i left it out on purpose because that's a far from forgone conclusion.

i think we WERE seeing just that sort of vaccine mediated virulence increase in delta.

but omi went the other way and become far less severe. that is the natural "desire" of a virus driven by evolutionary necessity. killing the host is severely maladaptive and selected strongly against.

you really only get that sort of inverted gradient when you have non sterilizing vaccines with meaningful partial efficacy.

if you get far enough outside them that efficacy is basically gone, the evo gradient reverts to normal and you go back to selecting for lower, not higher virulence.

and my base prior is that this will dominate and that delta was a transitory interstitial.