Coronavirus (COVID-19) Discussion Thread

[haxxiy]

SvennoJ said:

Chicho said:

Omicron is already thought to have come from co-infections with the common cold virus. Can Covid-19 exchange genes with the influenza virus as well?

There are 200+ viruses circulating in humans, but they aren't readily exchanging genes. Most of the time there's no obvious advantage to borrowing one another's open reading frame or structural proteins even if such a thing was viable.

There's one precedent, though. Embecoviruses, the family of coronaviruses that include two out of the four endemic coronaviruses, borrowed the entire hemagglutinin spike from influenza. But this was literally a one in thousands of years event.