“ directly out of post-apocalyptic fiction.”
I don’t see it that bad, but if it mutates like the common cold coronavirus and becomes seasonal, with a 1% or more fatality rate, things will drastically change. Kids won’t physically go to school anymore, for instance, all learning will be online.
considering that a percentage of survivors will have long-term cardiopulmonary damage (or other organ damage), it isn’t hard to postulate each subsequent year’s fatalities being higher just due to compromised people from the year before succumbing.
I am not sure why this isn’t a realistic scenario, and I would like to find good reasons why.
I don’t see any pressure on this virus to select for less deadly mutations. with hyper-infectious capability (the protein spike feature) and long incubation (some part of which is presumably contagious), I don’t see that it matters if the host is eventually killed.