Sort of a weird ask, but as a real, no shit, virologist, what do you think about changing your messaging to make content more accessible to lazy readers?
I have some half baked ideas about tradeoffs in infection rate and fatality, but I'm worse than a layman, I'm a layman with an opinion.
I'd sorta thought a virus could be real lethal(like ebola) ore real infectious(like a cold) but it's kinda hard to be both at the same time.
it _seems_ like there's a mapping between getting read (infection rate) and convincing people (fatality).
to be super explicit, is messaging a virus? is there a tradeoff in how the message spreads vs how convincing it is?
You've probably got other things to do, but it seems like there's a parallel there, even if imperfect, that's worth looking at. If you got a minute, I'd love to read your thoughts.
Viruses don’t really care about thing like death rate, they just care about how effectively they are spread from person to person (viruses don’t really care about anything, but I am describing how they appear to act if they had a mind).
In general the less deadly viruses spread better as dead people are not able to spread the virus around as well as living people. The general trend is for viruses to become less deadly over time, but it can take a long time for this to happen.
Spread rate would also need to stay in a certain range for a virus to stick around. Spread too fast and there won't be a second wave. The herd immunity effect gives this system some self-balancing properties, but there's surely a tipping point where even that won't help a speeding virus to survive.
> is there a tradeoff in how the message spreads vs how convincing it is?
That doesn't make any sense, viruses that are more fatal don't spread well because dead people are not good spreaders. Very sick people are also less capable spreaders than someone walking around with a persistent cough. Someone who's convinced would be MORE likely to spread a message.
