Is there any way we can anticipate how a virus will mutate? Some computer program that runs out probabilities?

I'm going to ask this question Durdle but you get first preview. In 1918 there was the Spanish Flu that killed hundreds of millions of people. A virus then too I believe. Science since then has made astonishing progress. But not when a virus is involved. Why is that? We are similarly impotent now as we were in 1918. Doesn't that seem strange to you? Will a virus eventually be our undoing? Will it always "outsmart" us by being steps ahead of our ability to keep up? Thank you for your reply m'dear! :)

Basically we cannot know of a new micro-organism harmful to us until it develops a new disease in us, so we can only ever react after the event.

We are not as impotent as we were 100 years ago though because as you say, we have made so much scientific and medical progress; but we are still natural organisms and no organism is above Nature.

So I am afraid I do not find it strange. It was bound to happen somehow at some time.

Just heard the headlines on the radio in the background - there are now some 20 000 Covid patients in UK hospitals.

BTW, officially diseases are never named after countries, because it is rarely accurate and the last thing anyone needs or wants are scapegoats and recriminations. The country that first reports it is not necessarily the first to have met it. The 1918-19 Influenza Pandemic killed many millions around the world, and I do not know if its origins were traced; but though Spain did not escape it, it was certainly never a "Spanish" disease. The myth arose from a chance of history - all the WW1 fighting nations were censoring their newspapers when the Influenza hit, but Spain was neutral, and so its own reports were the first to be published.

I have been properly chastened. I know that Durdle but it was a convenient shorthand. So we will never outsmart and outthink and be proactive. Only reactive. So perhaps maybe the final living thing will be a bacterium or virus? World conquerers? Seems a pity after there was so much potential. Or at least so we thought. We are not supreme. We are simply underlings. Thank you for your reply and Happy Tuesday to thee and thine! :)