Oh I genuinely mean that and nothing else. I'm remotely familiar with the topic, but I do not work with protein translation and viruses at all. My question about this silent/functional ratio argument could be completely wrong or in the wrong direction.

That original argument is interesting and is a surprising obervation to me, and I would love to read a well-written piece on that. Just keep in mind that "statistically unlikely" doesn't immediately mean "it's unlikely", you might have used the wrong presumption (in this case, silent mutation being not really silent).