What is fitness?

Yes, all strains will exhibit GE. But we are not ever going to run out of viruses since new ones get generated from time to time by the corruption of non-pathogenic, functional parts of organisms.

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So much nonsense in one sentence. Please educate yourself by some of the links I have supplied. Other than the fact that much of the material of these other viruses to which you refer are themselves descendent from the 1918 H1N1, the other contributions are not “less mutated”.

The following are phylogenetic trees for each of the eight genome segments of the 2009 outbreak. As you can see, lots of mutation in each.

Origins and evolutionary genomics of the 2009 swine-origin H1N1 influenza A epidemic

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By “corruption”, do you mean “adaptation”?

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Are you claiming that the flu virus was renewed by genetic contribution from a non-pathogenic, functional part of an organism? Are new flu viruses, specifically, being generated in the present day from organismal genomes? If not, your point doesn’t apply. If so, what evidence do you have?

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Short answer: Magic did it. Adam and Eve ate from some fruit, and then magic beams of magical decay emanated in all directions causing DNA polymerases to start making errors they otherwise wouldn’t. For… reasons.

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I’ve always said the nicest part of being YEC is you get to make up the most ridiculous science-free woo as you go. :slightly_smiling_face:

I’d love to see the scientific evidence new viruses arise from the “corruption of non-pathogenic, functional parts of organisms.”. But you don’t have any such evidence, right?

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It’s worth noting here that if one tries to combine all segments into a single tree, or combines them into a single graph (as Sanford does), one will necessarily conflate reassortment with mutation (as Sanford does).

Add that to the fact that Sanford doesn’t even realize that those sequences are from clonal isolates, and all you get is an incoherent mess.

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Just to be clear: when you say, ‘Just the way viruses work’, you mean ‘Something I made up about viruses that has zero empirical evidence and that contradicts everything scientists know about viruses’.

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National Geographic magazine is your idea of a scientific source? That would explain a lot, I guess…

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Reassortment with other existing viruses would bring in equally mutated genetic material. GE would be affecting those other lineages of viruses in the same exact way. Sorry, this just doesn’t work.

Added in edit:
Just so we are all on the same page, influenza is an RNA virus. It is not a retrovirus. Influenza can survive 24 to 48 hours outside of a host. Within hosts, it is cleared in a matter of days to weeks. Therefore, ALL influenza viruses must be infecting new hosts on an ongoing basis. There isn’t some magical frozen reservoir of influenza virus sitting somewhere, ready to replenish the genomes of their worn out brethren.

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