Jlang, I see that your response to me was delet

Jlang,

I see that your response to me was deleted, so I’ll venture that it was perhaps inappropriate.

I truly am not trying to be argumentative.

Your observation is absolutely correct that immune compromised patients provide an opportunity for mutations to occur. That does not mean that the resultant variant be more virulent than the parent lineage.

Mutation in the face of constant selective pressure results in continued evolution, albeit in a typically predictable additive fashion. IMO similar to the year over year changes in cars or computers.

Evolution in an zoonotic host or immune compromised other allows wholesale changes, with new variants demonstrating marked changes whose impact is unpredictable. Omicron may be escalate covid to a mew and terrifying level. Alternatively, it may be a fast track to a milder endemic disease. The identified incorporation of the “common cold” gene HCoV-229E is encouraging.

Its impact remains to be seen.