Some nearly neutrals must be beneficial. Saying otherwise is a rejection of basic mathematics.
No. And I quoted specifically what I did intentionally, as we can’t demonstrate anything about them conclusively. Effect size of nearly neutrals are far too small to be conclusively established at all. We can infer the exist from certain biochemical principles (excessively large genomes are slightly deleterious because of increased metabolic costs of reproduction, say), but these are below the capacity of reasonable effort to detect.
You can just read what they actually say… Reduced selection, to the extent they say it at all. Implying of course that a) normal levels of selection would not result in fitness reductions and b) none of it applies to any other species necessarily, and c) the reductions will reach a new equilibrium and then stop.
I guarantee this causes you less harm than your tendency to think people like Paul or Jeanson know much more than they actually do.
And yet it does apply to viruses, in spite of even higher population sizes… Odd, that. All most like they’re just making stuff up to fit whatever they need as they say it.