[tweetiepooh]

I'm sure there are many variants out there but many will be unviable for the virus, make no change to the proteins due to redundancy in coding, make no relevant change, make a relevant change but no practical difference to infectivity/antibody response/severity of infection.

It's hard talking about virii as they aren't really alive so they can't really be thought of as mutating. Mutations occur because of errors in processing in host cells and if that results in a virus that infects better it will grow in the population.

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The issue with CV is that it's novel to the world. Think of the impact of European explorers taking disease to the New World and how that decimated local populations to whom it was novel. Once we've cycled around this virus for a bit I'd expect death rates to reduce as we build up "herd immunity". Although the virus can still pass around and infect we get used to the type of virus and hopefully it becomes like flu or cold and for most people a minor disease with vaccinations/boosters for more vulnerable.