>Evolution is a somewhat random process at its heart, but I stand by what I said as the likely outcome, because that's the path new diseases normally take. It's early days yet.

So that's why malaria is less deadly now? I've seen this said many times with zero backing, and it just really doesn't correlate with the history of disease. The reason we don't deal with the majority of deadly diseases is vaccines, not because they've evolved to become less deadly.

>I think we have a petty good idea by now actually

We have an idea of how well they work on the original covid-19 strain that we saw last year. We don't know how well they will work on actually eradicating the virus.

>I think the risk is small given such a mutation would possibly render the virus much less virulent

Based on what? It's already evolved to evade antibodies produced by infections from the first wave (P1 strain in Manaus specifically is a good example). Those have been mutations in the spike protein, and have made the virus more virulent and deadlier.