[AndyJackson]

What the flu virus is doing isn't so much "evolution" as it is something truly strange since viruses don't have sex.

sexual reproduction is not a prerequisite to the evolution of a biological system. Virus's mutate (evolve) and the one's that survive and go on to create infectious diseases are the one's that mutate to a form against which a "network" of humans have not developed immunity. That is evolution and survival of the fittest in action.

[muawiyah]

The overwhelming majority of the different types of viruses (and we are probably speaking of tens of millions, if not billions, of different viruses) have absolutely no impact one way or the other on human beings ~ in terms of disease.

They are what they are and we don't even know if all of them do anything in particular.

It's been proposed we develop an artificial lifeform into which we'd plug viruses to see what they do.