What happens if a vaccine resistant variant develops/how likely?

[Metabigot]

Will we back to square fucking one?
They can't put us through all this again surely

Who is “they” ? If a new strain is vaccine resistant then that is nature, not anyone’s grand plan. If such a strain develops then sadly I think we are f*d as scientists have thrown their all at it and if vaccines don’t work then there’s absolutely nothing anyone can do.

They = the government

That’s massively more likely to happen with high levels of transmission. So let’s open everything up with no mitigation yay.

I don't think the vaccine is working very well anyway, according to the media that is. Reporting cases and ICU beds rising.

But the government didn’t invent the virus, and neither did anyone else’s government (well, perhaps with the exception of one…..) . What about Ireland, France, Italy….. they have been “through this” too.

We could well be paying for short term freedom with long term lockdown in other words. It’s a gamble.

They will develop further new vaccines that will deal with new strains. In fact, they are doing this already.
This is what happens with the annual flu vaccine, it changes every day to cope with new variants.
I'm pretty sure that with every vaccine, and every case of covid, we will start to build up our own personal resistance.

Viruses spread, and viruses mutate. That's what they do.
And there have been so many advances in therapeutics in the last 18 months. Doctors know how to treat Covid much better now than at the start

I think what the OP is saying is that, of course the government didn't invent the virus, but their poor choices 'put us through it' repeatedly because allowing high levels of transmission in a half vacc population is a perfect recipe for developing a vaccine resistant strain.

@DottyHarmer

But the government didn’t invent the virus, and neither did anyone else’s government (well, perhaps with the exception of one…..) . What about Ireland, France, Italy….. they have been “through this” too.

I'm asking if there will be lockdowns again. Nothing to do with the government inventing the virus,strange suggestion!

The government said a while ago they were putting plans in place in case this happened. It wouldn't be easy for a while, but vaccines would be in place quicker and hopefully a few things have been learned along the way.

@clarkkentsglasses

I don't think the vaccine is working very well anyway, according to the media that is. Reporting cases and ICU beds rising.

@clarkkentsglasses

Gosh it's so great you know better than all the world class scientists. What's that like?

Scientists have learnt things, for sure. But politicians haven’t - or they would not repeat the same mistakes over and over again!

@actorbynight

They will develop further new vaccines that will deal with new strains. In fact, they are doing this already. This is what happens with the annual flu vaccine, it changes every day to cope with new variants. I'm pretty sure that with every vaccine, and every case of covid, we will start to build up our own personal resistance.

Viruses spread, and viruses mutate. That's what they do.
And there have been so many advances in therapeutics in the last 18 months. Doctors know how to treat Covid much better now than at the start

Yea but if the vaccine is offered annually this only gives a once a year chance to combat new strains. Any developing in the next 12 months won't be recognised by the new vaccine surely?

Any developing in the next 12 months won't be recognised by the new vaccine surely?

I don't think anyone really could answer this. We don't have crystal balls. But someone better qualified than you or I may come along and hopefully reassure us that it is likely that new vaccines will recognise emerging strains. Alpha and beta variants have been circulating for at least ten months already, delta first detected last October/November

Jenny harries ws asked this about six months ago. She said in her view strains might emerge which are more or less controlled by the vaccine but she thought I was unlikely one that was completely unaffected by the vaccines would emerge.
Apologies if I've not written that quite right, not a scientist.
Also they're developing new vaccines and new drugs all the time.

@actorbynight

Any developing in the next 12 months won't be recognised by the new vaccine surely?

I don't think anyone really could answer this. We don't have crystal balls. But someone better qualified than you or I may come along and hopefully reassure us that it is likely that new vaccines will recognise emerging strains. Alpha and beta variants have been circulating for at least ten months already, delta first detected last October/November

It sounds like it will be a race against time with the scientists developing vaccines to combat the vaccine resistant strains before they cause mass infections... yes any scientific folk who can explain further please do!

I'm asking if there will be lockdowns again

We don't know. It entirely depends on what future variants are like, how ill they make you, what age groups they affect, how far they escape the existing vaccine.

There is always a lead time between deciding which variant/s to include in a jab, through safety testing and approvals (shorter princess for changes to an existing vaccine, but still done) manufacture, and distribution and eventual administration. That is a gap that may need to be bridged by infection control regulations.

It's crystal ball stuff. But also the reason why so many voices round the world are critical of the English decision to end restrictions when our case number are high and rising and out nearest neighbour has the most vaccine-escaping variant as its dominant strain.

If (or should that be 'when') it is reimported, if it reaches people who already have Delta, then those are pretty damned good conditions for a troublesome variant to arise.

I don't think the vaccine is working very well anyway, according to the media that is

It is simply not true to say the vaccines are not working well. They massively reduce the probability that someone who is exposed to Covid will a) become infected; b) have symptoms; c) get seriously ill and need hospital care; d) transmit the virus to others; c) die.

All of those are much less likely among people who are vaccinated than those who are not. But “less likely” is not the same as “impossible”, therefore, there are still infections, hospitalisations and deaths among vaccinated people - and because there a LOT of vaccinated people, even a tiny proportion of those means a lot of cases.

We now have 2/3 of adults fully vaccinated and another 20% with one jab, and only 1 in 8 unvaccinated. Just imagine how many more cases (hospitalisations, deaths) there would be without the vaccines.

@WaterBottle123 - I said according to the media

Maybe you should learn to read

Just to be clear the U.K. is not the only country impacted by covid and our decision to Open up or not will not be the key to controlling variants, given three of the main four variants currently being tracked originated outside the uk the concept that we just need to keep wearing masks and socially distancing from strangers in this one small island and everything will be fine is a little erm optimistic. I do t know if there will be a variant that evades vaccine was but high spread in the U.K. really is a very small factor in whether there will be one, given you know well over 50,000 cases a day in Indonesia which is testing a lot less than us.

@clarkkentsglasses

The media should never, under any circumstances, be trusted.

It’s already happening. The beta strain is reasonably widespread in France and AZ is not very effective against this strain for mild / moderate disease (about 10%). An adapted AZ vaccine is in trials and should be part of the autumn booster programme.

I would exercise caution in assuming AZ isn't effective against beta.

The trial that showed this was small, involved young people and 'some' of those who were counted as vaccinated had received only one dose. The gap between doses varied, but the median was 28 days.

While it showed low protection against mild to moderate disease, no one was hospitalised and no one died.

(I have linked to one report, which was easily accessible, but drawn information about the dose gap from a Medpage report that threw annoying cookie messages at me.)

@Lemons1571 The beta strain is reasonably widespread in France

It's been detected as the variant in 10% of cases in France I heard today.

@amicissimma it showed low protection against mild to moderate disease, - which it what you would expect if your trial involved young people surely?

I read a little while ago that the spike protein on the virus is unlikely to change so significantly that a variant becomes completely vaccine resistant. The assumption being that the vaccinations would still provide good protection against hospitalisation and death. A bit like the Delta variant being able to evade the vaccination much better that Alpha but still largely reducing hospitalisation and deaths. I say this as someone who is vaccinated with AZ and who is concerned about the Beta variant. I guess we are hopefully in a better position, as we have vaccinations that have been developed and can likely be adapted. I believe the MRNA ones are thought to work pretty well against all variants where as AZ isn’t as strong but we need more real world data. It’s a scary thought though and England’s approach certainly runs this risk.