> It’s also quite obvious, mechanistically: COVID doesn’t lose many infections by eventually killing the patient who, by then, is obviously sick and most often in the hospital.

But viruses spread in the real world not some hypothetical lab. In the real world as viruses become deadlier they tend to provoke a much larger response from governments and populations, both in terms of prevention and vaccines/cures/treatments. That's why there's a lot more money spent on potential HIV vaccines than on vaccines for the common cold. Being deadlier is a distinct disadvantage if you're a virus trying to survive for the long haul.

So how does Omicron have any advantage, right now, from that supposed difference? Wouldn’t every mild strain just suffer from governments’ efforts targeting the bad strains, which ruin it for all the others? Note that any future benefits cannot explain evolutionary changes in the present because viruses don’t strategize.

It can have advantages relative to other strains if the same techniques are used against them all.

None of them are the same family as other viruses which cause the common cold.

I doubt the top epidemiologists are spreading myths.

The "unusual" cases where covid is causing death might not be enough, no. The fact that it causes people to stay at home however could be.

So… the new goalpost is, “top epidemiologist say that there is a pattern of common-cold-viruses to get milder with time”?

Do any of them have names? (Either the viruses or the epidemiologists)

And that’s supposedly because… these common cold viruses were just too quick to kill their victims, at first?

HIV is evolving to a milder for : https://www.bbc.com/news/health-30254697

> AIDS, rabies, measles, Ebola, Marburg, Hep A/B/C

But those viruses don't generally spread very fast because of their severity.