HOW IS A VIRUS LIKE A GOVERNMENT?

The successful ones figure out how to be symbiotic with their hosts, rather than killing them.

Perhaps the Wuhan coronavirus is following that dynamic.  "Prof Matteo Bassetti, head of the infectious diseases clinic at the Policlinico San Martino hospital in Italy, told The [London] Telegraph that Covid-19 has been losing its virulence in the last month and patients who would have previously died are now recovering."  Evolutionary time scales are slow, though, and the masks, hand washing, and physical distance measures are still prudent.

A month ago, Power Line's John Hinderaker observed that British experimenters were having trouble finding enough volunteers and enough contagion to conduct controlled trials of vaccines.  I haven't been keeping up with that study; I note, though, that parts of Pekin are closed down again (and those are the cases the Chinese are copping to.)  Note, though, his concluding observation.

Why do viruses die out? Epidemics follow a bell curve; they disappear long before they infect everyone in a population. Why? Am I the only one who feels like epidemiologists know less than I had always assumed?

The honest ones will grant that. "Settled science" is what people of faith say when they should be saying "hoc est corpus."