History of the Wuhan Flu

Comparing the very first reports of the flu outbreak in Wuhan at the beginning of this year with more recent outbreaks, it is hard to believe we're dealing with the same disease. Initial reports, often supported by video footage, told of a disease in which symptoms could go from mild to extremely severe in a matter of hours. People dropped in the streets, coughing uncontrollably. Hospitals were overrun by people at death's door. However, try to find similar footage from Sweden and we come up short. What we are seeing in Sweden is a very mild version of what we were witnessing in China back in January.

Official mortality rates in China have been at a steady 2%. However, simple calculations based on early numbers indicate that the mortality rate may have been as high as 12%, which at first glance squares up with the mortality rates reported from Italy. But the numbers from Italy are misleading. Their 12% number relates to how many people die with the disease, not of the disease. Of the people who died with the flu in Italy, only 1% had no other ailment. The 12% number in China was based on a group of people who were otherwise fit and healthy. The initial outbreak in Wuhan appears to have been 12 times more deadly than what it has been in Italy.

Another interesting development is the way the flu is affecting medical staff. A large number of young and healthy doctors and nurses ended up dead in China. While Italy has had its share of similarly tragic deaths, this has been to a much smaller degree. Here too, it appears that the disease has become less deadly, a fact that was predicted by some experts back in January. Their thinking was that natural selection will always favor virus mutations towards less lethal versions, because this keeps the host alive for longer so that the disease can continue to spread. The ideal virus is therefore one that spreads quickly without weakening its hosts, which makes the common cold in this respect something very close to perfection.

It's worth noting that the common cold is in fact a corona virus, closely related to the Wuhan flu. It is therefore reasonable to expect the Wuhan flu to mutate towards its less lethal cousin, because it is the common cold that is the most ideally adapted disease. If it is true that the Wuhan flu is an engineered disease that escaped from the now infamous Wuhan bio-lab, it's even more likely that it has mutated. Engineered genetics is after all known to be extremely fickle. Purebred dogs only remain purebred as long as they are prevented from interbreeding. When purebred dog are let loose in nature, they revert to their genetic starting point within a couple of generations. This is undoubtedly also the case when it comes to engineered diseases.

All of this squares up with what we've seen. While things started out ugly in Wuhan, the disease has progressively lost its bite, and it's almost as if it has become a fairly mundane flu at this point. Going forward, we can therefore expect the disease to become even less of a problem until it disappears completely.

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