Dead viruses don’t mutate.
Live Viruses mutate.
In particular RNA viruses (as apposed to DNA) mutate quite a bit …
The process certainly has a random element, but some factors predictably increase the chance of mutation.
In general, the more people get really sick, and the longer the virus is pandemic, the greater the chances of a truly devastating mutation developing.
The odds of COVID-19 mutating in New Zealand are very poor, the odds of COVID-19 mutating in the USA on the other hand are much more worrisome.
Dead viruses don’t mutate.
Each time a virus duplicates there is a chance of mutation.
One key factor encouraging virus mutation is sheer numbers of moments the RNA/DNA is subjected to duplication — i.e. each new virus ‘birth-equivalent’ or replication.
{ If there is a random X% chance of a mutation at each ‘birth-equivalent’ ,
and Y% chance that a mutation is of the worst kind of mutation: the ones that both helps the virus prosper and makes it more devastating to us,
then each replication has (X%)(Y%) chance of being truly awful.}
But every virus, in every patient, for every day they are sick (i.e.. play host to a potentially mutating COVID-19) is rolling the Russian Roulette at each replication!
In addition, each person’s immune system and micro-environment present unique challenges to COVID-19 virus survival.
My hypothesis is that an additional factor in assisting both the probability of mutation,
and also the chances that this new mutation will win its evolutionary battle,
is if it has a chance to interact with many different people and micro-environments.
Dead viruses don’t mutate.
If we make the choices to shut down COVID-19, like New Zealand has almost completely done, then the chances that we will lose big on the virus mutation Russian Roulette game decreases.
Many in the USA pretend things are OK — encouraged by our Denier In Chief.
If we fail to shut COVID-19 down effectively, particularly if we re-open schools too soon, we are vastly multiplying the total number of COVID-19 replications;
and the many randomly varied immune systems and sets of chemical and biochemical influences that COVID-19 gets to interact with.
All it takes is one really bad toss of the dice, and we get a terrifying COVID-20 that makes COVID-19 (variant G) look like a mere warm-up.
So in addition to whatever immediate deaths, immediate impairment and suffering,
and whatever lingering and unknown long-term effects that are increasingly showing up,
failing to eradicate or at least minimize COVID in the USA means we are an incubation zone for horrible mutations
and therefore an enemy of public health — to ourselves and the rest of the world.
So remember :
Dead viruses don’t mutate !!!