The flu has a "baseline death rate" it reached after coevolving with humanity. We don't know what tha baseline will be for COVID, and we don't know if we will deem that acceptable or not.
Sure you can keep saying things "might" happen or "we don't know" this or that, but we do have a lot of historical precedent for these kinds of viruses, so it's reasonable to presume that it will become not-that-big-a-deal, the way all the others viruses like it have done.
Ergo, as it becomes endemic, and all of our immune systems learn how to respond to it, it's completely reasonable to expect that it will become benign to most people. (After all, it already is pretty benign to many/most people, compared to the original SARS and MERS).
Repeating "we don't know" is an easy response, and something you can say in response to anything like this, but it's not really addressing the logic I'm presenting. You really have to demonstrate why this virus is substantially different to all the other respiratory viruses that have become endemic and mostly benign, which you've not attempted to do. You just keep saying "we don't know". Sure, but we actually have some solid historical precedent, and this virus is so-far showing no signs of being any different from all those before it.
Nevertheless, on the way in which it is widely regarded as being different, I just addressed that in a reply to another commenter here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27290964
For what it's worth I'm not really saying it's "like the flu" - more that we should expect it to be like other coronaviruses, unless there's significant evidence to the contrary.
https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n579
This contradicts your position that COVID evolves just like the flu does. Do you have evidence to the contrary?
My point was that human vulnerability is due to it being novel, and that as more people’s immune systems become attuned to it (whether via contracting the virus, vaccination or being exposed to fragments in the environment), it will become less novel and less deadly to those exposed to it. Therefore, we should still expect the fatality rate to be steady among those who have never been exposed to it, but that will start dropping off quickly as immunity becomes more widespread, which is what we're seeing.
Based on everything we know, a “new” “novel” virus would most likely hit us via a jump from another species, not through continued evolution of this virus.
As for higher fatality rates from B.1.1.7 or other strains - reports about this are contradictory [1], and notably the headlines about it being no worse than other strains are always much smaller/less-prominent that the those trying to terrify us about it being much worse.
[1] https://www.contagionlive.com/view/sars-cov-2-b117-variant-m...
If a virus kills its host before it has the chance to spread, then it has an evolutionary pressure to evolve into a less harmful variant.
The difficulty with this coronavirus is that it can spread asymptomatically AND it takes up to a week before you notice any symptoms.
That's a problem, this virus has less of an evolutionary pressure to evolve towards a more benign variant. Imagine if it were to kill 100% of its hosts after 10 days, if you don't get a single symptom in the first 5 days while you're still able to transmit it, this virus will have barely any evolutionary pressure to evolve towards a more benign form.
Still, the less a virus kills the more it is able to spread, a virus's ultimate goal is to make as many copies of itself as possible.
There are plenty of viruses that have not gotten more benign over time, HIV for example.
Everything considered, I do personally believe that over the longer term 10-30 years, the disease caused by sars-cov-2 ancestors will be less bad than they are now, taking into account vaccination and our immune systems getting used to this newest virus as well.
Sure, but as you say, this is an imaginary scenario, not the reality.
In reality, it's symptomless/benign for most people for 5-7 days, then in some people it becomes symptomatic, and in relatively few cases - of impaired/frail people (or occasionally people who seemed "healthy" but had some hidden vulnerability) - it becomes severe and potentially lethal. But that last part is due to the fact that it is novel and takes time/effort to fight off, not because it has some magical quality that makes it sit dormant in your system for 5+ days before it wakes up and says "surprise, you're suddenly nearly dead".
HIV is a totally different kind of virus, so comparisons to it are mostly unhelpful. Whereas plenty of coronaviruses and other respiratory viruses have become endemic and mostly-benign before.
There's no reason to believe the rate of severe cases won't decline (more quickly than 10-30 years) once more people's immune systems become attuned to it.
Can someone point me to the latest information on asymptomatic transmission of covid-19? Last I had seen asymptomatic transmission wasn't likely: