1a) Paths of Survival

1a1) 1. Cases are no longer falling

The news about Covid-19 has been mostly positive in the U.S. over recent months. The vaccines continue to work well against every variant, and the number of Americans who have gotten a shot continues to rise.

But the U.S. still faces two problems. First, the pace of vaccinations has slowed, and a substantial share of Americans — close to one third — remains hesitant about getting a shot. These unvaccinated Americans will remain vulnerable to Covid outbreaks and to serious symptoms, or even death.

Second, the Delta variant — which appears to be both more contagious and more severe than earlier versions of the virus — is spreading rapidly within the U.S., after having first been identified in India. It now accounts for about 10 percent of cases, according to Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former F.D.A. commissioner.

Many experts are concerned that cases will eventually start to rise as Delta becomes the dominant form of the virus. “We are vulnerable,” Dr. Kavita Patel of the Brookings Institution told Yahoo News. On Twitter yesterday, Dr. Robert Wachter of the University of California, San Francisco, wrote: “I’ll now bet we’ll see significant (incl. many hospitalizations/deaths) surges this fall in low-vaccine populations due to combo of seasonality, Delta’s nastiness, & ‘back to normal’ behavior.”

David Leondhart

1a2) From the viruses are weird column: the Delta variant is more communicable. OK. Understandable. Your hosts begin to smarten up and it's harder to spread. But why is it more virulent? Is it a byproduct of being more communicable? The best strategy would seem to be highly communicable, but mild. Like the common cold. That way, you can develop a symbiotic relationship instead of encouraging eradication. But then, with modern humans as disorganized as they are, maybe riding it out as long as you can is optimal. If you were aware you were coming to the end of your survival path, you might just start using cannon fodder to overwhelm progressing defenses. 

To be clear, I am not assigning agency to the COVID virus. More musing on how selection works to send a form of life down a path of hypothetical survival. The strategy might be, mutate and evolve and whatever strategy makes it the furthest is good enough.

Temporally, generation upon generation of the virus could survive over a short period of years, but long enough to form into a more symbiotic form of life. A compression of the life cycle to assume a form that manages to survive. Gut bacteria might have started in such a way. Kind of fascinating to think about despite the human suffering caused.