Someone = evolution https://twitter.com/barbarindian/status/1385307410127106051

For evolution, each error is an experiment. Each new progeny is an experiment. A successful experiment is the one that quickly finds a new niche as a home from where it reproduces prolifically.

With eukaryotes, not only are there powerful innate mechanisms to eliminate errors swiftly (e.g., miscarriages), each generation comes about from anywhere between days to years.

Viruses produce millions of copies each. Many many have mutations. Most are deleterious. But still many are "improved" versions.

The "improved" versions are the ones that are likely to discover a breach in our defenses and individuals with those breaches. They now have tricks that previously didn't work.

For example, a version could live peaceably in individuals with good immune defenses, and use them only as carriers to be able to reach those who do not have a defense.

We can create vaccines in 6-8 months. In the future, maybe even in 2-3 months to deal with the most damaging viruses. But how can you match the gazillion bazillion variants being created every second?

The human immune systems and the virus are in the process of discovering where they could both co-exist, without killing each other.

The best outcome from the human perspective would be that we reach this stalemate soon and in this generation of humans. With or without the aid of our artifices.

Or else, we will have to rely on our future generations. We will have to rely on evolution. Most of us will perish. Some who have freak immune systems capable of withstanding all variants they are exposed to will survive. They will then reproduce to continue our species.

On the other hand, it is not unlikely that none of us are capable of dealing with all possible variants. Each of us is vulnerable to at least one and ends up being infected and killed by it.

Which means our species would have come to the end of its road.

Not a new story. This has happened with millions of species in the past. Some that lived on the planet for many more millions of years.

Just that we will think of it as tragic.

Perhaps humans should think of creating quarantine cities/nations. Let us house healthy, uninfected, young individuals in those locations, completely sequestered from the rest of us.

Let there be meticulously designed supply lines for them that let them lead near-normal lives and the rest of the world provides them with all that they need to create new civilizations.