I see that a study into the B. 1. 1. 7 variant as caught by (if I understood rightly) NBA players or staff in the US might explain our current stubborn cases plateauing.
Seems to suggest instead of a higher viral load causing problems this might be down to persistence of infection.
So if you get it you tend to have a hard time getting rid of it though it seems not to make you any more sick as such.
If that study is true then it might suggest why we are plateauing but hospitalisations are still going down - a strain that turns up in tests even weeks after you caught it much as if you caught it this week. But no more likely to put you in hospital.
I would imagine a high infectivity rate has more advantage to a virus in survival terms than a high fatality rate would,
Perhaps the end game will be to morph into a virus that almost anyone can catch but almost nobody will die from. Much as the vaccines attempt to persuade it to do.
Do not know the science well enough to know if that might be what is happening
