Again: Viruses do not necessarily evolve to be milder—especially if they transmit early, like this one. Our immune system learning about it—via vaccines or infection—can mean better response next time, so milder experience. Not same as virus becoming intrinsically less virulent.https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1465075561236250631 …
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SARS-CoV-2 transmits early in the disease course, sometimes before symptoms, and severe illness and death comes much, much later, *after* the most infectious period. "Milder" to vaccinated or previously infected people is different than "it became intrinsically less virulent."
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Delta as well as Omicron both seem to be less lethal and more contagious than Alpha, which is why I came to make that observation.
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If it spreads more it can be more lethal.
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This is not what
@MonicaGandhi9 says, BTW. IIRC, she says viruses do tend to get less virulent over time. Maybe I'm misremembering? -
That is not what virologists says.
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It would take a sizable population crash to put that kind of evolutionary pressure on a virus.
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I mean, in terms of the virus' ability to spread, isn't a dead person the same as an immune person? That said, 1 percentage point more or less lethality would be a dramatic change to us, but in terms of infection rate that would be a rounding error.
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I've been having exactly this argument for the past couple of days. As long as enough people survive for *long enough* for a variant to out-compete its rivals than it will. There's no linear rule for % reduction in illness vs fitness.
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The 1918 flu pandemic proves the point.
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To a virus, killing seroconverted hosts makes perfect sense when dense host populations are competing for scarce resources.
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