Kyle Harper

And it's not just transmissibility and virulence.

Those are like two really basic parameters.

But, you know, when you look at even COVID-19, part of what made it insidious is it just has just the right parameters to be latent for just long enough.

Like the first COVID, SARS-CoV-1, 2003.

slightly more virulent.

And in fact, it was just more virulent enough that it made you sick pretty quick.

And just that little difference was enough to contain it because you could figure out who was sick.

COVID-19 was impossible to contain because it took, you know, several days before you really presented with clinical illness.

And it's just that little quirk that made it totally impossible to control through non-pharmaceutical interventions early on.

And so, like,

you know, follow that train of thought, pathogens are going to find ways to take advantage.

And there may be, you know, pathogens that push the limits on latency that can be very, very hard to control.

So I think that's like one of the takeaways of the big evolutionary history of our pathogens.

Evolution is very weird, very contingent, very creative at exploiting whatever weakness we give it.

It's because there are

Billions and billions and billions of microbes in this room.

You know, I don't know how many tens to hundreds of millions of species of microbes are in this room.

Most of them are not even remotely pre-evolved to – pre-adapted to be pathogenic.

But like lots are and they're constantly – you know, they're constantly seeing if you manage to lock that door.

And they're just looking for a way to break in.