Mutating Mildly

"I'm dead set on living."
--Harlan Ogilvy (War of the Worlds)

These pages have discussed the concept of evolutionary pressure as it pertains to CV19. One theory is that vaccines increase pressure on the virus to mutate in ways that evade vaccines in order to survive. Behavior of the recent delta and omicron variants appear to support this premise as vaccinated people have been capable of contracting CV19 infections.

If this hypothesis is in fact true, then the question becomes one of severity. Will mutations become more or less severe? These pages have discussed the spectre of vaccine-resistant virus strains that become more deadly and longer lasting.

However, the characteristics of both "deadly" and "long-lasting" may be inconsistent with the central goal of a virus: to survive. Deadly forms of a virus run out of hosts and become extinct. Milder variants, on the other hand, possess more staying power.

This article suggests that the contagious but mild omicron variant is consistent with such a premise. Although it evades vaccines and infects more people, omicron subjects hosts to relatively mild symptoms.

Similar to the Spanish flu of 1918, perhaps CV19 is mutating into milder strains that will ultimately make it indistinguishable from other seasonal flu bugs.