How do the current vaccines do against these mutations
have you read anything on that
I havent
obviously they must have data that says not good or they wouldnt be talking about a booster
it would be nice to know a little more then they are telling us
There's plenty to read on this if you really look around.
Here's a good one that NPR put out 6 days ago: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/04/09/985745837/can-vaccines-stop-variants-heres-what-we-know-so-far
Summary:
The first concern was the British variant, because it was known to have mutations to the genetic sequence of the spike protein, and given that both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are encoding our bodies to recognize and build immunity to the genetic sequence of the spike protein, there was concern that it would be less effective. I believe so far both, and J&J, have proven very effective against the British variant.
The South African variant appears to not be as effective. Not completely ineffective, but not as effective. Apparently initial studies of J&J and Pfizer in South Africa were pretty positive, but Novavax (which hasn't been approved in the US) may be only half as effective against this variant. There is also a worrying study out of Israel (
here) suggesting that they're seeing less efficacy from the Pfizer vaccine against that strain.
As for the Brazilian strain, too little is known about it at this time from what the article suggests. There are studies being done, but they're not complete.
Eh, I'm not willing to assign this to the boogeyman of corporate greed just yet.
I know bwar doesn't think it's mutating quickly enough to warrant such measures, but I think the Brazilian variant, UK variant, and South African variant would all disagree with this hypothesis. These are three major, significantly more infectious mutations, that all occurred with 6-9 months of the original strains entering those regions.
As I've said for the past 11 months or so, I'm not confident we're going to be able to contain this virus via human intervention mechanisms.
But ultimately, it will no longer be seen as a novel virus by our systems, and we'll build up our own natural immunity to it. It will become one of many coronaviruses that affect and harm us on an annual basis, but it will no longer be the killer that it currently is.
One of the issues with the rate of mutation is the very fact that we have no immunity. Thus, there is a LARGE pool of potential hosts, greatly increasing the likelihood of successful mutations, and of enough community transmission for those mutations to spread and establish themselves.
Get to the point where we have an 80%+ vaccination rate, and suddenly you've cut your potential mutation rate based purely on number of hosts the virus can infect, and reduced the transmission chain for those mutations to establish themselves in large numbers.
Unless a mutation occurs that renders all vaccines 0% effective, the fact that we have the vaccines and as we expand them worldwide will cut the mutation rate based purely on numbers.
I'm still hopeful that we can get a handle on this--as mentioned we might need a booster as we learn more about some of these variants, but I still don't think the structure of the virus is one that is prone to mutation on the same level as the flu. I'm not convinced that we'll need annual boosters.
