On the intrinsic nature of viral pathogenesis: The assumption of a Darwinian paradigm to describe COVID-19 pandemic

Our hypothesis about evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic foresees an inverse relation between infectivity (R0) and lethality (L) of SARS-CoV-2. The above parameters are driven by a continuing mutation process granting the virus a clear survival advantage over virulence. For interpreting this relation we adopted a simple equation, R0 x L approximate to k, by which R0 and L depend upon a constant k, that corresponds to an intrinsic property of the viral species involved. The hypothesis was verified by following changes of the R0 and L terms of the formula in the different variants of SARS-CoV-2 that progressively appeared. A further validation came when the equation was applied to pandemic and epidemic influenza type A viruses, Ebola virus and measles virus. We believe this equation that considers virus biology in Darwinian terms could be extremely useful to better face infectious viral threats and validate virushost molecular interactions relevant to viral pathogenesis.(c) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Research Network of Computational and Structural Biotechnology. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creative-commons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Automated summary

This article proposes a hypothesis about the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic, suggesting an inverse relationship between infectivity and lethality of SARS-CoV-2. The hypothesis is supported by a mutation process that gives the virus a survival advantage. The authors verify the hypothesis by observing changes in the parameters of different variants of the virus, and further validation is found in other viral species. They believe that this equation, considering virus biology in Darwinian terms, could be highly useful in addressing infectious viral threats and understanding viral pathogenesis.