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Re:Ebola outbreak in Eastern Congo is moving toward a major ... by pariahHN on Sunday January 20, 2019 @10:24AM (#18953425)
It does, the more a virus replicates the more opportunities there are for a mutation to occur. The probability of specifically developing an airborne vector is pretty low though - there are significant differences between the physical properties required for fluid vs airborne transmission. A lot of specific mutations would have to accumulate, and there is no guarantee an airborne variety would see the same level of success and persistence as the original.
Re:Ebola outbreak in Eastern Congo is moving toward a major ... by api on Sunday January 20, 2019 @10:43AM (#18953488)
The good news here is that virus genomes are usually so small and parsimonious that they find it hard to cross significant fitness valleys between different local maxima. But they also have monstrous cohort sizes, so it's not impossible for them to get "lucky." (Lucky for the virus in a Darwinian sense, unlucky for its host.)