I don't exepct this to happen overnight. Evolution is usually quite slow, even when there is a very strong selective pressure, so even if this is troubling possibility does emerge, it would unfold over the course of years or decades. In the short term, I think you're right: any increase in virulence is likely to merely cause a worse respiratory infection. It's the longer term I'm worried about here.
The concern I have is that it looks like it might be under intense selective pressure to extend the ability it already has to infect some immune cells, at which point it would be able to use the lymph nodes to spread everywhere in the body, and once that's done one of the best ways to spread is through causing a rash and spreading as tiny bits of infected skin flake off. The fact it can cause rashes means it can already infect the skin, and so it has one fewer trick to learn to move in the general direction of smallpox.
It's also possible I'm being too literal minded, and the outcome will not be smallpox 2.0. If it is actually learning the trick of infecting immune cells though, I'd be astonished if it did not become one of the worst diseases to afflict human beings.
no subject
The concern I have is that it looks like it might be under intense selective pressure to extend the ability it already has to infect some immune cells, at which point it would be able to use the lymph nodes to spread everywhere in the body, and once that's done one of the best ways to spread is through causing a rash and spreading as tiny bits of infected skin flake off. The fact it can cause rashes means it can already infect the skin, and so it has one fewer trick to learn to move in the general direction of smallpox.
It's also possible I'm being too literal minded, and the outcome will not be smallpox 2.0. If it is actually learning the trick of infecting immune cells though, I'd be astonished if it did not become one of the worst diseases to afflict human beings.