJMoose
To be sure, I'm all for prudence. What stuck in my craw this time is that The Worst That Could Happen was hyped to the hilt, while the least that could happen was simply overlooked. I am so damned tired of this relentless fear mongering. Balanced reporting is dead.
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If it bleeds, it leads.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Flying Squid with Goggles
I'm sorry to say that's not an inevitable process for mutations & virulence. It's understandable - I hope it would become less virulent also, but this virus does most of its transmission to other hosts in the first week of infection and if it becomes fatal, it's a month later - there isn't going to be evolutionary pressure against lethality in those conditions.
But mutations are a random walk, the next variant might be less dangerous, we just shouldn't plan on time being on our side in that way.
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I know it's not inevitable, but I hold out hope that it's at least possible. And it doesn't preclude those less lethal potential future mutations from mutating again back to more lethal. In the same way there are definitely more-lethal and less-lethal flu strains. I hope SARS-Cov-2 winds up like the flu variant from the 1918 pandemic - one for the history books that mutates itself into obscurity even though it's still technically with us.
Not encouraged by what I heard last week about white tailed deer being a potential reservoir. Even in a fantasy world where we could get all the humans to vaccinate, zoonotic reservoirs are an ugly prospect. (zombie minks notwithstanding) We've gotten too comfortable with the idea that we can control all infectious diseases just because we can manage some. The past two years have proven otherwise.