Does anybody here understand, why didn't COVID-19 disappear, as Donald Trump predicted? Why do different laws of evolution appear to apply to viruses and to us?
Viruses co-evolve with the hosts, right? And virus equivalent of sexual reproduction is when two viruses infect the same cell, right? So, when a bat coronavirus receives a mutation that enables it to attack humans... it essentially enters an eco-system in which there is no organism of its specie. The coronavirus that lives in humans which is most closely related to COVID-19 is separated from COVID-19 by tens of millions of years, and "mating" with it will not produce viable offspring. So, one would expect COVID-19 to disappear due to inbreeding in a few generations, as the harmful genetic mutations in it accumulate. Where is the error in that reasoning?
Viruses co-evolve with the hosts, right? And virus equivalent of sexual reproduction is when two viruses infect the same cell, right? So, when a bat coronavirus receives a mutation that enables it to attack humans... it essentially enters an eco-system in which there is no organism of its specie. The coronavirus that lives in humans which is most closely related to COVID-19 is separated from COVID-19 by tens of millions of years, and "mating" with it will not produce viable offspring. So, one would expect COVID-19 to disappear due to inbreeding in a few generations, as the harmful genetic mutations in it accumulate. Where is the error in that reasoning?
