Quote (Thor123422 @ Apr 23 2020 12:22am)
Actually yes, it's one mechanism of viral mutation.
Basically if two different viruses infect the same cell sometimes the RNA from one virus gets accidentally packaged into a second virus and spliced together. The result is that the new virus will have some genes from one virus, and some genes from another virus. It's one of the proposed mechanisms for why the second wave of the Spanish flu was so deadly, it's possible that it had one of these events and essentially reset the immunity of the population.
It's important to know though that this is incredibly rare. If you have millions of infections it still isn't a likely occurrence, but the more infections you have the more likely a dangerous event like this happens, and that's one of the reasons why you want to reduce infections from diseases like covid.
Thanks for the info. Found this to fill in the spots.
https://www.history.com/news/spanish-flu-second-wave-resurgence