Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by CapriciousCptl 2044 days ago
There's some nuance to this. The current most common strain is theoretically the most genetically fit strain. Wide use of vaccines targeting conserved regions of the spike protein almost certainly would result in less genetically fit virus progeny becoming more common by simple selection. But, there's no predicting the virulence of the the less genetically fit strains that will pop up. ie) very deadly viruses aren't necessarily very genetically fit. The short of it is, the resultant strains will probably be less transmissible (the "R" number will decrease), but it's hard to predict their virulence/serverity.

I think consensus is we don't know for sure, but there's reason to be hopeful. SARS-CoV-2 probably won't evolve as fast as the flu, which undergoes a "sexual-like" evolution process called "re-assortment." On the other hand, CoV-2 has "re-combination," which gives similar results, and it does have zoonotic hosts.
2 comments
mlyle 2044 days ago
Yup, this is a good answer.

Note there is some correlation between virulence and severity. For something with a longer incubation time, increased viral load tends to mean both increased virulence and transmissibility. This relationship is far from universal, though.

link
Thorrez 2044 days ago
>The current most common strain is theoretically the most genetically fit strain.

Why? Has it had a ton of time to evolve?

link