Is omicron a sign that SARS-CoV-2 is evolving into a milder virus? : Goats and Soda : NPR
▻https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/01/14/1072504127/fact-check-the-theory-that-sars-cov-2-is-becoming-milder
[…] #omicron didn’t evolve directly from delta. It evolved from an earlier version of the virus circulating in 2020. And so omicron could actually be more severe than its ancestral virus, and it could be progressing toward higher severity, Bhattacharyya says.
And thus, there’s no guarantee that the next #variant to emerge will be milder. It could be the most severe yet.
“I think we don’t really know what direction this virus is taking,” says evolutionary biologist Stephen Goldstein at the University of Utah. “We’ve learned that trying to predict the evolutionary trajectory of this virus is very, very difficult. If not impossible.”