Viral Attenuation and Evolution
People mistakenly think evolution is about survival of the fittest - its not. It is about one thing only - replication. It gets down to a competition - which can out-copy the other. What throws the balance in favor of one or the other is circumstance or environment. Viruses are no different.
Humans replicate relatively slowly but we have memetic as well as genetic evolution. Viruses replicate super fast. Because the replication is a chemical/analogue process every copy is ever so slightly different. So think about each slight variation in each copy in the trillions and bazzilions of copies that happen with this, and other viruses.
One way of classifying each copy of each instance of the Sars-Cov-2 virus would be as slightly more harmful and slightly less harmful. When we don't isolate, which of those 2 categories will dominate? Variations that are more harmful will debilitate and kill their host - causing their host to have less opportunity to infect other virus-carrying machines (humans). The less harmful versions don't debilitate or kill their hosts, so their hosts can spread more of their version. This process is called viral attenuation. The virus becomes weaker when allowed to run its course because that's the most effective way to replicate.
With our extreme, all-encompassing isolation behavior the virus attenuates far less. We are changing the environment in which the replications happen. By removing the advantage the "weaker" copies had over the more harmful versions, we are tipping the evolutionary scales more in favor of the more harmful copies. Sadly we are not only doing this for the Sars-Cov-2 virus, we are doing it for the flu and all the other viruses that exist. Our intention may be good - to prevent the spread of this virus, but we are creating an environment that will favor more harmful versions of all viruses being created for the future.
A little bit more associated with viral attenuation .... or why locking ourselves away can have detrimental effects.
One of the most effective killers of all viruses is simply being outdoors on a sunny day. It doesn't even have to be warm. The suns UV rays are very powerful, and they are particularly lethal to viruses - including the Sars-Cov-2 virus.
For every virus molecule shed by a host that infects someone else, billions are shed that to not reach another host. For all the hosts infected that are outdoors on sunny days, the vast majority of the viroids they shed die. But they still float about in the atmosphere. When uninfected people come in contact with the dead viroids, or even parts of dead viroids, that persons immune system still reacts to the unknown invader. Their bodies start building a defence.
The more of this sort of exposure we get, the greater our chances are in dealing with the real virus when we finally get exposed to a live viroid.
Infected people staying indoors on sunny days stops billions of viroids from each carrier being killed by the suns UV emissions.
Uninfected people staying indoors prevents them from building an immune response.
It may be no co-incidence that, in severely effected areas of China, where there was a dramatic drop in infections extreme isolation measures were not implemented before the the weather turned sunny.
Originally Posted by Kyss4k
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