jon wrote:
Although I have seen no figures published, I am guessing the black
population has has suffered more than average with covid-19, partly
because of living in bigger groups and maybe their system responses.

Something I was reading today, mentioned a cancer patient
who was immunosuppressed, had COVID for an extended period of
time, and it's possible they used convalescent plasma to
help them. And that person had COVID with deletions in the
spike and would be an example of a source of viable mutations.

That suggests the duration of an infection, lends itself
to the virus getting to do more mutating. The human host
in such cases, functioning like a bat immune system and
co-existing with the virus.

There are thousands and thousands of mutations to date.
They started sorting them, early on, on a web site.
You could see the shift happening with time. But the
analysis at the time, was that these mutations were
not cause for concern.

The real test comes, when you start vaccinating people,
and applying evolutionary pressure.

But perhaps it was the way we treated certain patients,
that lent itself to the mutations we see today.
Constructing a patient as a "mutation factory".

Paul