Viral Evolution
Section titled “Viral Evolution”The COVID-19 virus is a modification of a normal winter coronavirus, and so named COronaVIrus Disease 2019, remember? What we knew about coronavirus was that it was one of a number of viruses that cause colds and flu-like illness in the winter, viruses with names like rhinovirus, parainfluenza virus, influenza virus, adenovirus, respiratory syncytial virus, and ...coronavirus.
Without getting into how, what happened with the everyday version of coronovirus was that we got some mixing and matching of the genetic material in Asia in late 2019 and presto-chango, the evolved virus spread around the globe and killed so many people that New York and other large cities had to bring in refrigerated trucks for the dead. Now with vaccines and natural immunity the danger is less. As it has for millennia, coronavirus in its new form will continue to circulate. As usual, it'll do that in the winter. As usual, we'll become less endangered by it each year as our immune systems and the virus come to terms with each other.
This https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4sUuFBEo2g two-minute video shows why I bared my arm for my seventh COVID vaccine recently. Nobel Prize winning https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2021/the-long-history-of-mrna-vaccines people have worked on them for decades. The vaccines have proven to be much, much safer than going without them.
Next in line for me, RSV-the respiratory syncytial virus, given to the very young and the very old. (Well, it doesn't seem old, once you get here.)
So, free advice! Get your flu vax, your COVID-19 update, and if you are over 60, your RSV.