Jabberwocky
Frumious Bandersnatch
That's the theory isn't it - that virus evolve to be less lethal to keep more hosts available. I was always a bit curious why the influenza pandemic didn't work like that tho - the first wave was basically common or garden, then the second wave killed millions. Then it went away. Wonder what the evolution of that was.
we will never know for the influenza pandemic, but the great thing about this pandemic is the vast amounts of data we have. there are something like 70k reference genomes for SARS-CoV-2, from all over the world, available freely to researchers via GISAID. we have never had such a good chance to find out about viral evolution in detail. so it does make sense that we will find some unexpected stuff in there.
if so many people weren't dying then it would it would be great lol. the nerd in me is thrilled to finally have an excuse to look at some of this data in detail but i'd much prefer it if the details gave me a bit more hope.