Jlang, Ad hominem attacks don’t bolster your

Jlang,

Ad hominem attacks don’t bolster your argument, they undermine it while making you appear petty.

You appear to be conflating mutation and selective pressure. These are two separate mechanism which combine to produce variants, or over a long enough period, speciation.

All organisms have mutations that occur during reproduction. Covid, being a single stranded RNA has higher mutation than double stranded and DNA virus. The high mutation rate allows changes in the virus to develop. These variations occur in greater across across large populations and in patients , such as those immunosuppressed by cancer or HIV.

However, these ARE NOT SELECTIVE PRESSURES.

Selective pressures are those which encourage survival of the fittest.

These would include vaccines eliciting robust host immune response, mABs and even strong hygiene measures.

Delta is apparently successful, not only due to a partial immune evasion to antibodies from previous infection , vaccines and exogenous mAb administration (regeneron), but increase transmissibility.

Wild type Covid was well contained in Australia with hygiene measures. Delta, with markedly enhance transmissibility is proving impossible to contain even with the imposition of severe measures.

Immune suppressed patients present no selective pressure, as even garden variety infections blow through impaired immunity. The exact opposite of selective pressure.

Imagine if all the zebra and antelope in African were sedated and tied to posts. Would the lions, cheetah and leopards become stronger, faster and better at stalking?

No, they would become soft and lazy but still live and reproduce as they would face no impediments.

Unusual pathogens do mutate through infection of the immune suppressed (think fungal infections ) as the host immune system is impaired and insufficient and the pathogen become resistant to subsequently administered medications.

With hundreds of millions of immune-competent people still getting infected with Covid, the driving selective pressures will remain antibodies from vaccines and previous infection, thus the need to vaccinate the rest of the world as continued rampant infection will produce an unending stream of variants to test and eventually overcome our acquired immunities.