Yes, Viruses Mutate. Here’s Why That’s Mostly a Good Thing.
So… have you heard about the Delta variant of Covid-19? What about the other variants? If you don’t live under a rock, then this whole thing is pretty much the only news you’ve probably heard about in the past year. That could be said for Covid itself.
The Delta variant is a supposedly “deadlier” variant of Covid-19 that’s somehow more transmissible, but that never really made any sense to me. All my life, I’ve been told that viruses generally become less deadly the more they mutate. But apparently, people are freaking out more than ever about this so-called “deadly variant” that’s gonna kill us all. Maybe I’m just tired of hearing about Covid all the time, or maybe I’m just a natural contrarian, but I just find this hard to believe.
Come on, guys. If humanity can make it through the Spanish Flu of 1918 and the literal Black Plague (not this virus many people are making out to be the “black plague”), then we can survive Covid and its variants. After all, mutation is just what a virus does. And with a general survival rate of more than 99% for most people, I’m not sure if all the fear is worth it.
For example, let’s talk about the 1918 Spanish Flu. 500 million people- a third of the world’s population at the time- caught this disease, and around 50 million died from it. That’s, like, 1% of the world’s population gone! So, what happened to it? Why don’t we hear about the Spanish Flu like we do about influenza or some other viruses? That may be because the virus mutated to become less deadly over the years; by 1920, this virus was about as deadly as an ordinary flu. So, how did it mutate to become less deadly?
It’s evolution. Viruses mutate. It’s a fact of life, just like how everyone and everything dying is a fact of life. And like all facts of life, we just have to learn how to accept it. It’s pretty clear Covid isn’t going away any time soon (at least, our governments aren’t letting the panic end anytime soon). We still have the 1918 Spanish Flu, and we even still have the Black Plague. Yes, we still have the Black Plague in the world. In fact, only two diseases have been completely eradicated from the world- smallpox and rinderpest (which I didn’t even know was a thing). It’s time to learn to live with these viruses- yes, even their mutations.
Covid-19 is endemic just like the flu and the common cold; it’s not going away anytime soon. And I personally think excessively locking down and masking up is just delaying the inevitable. Believe it or not, we need viruses to mutate. Hell, we need viruses in general. Did you know that the vast majority of viruses aren’t pathogenic to humans? Some of these viruses prop up ecosystems and maintain an individual organism’s health. Without viruses, our world would cease to exist. So, maybe viruses aren’t that bad after all. And yes, I’m even including the mutations.
Mutations are actually a virus’s biggest downfall for the most part. Yes, a virus can mutate and infect many other people, but let’s think about it. Not every person infected with a virus gets equally sick. Health plays an important role in this. The healthier your lifestyle is, the less likely you are to get seriously sick and die from a virus. That’s where the variations fit in. A mutated virus is a lot more likely to trigger a person’s cellular alarm, which prevents it from producing a lot of viral RNA; unmutated viruses create more viral RNA and are less likely to alarm the cellular alarm.
Of course, there are some viruses who have much more dangerous and much deadlier variants, but those are the exceptions rather than the rules. So, next time you hear about a new variant from a virus (mostly likely Covid since the media never seems to shut up about it), try not to panic immediately. Just because a variant is more transmissible doesn’t mean it’s deadlier because chances are, it’s mostly likely gonna harm you even less than the unmutated virus.
