COVID-19 seems to be weakening as it evolves from one variant to another. The initial outbreaks in many countries let to very strict measures that limited people's freedom to save lives. But now governments in many places have decided to scrape most of the protection measures, saying that the Omicron variant is less dangerous that its predecessors.

But as we lay down our guard against the virus, what will happen if, all of a sudden, a more destructive variant started to spread across the world?

First, let's check out some data to see if the virus is actually weakening.

According to public data sorted by Chinese health community dxy.com, the death rate of Delta and Omicron variants is much lower than the original COVID-19 virus. The original virus can kill seven out of a hundred people, while the Omicron variant can only kill less than one, which is lower than common cold.

Recent research indicates that Omicron tends to invade people's throat and bronchi and not the lungs. It means the new variant has less power to invade deep inside our bodies.

In addition to that, vaccines played an important role to reduce the chance of COVID-19 developing into severe pneumonia.

That sounds like good news.

History also tells us that most viruses tend to weaken after causing a pandemic. But we don't have any theory to back that claim.

In February, an article in Nature Reviews Microbiology said the evolution of COVID-19 is heading toward an unpredictable path. It may become less severe, but may go the opposite way too.

As the dxy.com articles said, "the ultimate goal of viruses is to survive, instead of killing the infected."

As far as we know, virus mutation has no rules. It's basically random. So, in addition to praying for the virus to disappear, we should also prepare for the worst.