Why are there many variations of viruses?

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Why are there many variants of viruses for example covid it has the delta variant and omicron variant how do viruses mutate and make new variants

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Anonymous 0 Comments

All living organisms evolve over time, even though viruses are stretching the definition of living. As the genes gets copied there are faults introduced and if these mutations are benefitial the new variant will become prominant. But if the mutation is disadvantagious the variant dies out even before it is detected.

Part of the reason why viruses are so effective is that they tend to mutate a lot faster then other organisms. This makes it harder for the immune system to detect because the virus would have mutated for the next time you get an infection. So the antibodies you generated to battle the last infection does not work as well on the new infection. Especially for pandemic viruses like covid they tend to create lots of variaunts and mutate quite a lot in the first few years. This is because the first variant were optimized for another species of animal and when it jumps to humans there are a lot of possible mutations that can create a better variant.

Luckally part of this adaptation process to a new species tends make the virus less harmfull. A very active virus infection will often trigger a much faster and more rapid immune system response then a slower virus infection. So new variants that are less active tends to spread faster and outcompete active virus variants. A lot of older pandemics like the 1918 pandemic is still spreading among the population but as a less deadly variant as part of the seasonal flu.

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