As leaders have shifted to the position that masks and tests are matter of personal choice rather than collective self-preservation, they have implicitly silenced a vital message to the citizenry about how pandemics actually come to an end. It is this: less transmission means fewer mutations; fewer mutations means less variation, the fuel of evolution. Reducing infections, then, puts the brakes on viral evolution.<\/p>\n
The combined actions of \u201cletting the virus rip\u201d in a population with varying degrees of protective and waning immunity created by vaccines or previous infections \u201chas led to unprecedented increase in viral diversification in 2022,\u201d as one group of researchers explained in a recent paper published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As leaders have shifted to the position that masks and tests are matter of personal choice rather than collective self-preservation, they have implicitly silenced a vital message to the citizenry about how pandemics actually come to an end. It is this: less transmission means fewer mutations; fewer mutations means less variation, the fuel of evolution. Reducing infections, then, puts the brakes on viral evolution.<\/p>\n
The combined actions of \u201cletting the virus rip\u201d in a population with varying degrees of protective and waning immunity created by vaccines or previous infections \u201chas led to unprecedented increase in viral diversification in 2022,\u201d as one group of researchers explained in a recent paper published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences.<\/i><\/p>\n