Fascinating article. But I struggle with this kind of writing:

> In other words, perhaps, the coronavirus virus uses long-term infections as a mutational testing ground. While inside one person, they can try out all these different combinations of mutations and figure out, through trial and error, which ones are best at evading the immune system or helping the virus become more infectious.

Viruses don’t have agency. They don’t choose to try out combinations of mutations. I think it’s quite misleading to suggest any form of intelligence or decision making as an analogy for how viruses evolve.