Conversation

This is crazy.

I see people, smart people, justify the argument that the latest #covid19 variants are more mild by the fact that people are getting less sick (during the acute phase). In fact, many people are completely asymptomatic.

That argument might make sense if this was a respiratory illness, such as a cold. But it's not - its vascular. It enters the body by way of the respiratory system, but it manifests itself in the bloodstream, and lives in internal organs such as the heart, brain, and others.

The respiratory symptoms people typically show are when the body recognizes the intruder and launches a counterattack to it.

The fact there is little to no immune response to an invading virus is incredibly bad.

The fact the body no longer recognizes the virus as an invader possibly is due to an impaired/rewired immune system (we know Covid damages the immune system).

It likely also means the virus is mutating to better evade the immune response (this has been documented in newer mutations).

We have *constantly* and *consistently* underestimated this virus at every turn. For some reason we want to keep wishing this thing to be nothing to worry about, instead of focusing on just how bad it could be.

Some people argue that a virus should become less dangerous to humans over time, in order to improve its chances of reproducing and growing.

There's no reason that it has to follow this route, however.

In reality, the better the virus is at disguising its damage, the better it becomes at transmitting, because we have become less likely to take steps to block it.

And there is zero reason to expect that it suddenly stopped causing long term harms ( #LongCOVID ). By it's very definition, long term effects of current variants won't be known for a while. And fundamentally, this virus has not become less dangerous.

If anything, it's now more dangerous than ever.