Re:Report on the characteristics of Covid-19 positive deceas...
by ram1981 on Friday March 20, 2020 @08:24AM
(#22636958)
Another important insight is that Viruses, and germs in general, try to evolve and adapt inside the host. They don’t gain if they end up killing the host because that ends them too.
Not to sound apocalyptic but I think their holy grail is something like what the machines do to humans in the movie Matrix
Re:Report on the characteristics of Covid-19 positive deceas...
by rumanator on Friday March 20, 2020 @08:34AM
(#22637020)
> Another important insight is that Viruses, and germs in general, try to evolve and adapt inside the host.
That assumption has no basis at all. Evolutionary pressures don't happen due to a intentional guidance from the evolving species. Individuals mutate by chance and replicate as they can. That's it.
Re:Report on the characteristics of Covid-19 positive deceas...
by ram1981 on Sunday March 22, 2020 @05:51PM
(#22659037)
This does have basis
Refer to this section in the publication from National Academy of Sciences.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK209710/?report=reader#...
Re:Report on the characteristics of Covid-19 positive deceas...
by _xerxes_ on Friday March 20, 2020 @08:43AM
(#22637073)
I think their holy grail would be to become part of our genome like many others have:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/04/science/ancient-viruses-d...
I think you are giving a bit too much agency to the virus. It has evolved in such a way that optimises for further spreading for sure, but I do not think it has a sneaky strategy to use young people as attack vectors.
What's more likely is that it has evolved to replicate and spread within the human population, while not acting so fast as to kill most people. The problem is that replicating at a rate that doesn't kill most people will kill some of the oldest and sickest within a population.