Cold Covid - part the fifteenth

Constant Power^© came to my geezer brain in a flash of obviousness that while ago. What didn't, not being of the medical community, was exactly how the trade-off between virulence and transmissibility is executed. Well, recent news provides a reasonable answer. And it's a Do'h moment. I feel so ashamed.

The reason that Omicron is milder may be a matter of anatomy. Dr. Diamond and his colleagues found that the level of Omicron in the noses of the hamsters was the same as in animals infected with an earlier form of the coronavirus. But Omicron levels in the lungs were one-tenth or less of the level of other variants.

So, not so much in the lungs, thus not so much lung damage. Less virulent, check.

"It's all about what happens in the upper airway for it to transmit, right?" he said. "It's not really what happens down below in the lungs, where the severe disease stuff happens. So you can understand why the virus has evolved in this way."

So, lots more in the upper tract, thus lots more to spew out. More transmissible, check.

Well, on the other hand, another voice heard from:

"These studies address the question about what may happen in the lungs but don't really address the question of transmissibility," said Sara Cherry, a virologist at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.