How does the Iceland data suggest the hypotheses that 1) an attenuated strain exists in the wild and 2) it provides immunity to the worse strain? It's asserted in the post, but I don't see it. It seems likely to me their experience isn't any different from any other country's, and they're just testing more.
The idea in the post is obviously a good one if it can be done, it's just that it seems like a generic idea that should be considered for any viral pandemic, which makes me wonder why it's not already an approach people are working on.
As for why people aren’t working on this idea I don’t know. Maybe someone is and they will send me an email and I can update my post. I would certainly be extremely happy with this outcome.
> This data suggests a simple and testable hypothesis – there are natural strains of SARS-CoV-2 in the world that have mutated to be non-pathogenic (asymptomatic), but are still infective and will provide immunity to the more pathogenic (deadly) strains.
From the structure of the post it sounded like "this data" referred to Iceland plus the Wuhan study.
If you only meant the Wuhan study then apologies for misunderstanding.
I’m a lay person here, but it seems a foregone conclusion that viruses experience frequent mutation, and that a novel virus infecting a new host species for the first time is going to see a relative explosion in mutations due to the extreme increase in the number of opportunities for it to occur.
The idea in the post is obviously a good one if it can be done, it's just that it seems like a generic idea that should be considered for any viral pandemic, which makes me wonder why it's not already an approach people are working on.