SARS-CoV-2 will continue to circulate in the human population: an opinion from the point of view of the virus-host relationship

Abstract

At the population level, the virus-host relationship is not set up to end with the complete elimination of either or both. Pathogen-resistant individuals will always remain in the host population. In turn, the virus can never completely eliminate the host population, because evolutionarily such an event is a dead end for the virus as an obligate intracellular parasite. A certain existential balance exists in the virus-host relationship. Against this backdrop, viral epidemics and pandemics only become manifest and egregious to human beings when tens and hundreds of thousands of people die and the question emerges what caused the high mortality peaks on the death chart. The answer seems clear; the emerging strain of the virus is new to the host population, and new mutations of the virus and natural selection will lead to a survival of only genetically resistant individuals in a host population. The dangers inherent to a novel virus are due to new features generally inthe molecular structure of proteins, which enable the virus to infect the cells of the host organism more intensively, dramatically challenging host immunity, and thus be transmitted more readily in the host population. In this article, we will concentrate on the facts currently available about severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which has caused COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic and try to predict its development and consequences based on the virushost relationship. In fact, only two scenarios will occur simultaneously in the very near future: people who are genetically resistant to the virus will get sick, recover, and develop immunity, while people who are sensitive to the virus will need drugs and vaccines, which will have to be researched and developed if they are to recover. If the pandemic does not stop, in a few decades it is anticipated that SARS-CoV-2 will become as safe as the four non-severe acute respiratory syndrome human coronaviruses (HCoV-NL63, HCoV-HKU1, HCoV-OC43, and HCoV-229E) currently circulating but causing low mortality in the human population.

Construction of SARS-CoV-2 Virus-Like Particles by Mammalian Expression System

“…The ongoing pandemic of 2019 Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), a newly emergent member of Coronaviridae family (Coronaviridae Study Group of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses, 2020; Wu et al, 2020). Though sharing 79.6% genetic sequence (Zhou et al, 2020), SARS-CoV-2 is apparently less pathogenic but more contagious as compared to SARS-CoV, which belongs to the same virus family (Oberemok et al, 2020). In the months since the COVID-19 rose from a regional crisis to a global threat, considerable research efforts testing possible treatments have been intensively exerted, however, until recently, there is still no medication and vaccines available for COVID-19 (Lythgoe and Middleton, 2020).…”

Genetic analysis of SARS-CoV-2 isolates collected from Bangladesh: Insights into the origin, mutational spectrum and possible pathomechanism

“…Mutation in the viral genome is a ubiquitous phenomenon for the viruses to escape the host defence. But the mutation rate in SARS-CoV-2 much lower than the other RNA viruses, including seasonal flu viruses ( Oberemok et al, 2020 ). In this study, there was found some variations in the SARS-CoV-2 isolated in Bangladesh, which may affect the epidemiology and pathogenicity of the virus.…”

Selective Pressure-Free Treatments for COVID-19

“…While in the early stages of the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, China, the L type that is more aggressive and has a higher transmission rate than the S type was more prevalent (96.3% L type vs. 3.7% S type), the spread of the aggressive L type dropped after early January 2020. It is hypothesized that human intervention that caused severe selective pressure on the L type is the main reason as to why the milder type of the virus has become common due to selective pressure [18][19][20]. Now, some evidence shows that the strain circulating in the Western region has possibly evolved during the pandemic [21].…”