Why You Should Still Be A Little Worried About Covid

Covid is, or should be, largely a nonissue right now. It's followed the expected path of a virus, it's gotten more transmissible but less deadly. You should, however, still be a little worried about, and here's why.

First, this virus was likely made in a lab. The most often cited reason for this conclusion is the proximity of the initial breakout in China to the Wuhan lab, but another more esoteric reason given is the appearance of the furin cleavage site. It showed up suddenly in the virus' genome, fully formed and ready to make it more transmissible.

Second, while it's the natural tendency of a virus to get more transmissible but less deadly, that's because of the odds, not a fait accompli. For a virus to be especially deadly it has to have a very specific genetic code, and for it to be deadly and very transmissible is rare. Think of all the viruses that affect other animals but not humans. Think of all the viruses that seemingly do nothing. The group of possible viruses that are both very deadly and very transmissible is small compared to that of viruses that would be mild or benign to humans. This means it's not impossible for a virus to mutate to be more deadly, just that it's not likely.

Third, deadly coronaviruses do exist, think of ones like MERS. There are coronaviruses with ~25% mortality rates.

So, the real question to contemplate is, if this current virus is the result of human engineering, how likely is it to drop that furin cleavage site than to retain it? If it's more likely to retain it while the rest of the genome mutates around it, then the chances of covid mutating into a deadly and transmissible virus are higher than those of a wild virus. It already has the transmissibility, if humans have given it a leg up on that front that won't go away easily, then it's simply a matter of how far away the current strain is from one more along the lines of MERS or deadlier versions of SARS.
It's quite possible we're not done with this virus in the sense beyond endemicity.

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