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Demiansky t1_jdjcjzn wrote

Reply to comment by Alwayssunnyinarizona in What happened to the old COVID variants, like Delta? Could they come back? by number1dork

Good analogy, but I'd compare it more to something like "could Homo Erectus come back???" The answer is "not really" because it already exists in us, today. Its like asking whether your great, great grandfather can come back.

Older versions of the virus can't come back because they've already evolved into the more modern version of the virus we see today.

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Booty_Bumping t1_jdjo2k0 wrote

Delta is not the ancestor of Omicron. Delta did not "evolve into" Omicron — it doesn't even have alpha variant in its lineage.

Another way this analogy breaks down is that humans have sexual reproduction whereas viruses are almost entirely asexual (with rare gene transfer exceptions). Neanderthal genes can enter humans because they are sexually compatible, but viruses have to rely on convergent evolution.

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Demiansky t1_jdkfryf wrote

Well, no, not every strain of the virus was on some kind of conveyor belt of evolution anymore than the hominid family tree. But all of the earlier, less virulent variants are the direct ancestors of modern variants.

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Alwayssunnyinarizona t1_jdjownw wrote

I thought about an Australopithecus analogy, but thought readers might grasp the idea of bringing back the wooly mammoth as it's currently in the news (along with the dodo). Apart from that, I've lost track of whether omicron is a straight derivative of delta, or if they have a shared common ancestor - which would make it more like the mammoth analogy ;)

Actually, according to this article in Science, it looks more like they shared a common ancestor....so, mammoth rather than Homo erectus.

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