It's not a miracle or anything close to that level of implied bafflement (devoid of being able to explain it rationally). We're excellent survivors overall, and a lot more than that. We're very skilled at resource utilization, we're relatively talented at conceptual thinking, we're competent tool builders on a planet ripe for it, we possess the ability to plan far ahead and understand consequences numerous steps out, we have memory capabilities that are quite effective across most of our lifetimes, most of our species is not particularly violent and is generally good natured & friendly (only a very small fraction of the population will ever commit serious acts of violence), we function quite well together in groups/tribes/cities/nations (compounded, shared outcomes), and so on. It's not particularly complicated, despite the doomsayers that will never stop existing amongst us (their mentality says more about them than it does the human race).

We should have prioritized health and Vitamin D in April 2020. At that time it was clear it was mainly affecting overweight people. Of course even almost 2 years later people still don't think that as a whole. They say comorbidities. Just say it like it is... it's mostly fat people. The news and society won't say that.

Also by some definitions America is “mostly fat people” so your point is not that meaningful to begin with.

The human mind can create symptoms very easily, especially if every day you get bombarded by social media and news about Covid.

> Also by some definitions America is “mostly fat people” so your point is not that meaningful to begin with

True, but I'm just saying this wouldn't have been an issue 30 - 50 years ago.

Citation for this? I've never heard this at all.

But still useful data. Thanks.

There's just no nuance in any conversation related to Covid.

Let me ask you a question. If weight had absolutely no impact on Covid then what expected percentage of Covid hospitalizations would be with overweight people?

Globally that is one thing, but if that data point is in the US, then the baseline population is something like 60-70% overweight/obese to begin with. In which case, that elevation from baseline isn’t as significant as implied.

Apparently though people's risk perceptions about COVID are wildly off base, by orders of magnitude.

https://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/354938/adults-estimat...

40% of US Democrats think COVID hospitalization risk if you're unvaccinated is 50%! Fifty percent! The real answer is less than 1%. Other polls have shown similar things for fatality rates, like estimated 16% IFR on average in France. It really makes me realize why people act in such extreme ways, if that's what they think.

COVID is to a large extent a total failure of our societies ability to disseminate accurate information. Unfortunately this misinformation catastrophe is largely the work of the very same people who are constantly complaining about misinformation.

The probability of a more transmissible, more virulent strain just went down, not up. It certainly isn't zero, but "more transmissible less virulent" is exactly how viruses tend to evolve. Mutations are a dice roll and it there's no way to be sure of anything, but being a little optimistic is completely appropriate.

How does selection pressure work when the disease is spread by people with no symptoms?

For a disease to make us go extinct it would have to be highly transmissible and have a fatality rate of close to 100%. Anything less than that, and evolution will produce a generation of humans that are resistant to (or otherwise able to protect themselves from) the disease, and from there the population will replenish itself. The great plague had a fatality rate of 30% and it didn't even come close to threatening our existence as a specie. (In fact, the resulting redistribution of wealth arguably contributed to the advent of the renaissance.)

While there can be recombinations of some similar viruses, that's not the common way that viruses propagate, and it's not mating. Point mutations are much more common. And if they do recombine there's no reason to (automatically) expect that the results will be the worst characteristics of both.