"Viruses don't think. Presumably there's nothing to stop them being stupid, or to mutate to be infectious for an extended period before the host gets seriously ill."
Like all living things including us a virus has but one ultimate aim. i.e to reproduce Everything else it does is ultimately in support of that one aim. A virus has no mechanism that enables it to reproduce by itself. I hijacks the cells ot its host, in the case of Covid that us, to carry out that task for it.
It therfore follows that its best strategy is to infect as many people as possible but not to kill them. If it kill its host it dies too. Obviously a virus done not deliberately embark on that strategy but evolutions will deliver that option as a virus that can do that will outperform its competitors.
It's survival of the fittest.
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