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this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2024
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My understanding: Viruses don't mutate to kill hosts. They mutate to survive and be passed on. It'll continue to get more mild but more contagious.
That's why the flu from the 1919 pandemic was bad but short lived. COVID is following a similar pattern.
Different than bacteria and antibiotics. That's a mess of our own making.
They don't mutate for any purpose, that's just what happens over time. What direction it goes can vary with how the mutation affects survival. On average not killing a host works out better, but that doesn't imply that's a preferred path nor exclude a mutation that gets worse for the hosts as well as the disease.
This simply isn't true, also, (already healthy people) not dying from it doesn't mean it's all fine and dandy once you've recovered from the "flu" (or at all):
https://www.unmc.edu/healthsecurity/transmission/2023/07/25/long-covid-persists-as-a-mass-disabling-event/
https://blogs.einsteinmed.edu/blog/2023/06/13/long-covid-is-a-mass-disabling-condition-treat-it-like-one/
https://www.greaterkashmir.com/health/study-decodes-link-between-long-covid-and-chronic-fatigue/
https://www.donotpanic.news/p/why-covid-can-never-be-just-a-cold
Hope you're right, and we're not keeping a bunch of marginal immune systems alive through heroic efforts just to breed more variations.
viruses don't mutate for any single reason, it's not directed evolution, it's errors in transcribing their own gene code in duplication.
That's what most evolution is. For sure. Not imagining there a will behind it
Mutations don't happen for a reason, but long term trends in widespread mutations absolutely do happen for a reason, namely that they meaningfully contribute to the organism's ability to reproduce.
Killing the host doesn't do that nearly as effectively as giving the host a minor cold that doesn't even make them feel like they need to change their routine.
and sometimes, even horrific shit like rabies - can kill the host and still be viable for reproduction and future variation.
just because it kills the host doesn't automatically take it out of the gene pool before it can cause enormous harm.