Omicron variant was 73% of U.S. covid cases last week

Re:Omicron variant was 73% of U.S. covid cases last week by bruce511 on Tuesday December 21, 2021 @03:03AM (#29635084)

It's obviously mutating all the time. But if a particularly lethal version mutated into being it would quickly kill the host, thus not spreading far, if at all.

Thus natural selection optimises for forms that spread but don't kill.

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Re:Omicron variant was 73% of U.S. covid cases last week by jacquesm on Tuesday December 21, 2021 @03:36AM (#29635281)

This is simply incorrect. There are plenty of viruses that end up with an intermediary grade that may well have very high lethality. Once a virus has spread what happens to the host is irrelevant, including death. See May and Anderson's paper from 1982: Coevolution Of Hosts and Parasites.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/224043344_Coevoluti...

DOI:10.1017/S0031182000055360

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Re:Omicron variant was 73% of U.S. covid cases last week by Xylakant on Tuesday December 21, 2021 @03:06AM (#29635100)

> Thus natural selection optimises for forms that spread but don't kill.

It may also find an unlucky local optimum where it shows no symptoms for a period while already being highly transmissible and then slowly kill or leave the survivors with permanent damage.

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Re:Omicron variant was 73% of U.S. covid cases last week by bruce511 on Tuesday December 21, 2021 @03:19AM (#29635177)

This is part of why AIDS is so bad. We're just lucky that AIDS is hard to catch outside of well understood behaviours.

Mix AIDS with Omicron and you can stop bothering to save a pension.

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