I did specify long-term, which for me meant time-frames of around a year to a decade out. Honestly, I suspect you’re largely right about the short-term.
Well, except I might be more optimistic about vaccination efforts. Effective vaccination pushes in the past give me some hope.
Also, the mutation rate is a good bit lower than the seasonal flu. SARS-CoV-2′s point-mutations per year is around 28 substitutions, which is about 1⁄2 as many as the flu. Or around 1⁄3 the rate, at ~1.1e-3 subs per site per year, compared to flu’s 3.3 subs per site per year. (Different genome lengths, hence the different answers.)
I did specify long-term, which for me meant time-frames of around a year to a decade out. Honestly, I suspect you’re largely right about the short-term.
Well, except I might be more optimistic about vaccination efforts. Effective vaccination pushes in the past give me some hope.
Also, the mutation rate is a good bit lower than the seasonal flu. SARS-CoV-2′s point-mutations per year is around 28 substitutions, which is about 1⁄2 as many as the flu. Or around 1⁄3 the rate, at ~1.1e-3 subs per site per year, compared to flu’s 3.3 subs per site per year. (Different genome lengths, hence the different answers.)