comment: >
  
  The answer is, when taken in isolation, the more recent variants are probably in the same realm of deadliness as the earlier COVID-19 variants. There is virtually no evolutionary pressure on COVID to become less deadly due to the fact it spreads so well asymptotically.
  The big difference is that we now have better treatment plans for severe cases, there's vaccines, and prior infections can infer some immunity. Though there's some early research out of the University of Waterloo in Canada showing prior infections can also cause subsequent infections to be worse in certain cases.
  Still, I'm less worried about how deadly COVID is and more worried about long COVID. Every infection seems to be rolling the dice on long COVID and if you keep getting infected the odds are not in your favor.
context: I don't want any more Covid 19 DLC. >
  
  This is COVID 23 the surprise edition >
  
  Fucking pay to play life edition >
  
  Does anyone have the patch notes >
  
  Viral load +50%, infection rate +20%, vaccine effectiveness -80%, misinformation +100%
  Added new skill line to the Grifter class: multivitamin overdose cures COVID-23
  Skill cap on Depression increased from 99 to 149
  World settings for Inflation and Supply Chain Disruption increased.
  Gasoline price cap removed.
  Additional dialogue branches:
  Nazis are back. King of England dies and Ireland rejoices. Half of over 70s die in London due to cold front and inability to pay 400% heating bills. Elon Musk starts buying Reddit shares. Footage of abuse from Epstein island released with no following convictions. Governor Desantis takes lead of the Republican party. Trump starts own party. >
  
  It is also the dominant variant in the US. >
  
  I’m so confused about variants. How did we get up to Delta and Omicron so fast and now we are just stuck oh Omicron and different variants of omicron? >
  
  Variants are an interesting thing in virology. Bumpersticker version, as genes turn on and off in the code of the virus, the more gene switching, the more "distant" the variant is from the original, in a tree chart, as if it were branches from a trunk.  Omicron hasn't had a major enough change be replicated to do something huge like Delta did from Alpha or Omicron from Delta, but the newer variants are being able to escape of sorts from antibodies locking onto them and destroying them, creating a higher infection and transmission rate. >
  
  But are these variants more severe or deadly? If they are mild and escape antibodies then it doesn't really matter, does it?