Possibly.aggiehawg said:I could be wrong but my understanding of how viruses evolve and mutate to less virulent strains is because a high mortality kills the hosts and hence the virus. And that goes back to the question of how long was it going through China before we knew it existed? What was then released upon the world could have been a mutation from the more virulent earlier strain?Quote:
The number of people in China that are older than 65 is around 230 million, give or take. If anything, the number is larger.
Given COVID mortality numbers around old people, death rates could easily have reached 10 million. 20 million? Not so sure. The virus would have had to have been a lot more deadly while in China than what we got in 2020 in the US.
COVID 19 and SARS from a decade earlier had a lot in common. However, SARS was much more deadly. So deadly, it never really spread all that wide. Using reasonable controls, it was effectively contained. Then, a certain gene mutated, and Sars became a non-threat. When COVID-19 came out, virologists that had experience with SARS continued to monitor for that specific gene mutation, which eventually did occur. I used to have the specific gene memorized, but it has been a while.
There is a chance that COVID-19 was much more virulent prior to 2020, and what was released into the wild was a mutated strain from the one originally manufactured. What is highly likely, though, is that the original COVID-19 strain was lab manufactured.
But, the nature of the virus, being more dangerous to older people than younger people, hasn't really changed. It has gotten less dangerous overall, but still hits older people harder. We are not quite sure why that is as of yet.
It takes a special kind of brainwashed useful idiot to politically defend government fraud, waste, and abuse.
