‘Like plague, Covid-19 is a stealth infection, and that might ultimately slow evolution toward lower virulence. Yersinia pestis, the germ that causes plague, tamps down the early immune response, so that infected people can travel and spread infection for days before they feel sick. Similarly, people infected with SARS-CoV-2 seem capable of infecting others before experiencing any symptoms. This sly mode of viral spread may make the evolution of lower virulence less likely, as infected but asymptomatic people are the perfect mobile viral delivery systems.
‘Yet even without an evolutionary process pushing SARS-CoV-2 towards lower virulence, over time, the virus might affect people differently, said Columbia University virologist Vincent Racaniello. “SARS-CoV-2 may become less deadly, not because the virus changes, but because very few people will have no immunity,” he said. In other words, if you’re exposed to the virus as a child (when it doesn’t seem to make people particularly sick) and then again and again in adulthood, you’ll only get a mild infection. Racaniello points out that the four circulating common cold coronaviruses “all came into humans from animal hosts, and they may have been initially quite virulent.” Now, he says, they infect 90 percent of children at young ages. At later ages, all you get is the common cold.’
Read here (Genetic Literacy Project, Jan 7, 2021)
