Comment

Comment by revalo

Of course, we can never stop all mutations. However, for mutations to be useful for the virus, they do need to happen at an evolutionary scale. Especially because we're lucky that SARS-CoV-2 mutates much slower than Influenza and HIV.

If the rate of transmission reaches the elusive herd immunity, the time-frame for the virus to evolve into evading vaccines grows significantly longer, even with a non-zero mutation rate.

Lastly, antibodies created via the mRNA vaccines have a broader binding affinity to different variants than those from natural immunity [1].

Again, the goal is to not eradicate, but to scale it down to the point where it is statistically not a threat.

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34103407/

parent revalo 5 years ago

Discussion

Live from the official Hacker News API

A modern reader for Hacker News · SvelteKit + Skeleton