How evolution of COVID-19 virus can affect infection risks? L-type vs. S-type. 2

COVID-19 coronavirus spreads now as a more virulent L-type that likely evolved from now less common S-type of coronavirus. What are possible scenarios for increase and decrease in how COVID-19 spreads in the future? What affects the evolution of viral particles’ ability to become more or less virulent? Let me say candidly that I do not think that the L-type and S-type distinction is sufficiently useful at this point. The differences in clinical disease associated with viral subtypes are not established. And it appears that what is a genetic distinction, modest genetic distinction, may just be more or less random in its distribution in the population. That said, the coronavirus does evolve, and we need to follow that carefully. There’s very good news, though, and this coronavirus is large. Because it’s large, this coronavirus has to have a proofreading function. It means the virus evolves more slowly because there are fewer errors when the coronavirus replicates its RNA. So, like SARS-1, like the original SARS coronavirus, this virus is mutating very slowly compared to other RNA viruses. That’s very good news from the point of view of treatment and vaccines. Even passive infusion of antibodies would block the virus. So we want to keep a very close eye on the evolution of the coronavirus COVID-19. But I don’t think that the early reports of some differences in the virus are that meaningful. And again, the good news is the virus of all slowly mutating.