[empath75]

There is very little evolutionary pressure to mutate to a more lethal variant and a lot of pressure to mutate to less dangerous variant.

The ideal evolutionary strategy is to produce excess bodily fluids from sweating, coughing and sneezing, while not making people so sick that they lay down and stay home, let alone die.

Viruses don’t get bonus points for being lethal, unlike certain video games.

[glaberficken]

Actually this is modeled quite well in "Plague Inc" (the game) if you mutate the virus towards being too lethal it will not spread fast enough to annihilate the entire population.

[empath75]

Right but the point of the game is still to kill a lot of people and that’s not something that viruses care about.