I still can’t get over Epstein’s ideas about viral adaptation in the Chotiner piece. I think he’s talking about what I think is a general pattern in virology that successful viruses need you to live long enough to allow them to propagate efficiently. So if you become ...
2/ infected and like immediately explode they’re not going to be off to great careers as viruses. And I know from history background that there is at least the theory that syphilis started as a more lethal pathogen. But he seems to have reduced this to the idea that all viruses..
3/ rapidly evolve to an equilibrium of being as lethal as the flu. Which is obviously not true. And he’s actually there saying that AIDS started as super strong but kind of evolved into a chronic disease by the 90s, which is really offensively stupid ...
4/ given the shattering scale of suffering caused by AIDS and the generation of activists and scientists who spent almost two decades wrestling it into a mostly manageable chronic illness, with permanent meds. And this dude has a vaunted academic rep.
