Mevlock
Distinguished Member
- Joined
- Jun 12, 2005
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The ability of the virus to mutate hasn't changed.
It's a coronavirus and it mutates slower than influenza.
However scientists have never had the opportunity to watch a novel coronavirus sweep the globe in a real time manner before. So while in theory they expected it to change at slower pace than the flu in reality due to our immune systems unfamiliarity to it and due to the sheer number of infected people it has mutated faster than expected. The OPPORTUNITY for it to mutate has increased. Not it's own innate ability.
Regarding vaccine efficacy it's not that covid has mutated to such an extent as to render vaccines ineffective, it's just that efficacy has dropped. All the lab based experiments show a that antibodies produced by vaccinated people are less efficient at neutralising some mutations.
Now even as we inch closer to the HIT variants may well cause havoc. Until we are well over the line just a small drop in efficacy could still put many in hospital and kill an awful lot of people.
People seem to have this misunderstanding that the vaccines will prevent all hospitalisations and all deaths. They won't. A 100% success rate in clinical trials is a great result. But it simply won't translate to the same percentage on a population level. Efficacies of around even 90% still leaves a very large number of the elderly and CEV susceptible to hospitalisation and death.
If you want a an idea of how much of a problem drops in efficacy MAY cause have a read of this:
It's a coronavirus and it mutates slower than influenza.
However scientists have never had the opportunity to watch a novel coronavirus sweep the globe in a real time manner before. So while in theory they expected it to change at slower pace than the flu in reality due to our immune systems unfamiliarity to it and due to the sheer number of infected people it has mutated faster than expected. The OPPORTUNITY for it to mutate has increased. Not it's own innate ability.
Regarding vaccine efficacy it's not that covid has mutated to such an extent as to render vaccines ineffective, it's just that efficacy has dropped. All the lab based experiments show a that antibodies produced by vaccinated people are less efficient at neutralising some mutations.
Now even as we inch closer to the HIT variants may well cause havoc. Until we are well over the line just a small drop in efficacy could still put many in hospital and kill an awful lot of people.
People seem to have this misunderstanding that the vaccines will prevent all hospitalisations and all deaths. They won't. A 100% success rate in clinical trials is a great result. But it simply won't translate to the same percentage on a population level. Efficacies of around even 90% still leaves a very large number of the elderly and CEV susceptible to hospitalisation and death.
If you want a an idea of how much of a problem drops in efficacy MAY cause have a read of this: