The article you cited refers to what publicly announced here in Italy by two top medical doctors, but provides an explanation which is exactly the opposite of the one given by the two Italian doctors at the TV: they said that there is no evidence of genetic mutations of the virus, and that the reduction of its damaging potential seems to be due exactly as the effect of the social distancing and lockdown.
It is a clinical effect, not a genetic modification. During the terrible days in March, each patient was receiving an abundant viral load being infected by dozens of other infected people, resulting in severe medical problems. Now people get infected by just a single spreader, and with much smaller viral load, resulting in a milder sickness.
Both doctors praised the severe lockdown as the cause of the current much better situation.
The article suggests the opposite, that the reduction in clinical effects is due to genetic modifications, and that it had occurred the same also without social distancing and lockdown.
It is exactly NOT what the two top Italian doctors said at the TV.
Of course no one knows really what's happened, and I remain very sceptic of everything people says at the TV or in these pseudo-scientific articles.
I learned to be sceptic even of what I read in peer-reviewed scientific journals!
