Coronavirus is one of the main viruses which cause the common cold, Covid is a coronavirus, Covid has been decreasing in severity with each new major variety.
Let's not assume that the Covid will not follow the normal evolutionary trajectory of viruses, ie stop the fear porn and labelling things memes to justify dismissal of valid possibilities
Eventually it’s going to do what all other viruses have done. Mutate into another flu or common cold. We already have l seasonal coronavirus outbreaks. We call it cold and flu season; except it’s numerous coronaviruses and influenza viruses and one or two “win” that year.
Worth pointing out that two of the viruses[0][1] responsible for the Common Cold share the same exact Family (in fact, the exact Genus[2]) as SARS-CoV-2 [3].
This isn't to say that the progression is certainly in this direction (better evidence of that dates back to 2009 [4]), but hey, there's hope that that's the direction.
There are several arguments supporting the idea that covid will become like the common cold, it is not a generic "all viruses turn into the common cold".
We already have 4 endemic coronaviruses that cause common colds, and we suspect that they started as deadly pandemics too, which were historically reported as the flu. Many specialists suspect that the OC43 coronavirus caused the 1889 "Russian flu".
Covid seems to follow the same path: a disease that is mostly harmless to the young but potentially deadly to older adults with no acquired immunity. It is likely that in a generation or two, everyone will be infected at a very young age, building immunity and occasionally get breakthrough colds. Breakthrough cases already look a lot like colds.
It is important to note that we are talking about one specific virus, SARS-Cov-2. There are zillions of types coronaviruses around us at all times[1]. They've been here a while and they'll be here or a looong time yet.
Who knows, maybe with all these breakthroughs, someone might cure the common cold.
We have zero evidence that the common cold coronas were previously any more deadly than they are now. Zero evidence.
Unfortunately the idea that Covid becomes just another common cold virus can be no more than wishful thinking at this point.
Without vaccines and public health interventions, likely SARS-COV-2 would continue washing through the population, with waning immunity and variants causing endless sickness and death.
> The virus is mutating but it is also losing its lethal nature.
In one of the first articles I read on covid, in Feb 2020, the experts stated that they expected this to become endemic, either like the other common cold coronaviruses, or something a bit worse like the flu [0]:
> I think there is a reasonable probability that this becomes the fifth community-acquired coronavirus... settling down to something like the other four coronaviruses.
> What we may be seeing “is the emergence of a new coronavirus … that could very well become another seasonal pathogen that causes pneumonia,” said infectious disease expert Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota. It would be “more than a cold” and less than SARS: “The only other pathogen I can compare it to is seasonal influenza.”
This has probably happened before. The Russian Flu epidemic of 1889-1890. It looks like it was a coronavirus that jumped from cattle to people. That pandemic was one of the deadliest of that century. Now that same virus is one of our common cold bugs [1].
As much as we would like to wish, Covid is not going to become the common cold anytime soon, or indeed ever. We should act according to what we see with Covid, and understand that any naïve attempts reduce it to other known pathogens can only lead us into tragedy.
What's super-weird in all that coronaviruses are already an entire class of viruses that are the second most popular cause of the common cold, behind rhinoviruses:
> "The common cold is a viral infection of the upper respiratory tract. The most commonly implicated virus is a rhinovirus (30–80%), a type of picornavirus with 99 known serotypes. Other commonly implicated viruses include human coronavirus (˜ 15%), influenza viruses (10–15%), adenoviruses (5%)..." [1]
Someone you know probably has a coronavirus right now -- just not the one in the news.
But somehow this basic fact has barely been mentioned in the media.
Seriously, calling the new disease "coronavirus" is as silly as a chef calling their new very specific recipe "soup". Like... you've gotta come up with something more specific...
As I understand it, influenza mutates much faster than coronaviruses do. "The" common cold is really a whole bunch of unrelated viruses lumped together, and I haven't heard anything about the other coronaviruses that cause common colds mutating any faster than Covid.
I've heard the claim that one of the "common cold" corona viruses, HCoV-OC43, was actually a nasty former pandemic virus (the so-called "Russian Flu" of 1889-1890, which is estimated to have killed about 1 million people).
There is plenty of evidence to support the idea that as it becomes endemic, it will evolve toward yet-another-cold. There is no evidence in all of history for an endemic coronavirus that is not yet-another-cold.
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