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Continued Variant Emergence
- New COVID-19 variants will likely continue to emerge due to widespread infection and viral evolution.
- The characteristics of future variants are difficult to predict with certainty.
Viral Fitness Criteria
- Viruses prioritize transmission, first by targeting naive hosts and then by evolving to infect immune hosts.
- Escaping immunity, especially for infection and transmission, becomes increasingly important for viral fitness.
Virulence Evolution
- The common belief that viruses always evolve to become milder is not necessarily true.
- Viruses prioritize replication, and their impact on host health is secondary.