Highlights From The Article
Ye Editor
... "as the less-harmful nature of the new strain becomes more apparent, scientific knowledge of how other deadly viruses mutated into everyday illnesses has been borne out.
... long before Omicron appeared in Botswana, virologists had predicted that the virus — which has killed some 5 million people worldwide — would eventually evolve into a near-harmless form, which would ironically give it a selective advantage over previous variants.
A novel strain of H1N1 influenza caused the 1918 pandemic following the First World War which killed 25-50 million people worldwide. But by 1920 it had mutated into a much milder form indistinguishable from other seasonal flu bugs. Will COVID-19 go the same way?
The basic concept is simple: in order to thrive and continue its genetic line, a virus must spread from organism to organism. A virus that rapidly kills its host will have fewer opportunities to infect new ones.
Unlike bacteria and amoebic pathogens, viruses cannot live and multiply freely in the wild.
... Any pathogen that kills the host too fast will not give itself enough time to reproduce.”
... One of the key traits of COVID-19 is that the infected patient becomes contagious before they begin to show symptoms.
The vaccinated can still transmit the disease even if their immunity means they never get ill, unlike with viruses like measles or smallpox ...
... Coronavirus is one of many viruses whose genetic information is carried on a single strand of RNA, the long-chain molecule used to translate the DNA of living cells into the proteins they code for.
This class of viruses, which use the enzyme RNA-dependent RNA polymerase from host cells to copy their strand of genes, are known to have very high mutation rates.
... in Japan a strange thing happened. After peaking in late summer with daily case numbers exceeding 26,000, Delta mysteriously began to to fade away. By November this year only around 200 cases were detected per day.
A team of researchers from the National Institute of Genetics and Niigata University, led by Professor Ituro Inoue, proposed that the virus had mutated itself into “self-destruction”.
... “The delta variant in Japan was highly transmissible and keeping other variants out. But as the mutations piled up, we believe it eventually became a faulty virus and it was unable to make copies of itself.”
“Considering that the cases haven’t been increasing, we think that at some point during such mutations it headed straight toward its natural extinction,” the professor concluded." ..
Thursday, December 30, 2021
From Pandemic Plague to Seasonal Sniffle: How Viruses Mutate into Milder Strains To Survive
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