{"id":5419,"date":"2021-12-04T14:43:12","date_gmt":"2021-12-04T22:43:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/?p=5419"},"modified":"2021-12-04T15:51:20","modified_gmt":"2021-12-04T23:51:20","slug":"omicron-hypovirulence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/?p=5419","title":{"rendered":"Omicron Hypovirulence?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>It is starting to look as if, contrary to initial expectations, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/news\/us-news\/omicron-may-cause-milder-symptoms-experts-arent-breathing-sigh-relief-rcna6920\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/news\/us-news\/omicron-may-cause-milder-symptoms-experts-arent-breathing-sigh-relief-rcna6920\">it might actually be a thing<\/a>. If so, coupled with its hyper-contagiousness, this is only to be expected from an evolutionary standpoint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you are a virus, killing your hosts is a bad strategy. You <em>need<\/em> your hosts in order to reproduce. And if you are a fragile virus with a limited viability (like the COVID-19 virus), you are under the imperative to reproduce or go extinct.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The most successful viruses are the ones that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Do not cause severe illness,<\/li><li>Spread easily,<\/li><li>Mutate rapidly.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>This keeps the virus spreading and freely replicating amongst a large host population. So it would be no surprise if COVID-19 evolved along these lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If so, expect it to become much like your typical common cold virus in terms of concern. In fact, it might simply <em>become<\/em> yet another common cold virus; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><\/span><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><\/span>many colds are caused by coronavirus strains already.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It is starting to look as if, contrary to initial expectations, it might actually be a thing. If so, coupled with its hyper-contagiousness, this is only to be expected from an evolutionary standpoint. If you are a virus, killing your hosts is a bad strategy. You need your hosts in order to reproduce. And if [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5419"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5419\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5421,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5419\/revisions\/5421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}