I'm not an expert at all, but I don't think viruses are mutually exclusive. Spread of the new strain can be fast and can became widespread, but can't decrease or affect the harmful one.
The point is, we don't need to know how exactly consciousness work to create an AGI. In theory, we can just simulate all the neurons in the brain on a supercomputer cluster and voila, we have AGI. Of course, it's not that simple but you get my point.