Although it is widely held by biologists that there is a tradeoff between infectiousness and virulence, people (eg, Paul Ewald) who actually study the evolution of virulence say the opposite, both in theory and data. In the case of sars2, it is overdetermined: death is due to immune overreaction, after the window of selection is over.
Does he have anything to say about the case of sars-Cov-2 specifically?
On one hand, yes it seems like there’s something like antagonistic pleiotropy here where most of the transmission is done before the “acute phase” (the time when your o2 sat drops and you go to the ER, there’s probably a better term for that I’m just not sure what it is).
But we’re also applying non-trivial selection pressure via lockdowns and other precautions, and if sars-Cov-2 would stop killing people and just give them a runny nose we would stop and it could reproduce more. I’m just not certain why that isn’t have more of an effect.
Although it is widely held by biologists that there is a tradeoff between infectiousness and virulence, people (eg, Paul Ewald) who actually study the evolution of virulence say the opposite, both in theory and data. In the case of sars2, it is overdetermined: death is due to immune overreaction, after the window of selection is over.
Does he have anything to say about the case of sars-Cov-2 specifically?
On one hand, yes it seems like there’s something like antagonistic pleiotropy here where most of the transmission is done before the “acute phase” (the time when your o2 sat drops and you go to the ER, there’s probably a better term for that I’m just not sure what it is).
But we’re also applying non-trivial selection pressure via lockdowns and other precautions, and if sars-Cov-2 would stop killing people and just give them a runny nose we would stop and it could reproduce more. I’m just not certain why that isn’t have more of an effect.
That’s a group selection argument.
Not trying to be antagonistic, but how so? It applies individually to each virion that would have a mutation that decreases its virulence.