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A comment on U.S. Identifies First Coronavirus Case Without Outbreak Ties. Parent comment

Re:U.S. Identifies First Coronavirus Case Without Outbreak Ties by roenxi on Thursday February 27, 2020 @03:14AM (#22431573)
> Hence selection pressures will skew it towards “Antibody resistant, lower fatality”

That is pressure on the humans. All the humans that will die easily will die and all the survivors will be the more resistant ones.

The virus itself does not behave strategically. Species, other than humans, have no particular ability to plan how they evolve. The only pressures on the virus itself are for longer incubation times, faster ability to spread and the ability to reinfect people. Even if it could strategise there is no particular pressure on the virus whether it kills its host or not as long as it gets passed on to a few people in excess of the original host.

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Re:U.S. Identifies First Coronavirus Case Without Outbreak Ties by Engineering-MD on Thursday February 27, 2020 @01:12PM (#22435941)
Not really true. The selective advantage is to viruses which can spread to more new hosts. The longer you keep the host arrive, the more new hosts are colonised. If it kills without spreading it’s not going to survive.
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