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by ed_balls·4y ago·view on hn ↗
Since immunocompromised people haven't "produced" super flu variant so far, is it safe to assuming we won't have it with Covid? I may spread faster, but won't be more deadly.
2 comments
Possibly, but spreading faster is much more deadly than being more deadly - at least for a disease that already starts at a high death rate like Covid does.

This happens because living sick people help spread the disease, while dead people don't.

The general tendency is for viruses to become less deadly with increasing mutations. Highly deadly strains kill too quickly to spread well, whereas the common cold kills relatively few but hangs around long enough to keep moving from person to person.

Viruses dont "care" to kill people, viruses only "want" to spread. That's what drives a viruses growth

That is not true for Covid. It's an upper respiratory virus which infects others before causing symptoms. It's possible to develop a variant that spreads, but kills everybody (highly unlikely in practice). There is no strong evolutionary pressure like in case of SARS-COV-1