I have a bad habit of exaggerating what I say sometimes. Yes, it doesn't have to stop being covid to become completely undetectable. Although the thing with flu is that flu is not one thing. Influenza A has lots and lots of subtypes, and each subtype has lots and lots of strains. Additionally, immune response and memory isn't usually just monoclonal antibodies, which is why even when a strain "should" be undetectable, we still see the immune system responding much better. Where I was getting at is that as you said, covid doesn't have the variety to completely elude and none of the strains so far seem to be an insurmountable problem for current vaccines.
Decreased effectiveness is bad. It means more spreading, more people be getting sick, more dying. I think those things are bad. Do you not?
Since we already have escape mutations and that's been known for some time now, I don't see why you are framing it as bad news that vaccines are still effective against them. The news is that they are still effective, not that there are escape mutations.
And the vaccines based on folded spike protein should have a pretty bad time with some of the new variants, they should be similar to native immune response
The thing is I can't find any studies yet about the severity of reinfection, neither are there extensive studies about the performance of most vaccines on these strains. That's the important question here, it's not whether or not they are as capable at addressing the new strains as they are with the old strain, they aren't, the question is, the question is, how much worse are they? So far there has been some evidence they are still at least partially effective. That's the good news.
Incidentally I just saw that apparently AZ says they want to roll out a new vaccine by autumn.
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Well you kinda did.
I have a bad habit of exaggerating what I say sometimes. Yes, it doesn't have to stop being covid to become completely undetectable. Although the thing with flu is that flu is not one thing. Influenza A has lots and lots of subtypes, and each subtype has lots and lots of strains. Additionally, immune response and memory isn't usually just monoclonal antibodies, which is why even when a strain "should" be undetectable, we still see the immune system responding much better. Where I was getting at is that as you said, covid doesn't have the variety to completely elude and none of the strains so far seem to be an insurmountable problem for current vaccines.
Since we already have escape mutations and that's been known for some time now, I don't see why you are framing it as bad news that vaccines are still effective against them. The news is that they are still effective, not that there are escape mutations.
The thing is I can't find any studies yet about the severity of reinfection, neither are there extensive studies about the performance of most vaccines on these strains. That's the important question here, it's not whether or not they are as capable at addressing the new strains as they are with the old strain, they aren't, the question is, the question is, how much worse are they? So far there has been some evidence they are still at least partially effective. That's the good news.
Incidentally I just saw that apparently AZ says they want to roll out a new vaccine by autumn.
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