Why Coronavirus Will Morph

Lots of experts have predicted the vast majority of the world will be exposed to COVID-19 within a year or two. Spread is what viruses do. So why all of the effort to avoid it when, ultimately, you probably won’t be able to? Because there may be a big difference between getting it now and getting it later.  

In the early days of a new infection, it’s not uncommon for the most devastating bugs to cause life-threatening and sometimes life-ending disease. Now this pattern isn’t always true – there's lots of talk about the Flu epidemic of 1918, which appeared in the late winter/early spring, disappeared for a few months, and then came back with a vengeance that fall. But even that strain of flu became far less deadly after a full year. The trend makes sense: overtime, illnesses become milder because any virus or bacteria that kills its host too quickly will also die out. There are lots of articles describing this phenomenon. I like this one talking about an entirely different outbreak, the 2007 Adenovirus epidemic.  

I will add a bit of editorial here, because I think “flattening the curve” is one of the most important strategies at the moment. Most scientists say we are all going to get coronavirus eventually, but our goal right now should be to get it slowly. Hospitals all over the world have been overwhelmed with patients sick from this virus and the trend will only continue (and get worse) unless we curb its spread. Partly because we are more likely to get a weaker strain, but mostly because this will help health care providers and hospitals conserve resources like medicines, ventilators, and even beds for sick patients. How do we slow the passage of an illness? By practicing social isolation. It is on each of us to opt out of large group events and avoid scenarios squeezing medium-sized collections of people into small spaces. Use common sense because that common sense may very well save lives. And read this article, which provides the numbers behind my sentiment, a sentiment shared by most doctors I know.