COVID is just like the flu.

[colfax_m]

The faster you accelerate infections, the fewer variants become possible because there is no time.

It doesn’t need time. It needs replications and infections.

The faster you accelerate infections, the faster you accumulate variants.

In a lab, you can induce evolution and create variants by forcing viruses to go through many replication cycles and infection cycles rapidly. You’re suggesting doing the exact same thing to hundreds of millions of people in just this country.

Wrong.
If you cause a million replications of the same original RNA, there is NO evolution because the replications happened in parallel, at the same time, and there can be no significant genetic change in one generation.

You can not "force" viruses to go through replication cycles.
They happen at a fairly fixed rate, and you can't speed them up.
You can slow them down, but that is irrelevant to the discussion.

To cause evolution you need to increase the number of generations in series, not the number of infections or offspring in parallel. And that is simply a matter of time. The longer any epidemic is kept around, the more it will evolve variants.
The early peak when the infection rate is at its highest, does not at all allow for any evolution because there are not enough generations. It happens too quickly for that.

Except they’re not going to be infected with the exact same virus.

You seem to think everyone is going to get the infection simultaneously. That’s not how this works.

 

[Circe]

Interesting discussion.
We may try out the population immunity strategy ---- if the Left forces vaccinations via required "papers" to prove vaccinations, a lot of people will simply refuse. I'll be one of them. I may eventually get the vaccine when one of them is proved safe and face masks aren't required --- I'm trying to avoid this police state stuff.

But if they require it, I'm out.

If the Left drives a lot of people into rebellion, we'll find out how natural population immunity works.

 

[colfax_m]

This is basic science of biology, and there can be no alternative interpretation.

You don’t understand biology.

More infections means more mutations means more evolution. Time is not relevant here. The relevant issue is how many infections.

By allowing everyone to get sick, you supercharge the process, just as we do in the lab.

 

[Rigby5]

The faster you accelerate infections, the fewer variants become possible because there is no time.

It doesn’t need time. It needs replications and infections.

The faster you accelerate infections, the faster you accumulate variants.

In a lab, you can induce evolution and create variants by forcing viruses to go through many replication cycles and infection cycles rapidly. You’re suggesting doing the exact same thing to hundreds of millions of people in just this country.

Wrong.
If you cause a million replications of the same original RNA, there is NO evolution because the replications happened in parallel, at the same time, and there can be no significant genetic change in one generation.

You can not "force" viruses to go through replication cycles.
They happen at a fairly fixed rate, and you can't speed them up.
You can slow them down, but that is irrelevant to the discussion.

To cause evolution you need to increase the number of generations in series, not the number of infections or offspring in parallel. And that is simply a matter of time. The longer any epidemic is kept around, the more it will evolve variants.
The early peak when the infection rate is at its highest, does not at all allow for any evolution because there are not enough generations. It happens too quickly for that.

Except they’re not going to be infected with the exact same virus.

You seem to think everyone is going to get the infection simultaneously. That’s not how this works.

Of course you can deliberately infect millions with the same virus strain at about the same time, if you want.
Its called variolation.
And ancient tried and true method to achieve herd immunity as quickly as possible.
The advantage is that you can then pick only healthy volunteers who are likely to survive, thus protecting the elderly and weak who would be much more likely to die.

But even without deliberate variolation, all epidemic go through an initial peak quickly, and since it is quick, it will have to all be the same strain most likely.
It took almost a year for other strains to even be detected.
Evolution of other strains takes a great deal of time.
They did not pop up from nothing in a week.

 

[Rigby5]

This is basic science of biology, and there can be no alternative interpretation.

You don’t understand biology.

More infections means more mutations means more evolution. Time is not relevant here. The relevant issue is how many infections.

By allowing everyone to get sick, you supercharge the process, just as we do in the lab.

That is ridiculously ignorant.
If one parent has millions of offspring and infects millions of people, that is ONE generation, and then there can be NO evolution at all.
Infections in parallel do NOT allow for evolution.

The only way you get evolution is with millions of serial generations.
The number of infections or infection rate is irrelevant.
If one virus only infects 1 person, but you do that for a million generations, only THEN will you get any significant evolution.

 

[Flopper]

Remember when that was one of the WH talking points in the early stages of the pandemic? No reason to panic. COVID will go away when the weather gets warm. It's all under control.

Turns out, they were wrong..........in too many ways to discuss. One of the more demonstrably provable things they were wrong about was the comparison to the flu.

We wiped out the flu this year. Could we do it again?

That's what happens to influenza type viruses when people wear masks and practice social distancing. Unfortunately, COVID is a highly transmissible virus. More so than the regular flu.

The point being the COVID protocols dismissed as ineffective, infringements on freedom, a waste of time by conservatives.........they work. And if we had not implemented them, if we had not locked down the economy for a while, the infection rate and death toll would be far worse than it is.

It turns out everyone was wrong about Covid. We heard something every day. The only consistent thing was be very afraid. A 99.7% survival rate is not a killer disease.

In the early stages of the epidemic in January and February, people were making educated and uneducated guesses because there was not enough good data. By April medical science had a good idea of what we were facing and how reduce the spread. It was the White House that was making claims that the virus would just go away by summer, by fall, and by election day. There was an election to be won and Covid-19 was a threat so it was downplayed which made preventing the spread more difficult.

Except slowing the infection spread rate is what prevents the epidemic from ending, and that eventually accumulated a much LARGER total death amount.
Herd immunity is what ends all epidemics normally, but herd immunity can't end any epidemic if you are "flattening the curve", and in effect conserving hosts for the virus to it can't die out.

Herd immunity was the way epidemics ended before modern medicine but that does not mean it is desirable today.

There two ways to end an epidemic.

1. Allow nature to run it's course with no need for masks, social distancing, or vaccines. Once enough people develop an immunity by becoming infected, we will achieve herd immunity and the virus dies out.
2. Vaccinate to reach herd immunity and use preventive measure to lessen infection and death.

Reaching herd immunity naturally as opposed to vaccinations is bad for the health of the nation as well as the economy. It is estimated that Covid-19 herd immunity will be reached when 70% of the population is immune. After 1 year of covid-19 we have 500,000 dead, 30 million cases. If we relied on natural immunity, we would not reach herd immunity for about 7 years, possibly at lot longer as new strains occur. The number of dead could reach 3 million or more. Under those conditions, it would be impossible to get the country back to normal, and we have a sluggish economy at best for many years.

 

[Rigby5]

Remember when that was one of the WH talking points in the early stages of the pandemic? No reason to panic. COVID will go away when the weather gets warm. It's all under control.

Turns out, they were wrong..........in too many ways to discuss. One of the more demonstrably provable things they were wrong about was the comparison to the flu.

We wiped out the flu this year. Could we do it again?

That's what happens to influenza type viruses when people wear masks and practice social distancing. Unfortunately, COVID is a highly transmissible virus. More so than the regular flu.

The point being the COVID protocols dismissed as ineffective, infringements on freedom, a waste of time by conservatives.........they work. And if we had not implemented them, if we had not locked down the economy for a while, the infection rate and death toll would be far worse than it is.

It turns out everyone was wrong about Covid. We heard something every day. The only consistent thing was be very afraid. A 99.7% survival rate is not a killer disease.

In the early stages of the epidemic in January and February, people were making educated and uneducated guesses because there was not enough good data. By April medical science had a good idea of what we were facing and how reduce the spread. It was the White House that was making claims that the virus would just go away by summer, by fall, and by election day. There was an election to be won and Covid-19 was a threat so it was downplayed which made preventing the spread more difficult.

Except slowing the infection spread rate is what prevents the epidemic from ending, and that eventually accumulated a much LARGER total death amount.
Herd immunity is what ends all epidemics normally, but herd immunity can't end any epidemic if you are "flattening the curve", and in effect conserving hosts for the virus to it can't die out.

Herd immunity was the way epidemics ended before modern medicine but that does not mean it is desirable today.

There two ways to end an epidemic.

1. Allow nature to run it's course with no need for masks, social distancing, or vaccines. Once enough people develop an immunity by becoming infected, we will achieve herd immunity and the virus dies out.
2. Vaccinate to reach herd immunity and use preventive measure to lessen infection and death.

Reaching herd immunity naturally as opposed to vaccinations is bad for the health of the nation as well as the economy. It is estimated that Covid-19 herd immunity will be reached when 70% of the population is immune. After 1 year of covid-19 we have 500,000 dead, 30 million cases. If we relied on natural immunity, we would not reach herd immunity for about 7 years, possibly at lot longer as new strains occur. The number of dead could reach 3 million or more. Under those conditions, it would be impossible to get the country back to normal, and we have a sluggish economy at best for many years.

Wrong.

First of all, there are 2 main ways to end an epidemic.
One is herd immunity, but that has 3 was to happen. Vaccine is one, natural is another, but the third is variolation, or deliberate infection.
But when there is too high of a lethality rate with an epidemic, the second way to end an epidemic is quarantine, with contact tracing. That is how they deal with Ebola.

When you suggest vaccines are safer, of course that is correct, but not once has any epidemic in progress been stopped by vaccines before covid-19. That is because vaccine normally take about 6 years to make and test. For example, the polio epidemic that started in 1948, was pretty much over before the Salk vaccine became available in 1958.

So then no, vaccines are almost irrelevant to ending epidemics in progress.
What they usually are for, it to prevent future epidemics.
Like smallpox vaccine was not to end one, but to wipe it out and prevent another in the future.

And while you are right that covid-19 was estimated to need 70% of the population to be immune in order to end the epidemic with herd immunity, you are wrong about everything else.

The reason covid-19 lasted a year and killed so many people is because we deliberately forced that to happen.
Normally what ends epidemics is the initial spike uses up all the easy available hosts, so then it dies out.
By "flattening the curve", we conserved hosts and ensured the epidemic could not possibly die out.
We artificially stretched the epidemic out much longer than it would have lasted normally, which would have been a couple of months at most.
But we could have accelerated herd immunity even more by deliberately infecting young volunteers who essentially would not have been at any real risk.
We could easily have ended it in less than a month if we have accelerated it as fast as possible.
And the death total then would have been much lower. Since young people are all inherently immune, and half the population is already immune, from the high asymptomatic rate, then only 30 million would have had to get infected and recover, for the 70% herd immunity to be reached. And since the death rate for healthy young people is 40 times less than that of the elderly or compromised, we could have reduced the death rate by a factor of about 200.

So forget about vaccinations as a strategy.
It was just an accident that the 2009 SARs vaccine research was able to be applied to covid-19.
Normally that is not possible, and normally vaccine are NOT the way to end any epidemic in progress.
It simply takes too long.
Never have vaccines ever ended any epidemic in progress, before.

 

[LA RAM FAN]

Wow, what a miracle!

Not really. Lower flu cases comes as a direct result of less social interaction and safety measures taken when people are in public. The things that prevented COVID from being far worse. The things conservatives referred to as infringements on their freedom. What the exact numbers would have looked like if Trump's top adviser, Scott Atlas, had his way are obviously hard to determine. But we can say there would be millions dead not hundreds of thousands.

You sure play dodgeball and have to resort to lies when proven wrong,you are such a stupid fuck you ignore that the yearly flu virus does not exist anymore,that it is being ruled as covid same as fatal car accidents gun shot wound to the head ,cancer and eveything else,your boss sure pays you well to lie and for all the ass beatings you suffer here.

 

[LA RAM FAN]

Remember when that was one of the WH talking points in the early stages of the pandemic? No reason to panic. COVID will go away when the weather gets warm. It's all under control.

Turns out, they were wrong..........in too many ways to discuss. One of the more demonstrably provable things they were wrong about was the comparison to the flu.

We wiped out the flu this year. Could we do it again?

That's what happens to influenza type viruses when people wear masks and practice social distancing. Unfortunately, COVID is a highly transmissible virus. More so than the regular flu.

The point being the COVID protocols dismissed as ineffective, infringements on freedom, a waste of time by conservatives.........they work. And if we had not implemented them, if we had not locked down the economy for a while, the infection rate and death toll would be far worse than it is.

Wow, what a miracle! The superintelligent and concerned about Americans left magically did away with the flu....totally wiped it out along with pneumonia in one year! Why, by forcing facediaper wearing and coming up with never before heard of hand washing they brought about this miracle! But wait.....with all this isolation and shutdown and miracle inventiveness, how could people NOT get flu or pneumonia but so easily catch the leftyvirus? It truly boggles the mind.

You so much owned his trolling ass and took him to school.lol

 

[LA RAM FAN]

Remember when that was one of the WH talking points in the early stages of the pandemic? No reason to panic. COVID will go away when the weather gets warm. It's all under control.

Turns out, they were wrong..........in too many ways to discuss. One of the more demonstrably provable things they were wrong about was the comparison to the flu.

We wiped out the flu this year. Could we do it again?

That's what happens to influenza type viruses when people wear masks and practice social distancing. Unfortunately, COVID is a highly transmissible virus. More so than the regular flu.

The point being the COVID protocols dismissed as ineffective, infringements on freedom, a waste of time by conservatives.........they work. And if we had not implemented them, if we had not locked down the economy for a while, the infection rate and death toll would be far worse than it is.

Covid is just like the flu for most people.

I bet if you gave antibody tests to every American we would find an infection rate in excess of 80%
Do you know what that would do to your precious death rate?
And don't you find it odd that we only had a handful of actual flu cases? It's like covid cured all diseases.

You people are gullible as fuck

Its way past even gullibility......its like the Pied Piper syndrome.

Did people lie like tramp?

Who is tramp,please fill us in? You are the expert st lying you would know.

 

[LA RAM FAN]

Remember when that was one of the WH talking points in the early stages of the pandemic? No reason to panic. COVID will go away when the weather gets warm. It's all under control.

Turns out, they were wrong..........in too many ways to discuss. One of the more demonstrably provable things they were wrong about was the comparison to the flu.

We wiped out the flu this year. Could we do it again?

That's what happens to influenza type viruses when people wear masks and practice social distancing. Unfortunately, COVID is a highly transmissible virus. More so than the regular flu.

The point being the COVID protocols dismissed as ineffective, infringements on freedom, a waste of time by conservatives.........they work. And if we had not implemented them, if we had not locked down the economy for a while, the infection rate and death toll would be far worse than it is.

Amazing isn’t it? All we had to do to eliminate the flu and other illnesses is call them COVID cases. The flu didn’t go anywhere dumbass. It was just renamed to keep clowns like you scared.

Logic and common sense like that never register with lying trolls like him,Penelope and idiot4all,err Care4all too stupid to understand you checkmated them,you the teacher can dismiss that class now and tell them class dismissed.

 

[LA RAM FAN]

Yep - masking, social distancing and other mitigation has kept the flu at record lows this season. Also, more people than ever got a flu shot.

The number of people who die each year from flu-related causes in the U.S. is 8,200 to 20,000. SOURCE: Centers for Disease Control.

Nope, COVID ain't the flu

United States
Coronavirus Cases:
29,530,165
Deaths:
533,693
Recovered:
20,094,790

I understand why Trumpleton's want to obfuscate the empirical data proving their attitudes and beliefs about COVID to be 100% wrong. That doesn't make it any less stunning.

yet you failed to disprove what an idiot you are on this thread with us.

 

[LA RAM FAN]

They are indeed way past fuck in gullibility. They are so fucking braindead they seem to actually think covid cured the flu

It's exhausting dealing with people like yourself you can't comprehend simple concepts. Of course COVID didn't cure the flu. COVID protocols and increased flu shots kept the numbers way down.

What Is the Flu?

Learn more from WebMD about the flu, including causes, symptoms, types, risk factors, treatment, and prevention.

www.webmd.com

Studies have shown they worked to reduce cases of COVID.

https://www.kansascity.com/news/coronavirus/article247315954.html

I'm embarrassed for you that I have to explain this.

Miserable fail again paid shill,you should be embarrassed to be a human being is what you need to be embarrassed about That is comical you use the Kansas City star as a source not aware that I am aware that Congress did an investigation into the cias activities in the 70s and discovered they have agents planted in all mainstream mediaand major university’s,it’s obvious you and kissmy are plants here as well. You failed to disprove anything jbrown and Missouri Mike said in their first posts when they embarrassed YOU.

 

[LA RAM FAN]

The faster you accelerate infections, the fewer variants become possible because there is no time.

It doesn’t need time. It needs replications and infections.

The faster you accelerate infections, the faster you accumulate variants.

In a lab, you can induce evolution and create variants by forcing viruses to go through many replication cycles and infection cycles rapidly. You’re suggesting doing the exact same thing to hundreds of millions of people in just this country.

Wrong.
If you cause a million replications of the same original RNA, there is NO evolution because the replications happened in parallel, at the same time, and there can be no significant genetic change in one generation.

You can not "force" viruses to go through replication cycles.
They happen at a fairly fixed rate, and you can't speed them up.
You can slow them down, but that is irrelevant to the discussion.

To cause evolution you need to increase the number of generations in series, not the number of infections or offspring in parallel. And that is simply a matter of time. The longer any epidemic is kept around, the more it will evolve variants.
The early peak when the infection rate is at its highest, does not at all allow for any evolution because there are not enough generations. It happens too quickly for that.

Except they’re not going to be infected with the exact same virus.

You seem to think everyone is going to get the infection simultaneously. That’s not how this works.

Of course you can deliberately infect millions with the same virus strain at about the same time, if you want.
Its called variolation.
And ancient tried and true method to achieve herd immunity as quickly as possible.
The advantage is that you can then pick only healthy volunteers who are likely to survive, thus protecting the elderly and weak who would be much more likely to die.

But even without deliberate variolation, all epidemic go through an initial peak quickly, and since it is quick, it will have to all be the same strain most likely.
It took almost a year for other strains to even be detected.
Evolution of other strains takes a great deal of time.
They did not pop up from nothing in a week.

Colfex.the op,kissmy.lesh,and flopper are all paid shills from Langley,why do you bother with those trolls.

 

[Flopper]

This is basic science of biology, and there can be no alternative interpretation.

You don’t understand biology.

More infections means more mutations means more evolution. Time is not relevant here. The relevant issue is how many infections.

By allowing everyone to get sick, you supercharge the process, just as we do in the lab.

That is ridiculously ignorant.
If one parent has millions of offspring and infects millions of people, that is ONE generation, and then there can be NO evolution at all.
Infections in parallel do NOT allow for evolution.

The only way you get evolution is with millions of serial generations.
The number of infections or infection rate is irrelevant.
If one virus only infects 1 person, but you do that for a million generations, only THEN will you get any significant evolution.

Sexual reproduction is the primary method of producing variations in higher forms of life. It is these variations that form the basis for evolution. Over many generations natural selection and other means of evolution determine what variations survive. An thus we have evolution occurring over many generations.

The viruses are different. There is no sexual reproduction. A virus particle replicates itself into tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of particles every 8 to 72 hours and each of those particles can likewise replicate. Mutations are a primary means of changes in the genome and every mutation can potentially be a new strain if the mutations alter it's biology. So no, it does not take a long time for a new strain to appear. Most of these strains fall by the way side. Occasionally one has the characterizes that make them a danger to man. So far we have discovered 8 such strains over the last year. The more a virus replicates, the more likely dangerous strains will occur.

A Primer on Coronavirus, Variants, Mutation and Evolution | Applied Ecology | NC State University

cals.ncsu.edu

 

[Lesh]

The faster you accelerate infections, the fewer variants become possible because there is no time.

It doesn’t need time. It needs replications and infections.

The faster you accelerate infections, the faster you accumulate variants.

In a lab, you can induce evolution and create variants by forcing viruses to go through many replication cycles and infection cycles rapidly. You’re suggesting doing the exact same thing to hundreds of millions of people in just this country.

Wrong.
If you cause a million replications of the same original RNA, there is NO evolution because the replications happened in parallel, at the same time, and there can be no significant genetic change in one generation.

You can not "force" viruses to go through replication cycles.
They happen at a fairly fixed rate, and you can't speed them up.
You can slow them down, but that is irrelevant to the discussion.

To cause evolution you need to increase the number of generations in series, not the number of infections or offspring in parallel. And that is simply a matter of time. The longer any epidemic is kept around, the more it will evolve variants.
The early peak when the infection rate is at its highest, does not at all allow for any evolution because there are not enough generations. It happens too quickly for that.

Except they’re not going to be infected with the exact same virus.

You seem to think everyone is going to get the infection simultaneously. That’s not how this works.

Of course you can deliberately infect millions with the same virus strain at about the same time, if you want.
Its called variolation.
And ancient tried and true method to achieve herd immunity as quickly as possible.
The advantage is that you can then pick only healthy volunteers who are likely to survive, thus protecting the elderly and weak who would be much more likely to die.

But even without deliberate variolation, all epidemic go through an initial peak quickly, and since it is quick, it will have to all be the same strain most likely.
It took almost a year for other strains to even be detected.
Evolution of other strains takes a great deal of time.
They did not pop up from nothing in a week.

Colfex.the op,kissmy.lesh,and flopper are all paid shills from Langley,why do you bother with those trolls.

Paranoid much nutjob?

 

[Rigby5]

This is basic science of biology, and there can be no alternative interpretation.

You don’t understand biology.

More infections means more mutations means more evolution. Time is not relevant here. The relevant issue is how many infections.

By allowing everyone to get sick, you supercharge the process, just as we do in the lab.

That is ridiculously ignorant.
If one parent has millions of offspring and infects millions of people, that is ONE generation, and then there can be NO evolution at all.
Infections in parallel do NOT allow for evolution.

The only way you get evolution is with millions of serial generations.
The number of infections or infection rate is irrelevant.
If one virus only infects 1 person, but you do that for a million generations, only THEN will you get any significant evolution.

Sexual reproduction is the primary method of producing variations in higher forms of life. It is these variations that form the basis for evolution. Over many generations natural selection and other means of evolution determine what variations survive. An thus we have evolution occurring over many generations.

The viruses are different. There is no sexual reproduction. A virus particle replicates itself into tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of particles every 8 to 72 hours and each of those particles can likewise replicate. Mutations are a primary means of changes in the genome and every mutation can potentially be a new strain if the mutations alter it's biology. So no, it does not take a long time for a new strain to appear. Most of these strains fall by the way side. Occasionally one has the characterizes that make them a danger to man. So far we have discovered 8 such strains over the last year. The more a virus replicates, the more likely dangerous strains will occur.

A Primer on Coronavirus, Variants, Mutation and Evolution | Applied Ecology | NC State University

cals.ncsu.edu

Not really.
Mutations are totally random damage, usually from things like radiation, and that almost always results in just useless junk that is totally not viable.
When a virus reproduces, it is almost like sexual preproduction, in the virus injects its RNA into the nucleus of the host cell. There is adds its hereditary traits to the host DNA for replication when the host cell replicates, or it can combine with other virus genetic material. It does not and can not reproduce all on its own. And mutations then are NOT the primary cause of new strains.
The more generations, the more likely some combination will result in a strain that is worse for humans, but not the most replication of a single generation. The faster epidemic infection spreads, the sooner herd immunity is reached, and that stops new and more deadly strains. The more you stretch out and delay herd immunity, by flattening the curve, the more generations you will have, and that increases the number of new strains.

 

[Flopper]

So far we have discovered 8 such strains over the last year. The more a virus replic

This is basic science of biology, and there can be no alternative interpretation.

You don’t understand biology.

More infections means more mutations means more evolution. Time is not relevant here. The relevant issue is how many infections.

By allowing everyone to get sick, you supercharge the process, just as we do in the lab.

That is ridiculously ignorant.
If one parent has millions of offspring and infects millions of people, that is ONE generation, and then there can be NO evolution at all.
Infections in parallel do NOT allow for evolution.

The only way you get evolution is with millions of serial generations.
The number of infections or infection rate is irrelevant.
If one virus only infects 1 person, but you do that for a million generations, only THEN will you get any significant evolution.

Sexual reproduction is the primary method of producing variations in higher forms of life. It is these variations that form the basis for evolution. Over many generations natural selection and other means of evolution determine what variations survive. An thus we have evolution occurring over many generations.

The viruses are different. There is no sexual reproduction. A virus particle replicates itself into tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of particles every 8 to 72 hours and each of those particles can likewise replicate. Mutations are a primary means of changes in the genome and every mutation can potentially be a new strain if the mutations alter it's biology. So no, it does not take a long time for a new strain to appear. Most of these strains fall by the way side. Occasionally one has the characterizes that make them a danger to man. So far we have discovered 8 such strains over the last year. The more a virus replicates, the more likely dangerous strains will occur.

A Primer on Coronavirus, Variants, Mutation and Evolution | Applied Ecology | NC State University

cals.ncsu.edu

Not really.
Mutations are totally random damage, usually from things like radiation, and that almost always results in just useless junk that is totally not viable.
When a virus reproduces, it is almost like sexual preproduction, in the virus injects its RNA into the nucleus of the host cell. There is adds its hereditary traits to the host DNA for replication when the host cell replicates, or it can combine with other virus genetic material. It does not and can not reproduce all on its own. And mutations then are NOT the primary cause of new strains.
The more generations, the more likely some combination will result in a strain that is worse for humans, but not the most replication of a single generation. The faster epidemic infection spreads, the sooner herd immunity is reached, and that stops new and more deadly strains. The more you stretch out and delay herd immunity, by flattening the curve, the more generations you will have, and that increases the number of new strains.

Per the link above, the most common source of variations are from mutations. Viruses will exchange DNA in a number of ways but that is in significant compared to mutations. Viruses certain do attack DNA of cells resulting DNA cell damage, however I have not seen any thing about DNA exchange between viruses and cells. Virus mutations are very common, particular RNA viruses perhaps as high as one mutation per genome copy. With coronavirus copies occurring every 6 to 12 hours in hundreds of thousands of infections, that is a lot of mutations.

Viral mutations occur because of errors incorporated in the viral genome. Radiation can certain cause errors in the genome but viral mutations are far too common to think radiation is the only cause. Most probably recombination is major cause DNA error.

It is vaccines that will bring the virus under control so the public will fee safe getting their lives and the economy back to normal. If we were dependent on infection as means of immunity and not vaccines, then I would agree, flatten the curve only postpones herd immunity. Without vaccines, we could be looking at 5 to 7 years till herd immunity with a sluggish economy, and over a million deaths. At the rate we're vaccinating now we could reach heard immunity by the end of the year or early next year.

 

[Crepitus]

I didn't know we tested for the flu in the past, did you know that? It's because they DIDN'T.

Is this supposed to be a joke?

 

[WTH_Progs?]

I didn't know we tested for the flu in the past, did you know that? It's because they DIDN'T.

Is this supposed to be a joke?

You have something to add?