The UK’s approach to vaccination could create vaccine-resistant forms of the virus...

[Lucidas]

Are we gambling again like just the Operation Moonshot, school openings with minimal mitigation, other failed innovations of this govt?

I’ll admit this article got me a little worried. I hope we don’t fuck this up.

Paul Bieniasz of Rockefeller University is one of those who is watching the evolving situation in Britain with dread. A retrovirologist who turned from HIV research to work on SARS-2, Bieniasz is studying how the virus acquires mutations that allow it to evade the protective antibodies people develop when they have contracted Covid-19, or when they have been vaccinated against it.

@SpikySara

Vaccine efficacy after one dose is pretty high - 85%+ I don’t know where you heard that because the Pfizer vaccine is only 52% effective after one dose.

No they didn't. They said the vaccine is 52% effective for the first three weeks, before the second dose is given. But the vaccine is 0% effective in weeks one and two, then by week 3 is 85% - because it takes three weeks for the body to start to recognise and respond to the vaccine. The quoted 52% is the average over the first three week period.

Pretty sure that it is the existence of immunity which creates evolutionary pressure on the virus, not the means by which immunity is achieved.

As more people become immune, whether through infection or vaccination, any variation which enables it to bypass that immunity confers an advantage and will be selected for.

To put it another way - the virus is going to mutate, that’s what viruses do. A partial vaccination strategy may make that happen sooner, but against that you have to reckon the lives it will save. And bear in mind the scientists are saying that tweaking vaccines to reflect such a change is fairly straightforward and can be done within weeks.

It is much safer to acquire immunity by vaccination than infection.

I'm surprised a virologist said that as that's more the behaviour you'd expect from a bacterial infection, not a viral one.

Im no scientist but isn’t the flu vaccine only 40-60% effective and not given too everyone, I know they change it every year perhaps this could be a possibility for covid too 🤷‍♀️