re: The next covid variant will be more contagious than Omicron

It is more about what the process of evolution actually is. For every successful evolution event of a species there are a million that failed.

Just because a virus has a greater chance at surviving by becoming a more transmissable and milder strain doesn't mean that is the path it will take. The actual mutations that occur to push evolution are as close to random as we can describe, so it goes to gather that on a sliding scale those mutations can go either direction.

For every successful species there are a million failed divergents that failed to fill a niche in nature.