Pathogens evolve: https://academic.oup.com/nsr/advance-article/doi/10.1093/nsr...

Actually SARS-CoV-2 has been found to have a comparatively low mutation rate. But my point was that now you're not just positing a very large undetected outbreak of COVID-19, you're positing a very large undetected outbreak of an itself-undtected variant strain of COVID-19 that just happens to have the properties needed to produce the overmeasurement that you want to see in the case fatality rate.

See the problem with that logic?

> Actually SARS-CoV-2 has been found to have a comparatively low mutation rate.

Compared to what, a rhinovirus?

> you're positing a very large undetected outbreak of an itself-undetected variant strain of COVID-19

From the linked study, it appears that at least one variant has been detected:

"Population genetic analyses of 103 SARS-CoV-2 genomes indicated that these viruses evolved into two major types (designated L and S), that are well defined by two different SNPs that show nearly complete linkage across the viral strains sequenced to date."

How would PCR test results give us any sense of the relative spread of these two strains (or indeed others)? Is it possible that you're motivated to dismiss ideas that challenge your understanding? I'm not convinced that it's the correct explanation for these observations, but the argument that it's impossible seems pretty weak.

I'm not saying it's impossible. I'm saying it can't be simply assumed to make an unrelated point about case fatality rate. If you want to cite me a study showing a separate, weaker strain of COVID-19 that explains how the CFR is much lower than we think you need to show me the actual science, not just assert that it exist.

Because the obvious hypothesis is that it's one disease and one outbreak and the CFR is what we measure and not something else.

Different hypotheses are obvious to different people. You're hearing one of the scariest ones - partly because it's great business for the media and political industries, and partly because it supports the belief that we can accurately measure an in-progress epidemic of this kind with our modern technology. Here are some very experienced folks with less-scary "obvious" hypotheses:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGC5sGdz4kg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6MZy-2fcBw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UO3Wd5urg0

https://www.globalresearch.ca/open-letter-professor-sucharit...