Viruses don't mutate toward being more deadly. In fact they mutate away from it. There's active natural selection to spread faster, and be less deadly, and that's exactly what Omicron is. Why Covid was deadly in the first place was because it targeted some other animal with different defenses and had natural immunity toward it. Then it jumped species to humans and suddenly was quite deadly, but spread somewhat poorly as it wasn't catered to humans yet. Several mutations later it now spreads crazy rapidly but it's killing a lot fewer people.

A virus' end "goal" is to be endemic in the population. Infecting and spreading but killing almost no one, just like the flu does.

Mutation is a random process. It is neither god nor bad and does not have a purpose or direction.

Natural selection, -should- do those things, but we can't count on it, because we are humans, and natural selection in us works in a different way. We basically have stopped it as part of our own evolution. Nobody needs to run faster, develop claws or climb better than predators anymore

The biggest problem with Covid is that it spreads -before- people have symptoms. Flu spreads when and after, but not before. An Omicron "improved" to kill people in a few days would still travel perfectly.

> The biggest problem with Covid is that it spreads -before- people have symptoms. Flu spreads when and after, but not before. An Omicron "improved" to kill people in a few days would still travel perfectly.

If that happens then society as a whole would react to it more strongly and it would thus spread slower. That's a natural selective force.

At this point vaccinated people are getting it at rates that are just silly. I know a ton of people with COVID right now, and the vast majority are vaxed.