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Comment by pg314 | Hacker News Reader

Covid-19 doesn't kill rapidly, so there is no pressure for it to mutate to become milder.

There's also no evolutionary pressure to conserve its lethality.

What appears to have happened with Omicron is that it has mutated in a way that increases transmission at the expense of lethality:

https://www.med.hku.hk/en/news/press/20211215-omicron-sars-c...

> There's also no evolutionary pressure to conserve its lethality.

That depends on whether the mutations that cause it to replicate better also make it more virulent. The symptoms that help spread Ebola, for example, are the same symptoms that kill those who become infected with it.

I think the effect is the same once the patient is quarantined. If they survive two days or two weeks the virus is unable to spread either way.

The milder it gets, the less noticeable it is. As it gets less noticeable, the chance of exposure to new hosts increases. Seems reasonable.

the real question is, can we pivot faster than evolution can...

The milder it gets, the less it is able to spread because disease symptoms are what help spread the disease in the first place. Also, there are selection pressures that select for increased virulence, otherwise all viruses would have evolved to be completely benign billions of years ago.

That makes a lot of sense too! I guess the sweet spot is where you'd find the persistent seasonal flues. Mild enough for people to be reckless, but virulent enough to cause sufficient spread.

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