Power Factor

At some point in your education, it's likely you were exposed to calculus, either Lite or High Test. At the very least, you were introduced to the derivative and the integral (usually, the indefinite version). The real world interpretation and analytic derivation of the derivative (for simple algebraic formulas, at least; no functions embedded) is grasped without much angst. The first derivative of a curve is just the tangent at any point, is just the rate of change of the curve at that point, and is commonly referenced to acceleration. The analytic derivation of such for simple algebraic equations is pretty straightforward; just 'reduce' the power of each constituent serially, and tada, you're done.

The integral tends to be harder to grasp intuitively. The common reference is to 'the area under the curve', but the calculation gets a bit hoary. Not as straightforward as the derivative. That's when you see dy/dx and such with that loopy thingee ∫. But 'area under the curve' can be interpreted as just some multiplication of two values; that is, after all, what a simple area is.

It's also what power is. In electrical terms: Power = Voltage X Current. Some, but not many, scientists and pundits have applied that reasoning to Covid, and I find that a shame, because I find it to be helpful in understanding what's been going on for nigh on to two years. Something that's clear from the history of SARS-Cov-X is that the virus (and I'd wager, all viruses) actually are Darwinian, even though some have offered that a virus isn't even 'alive' in the conventional sense. But Darwinism doesn't care whether the actors on the stage act with forethought or not. Darwinism only says that those who adapt best to the environment prosper. And the adaptation(s) are not determined by forethought, necessarily.

Many of the science and pundit communities have reminded us that while viruses mutate more or less constantly, those changes are random in nature. They ain't no brain in there to make decisions. On the whole, mutations have no impact. Some, occasionally, do change the impact of a virus.

My cogitation on the question of mutations is thus. The Power of a virus is fixed at inception and that the expression of that Power is simply Virulence times Transmission; in other words, if a mutation increases one of those values, the other must of necessity diminish to meet the Power value of the virus. Power in this sense is just some abstract notion not a specific value of specific units, at least so far as I know now. Perhaps some virologist somewhere has already codified this, but I'm not aware of such. And there's ample evidence of this (quasi?) relationship from the history of SARS-CoV-X viruses. Both SARS-CoV-1 and MERS were quickly lethal and barely transmissible. Covid-Β was more lethal than Covid-19 or variants, and it was submerged by Covid-Δ by the latter's superior transmissiblity. Power was maintained. I don't expect a SARS-ish version of Covid-19 to emerge and flourish. Covid-Β didn't, and that makes Darwinian sense: a virus that eliminates hosts too fast enduces herd immunity (by killing efficiently) in the local area.

Oddly enough, in some sense, is that labs like Wuhan (and our Black Ops counterparts) could be on a simple mission: devise viruses with high virulence and high transmissibility, IOW higher Power than any we've encountered from Nature. Whether Darwin permits that to happen is an interesting question. I suspect it's a fool's errand, both in the MAD Cold War point of view and straightforward math of it all.

Of course, if it should happen that a variant emerges that increases the virulence of Covid and maintains or increases transmissibility, thereby increasing Power, then this has all been a pipe dream. But I don't think so. We also already know that coronaviruses exist for the common cold; not virulent (unless you were a Pre-Columbian resident of the Western Hemisphere, of course) and highly transmissible.

The implication from a policy standpoint is to do what was done from the start: take the necessary steps to prevent the healthcare infrastructure, which is by definition local, from being overwhelmed. I expect that Covid-Ο will be found to be less virulent, given that the information is that it is more transmissible. Power must be maintained. Covid may well, over some years, devolve into another type of common cold coronavirus. I sure can't wait for that. While it made no sense two years ago, the Right Wingnut governors laissez-faire may not be as bonkers now. It all depends on Covid-Δ cresting over (don't know yet, as the turkey day non-reporting is starting to straggle in and the Cold States just might be continuing up), and whether Covid-Ο replaces it as Covid-Δ did to Covid-Β. Whichever way the situation works out, Covid-19 remains a pandemic among the unvaccinated. The question remains whether the Right Wingnuts will be the only ones paying a price for stupidity and arrogance. Yet another Right Wingnut Christian vaccine denier died.