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Overhead something interesting on the news today. Paraphrasing: “a sudden increase in covid infections in India has motivated the US to send vaccines overseas. If the outbreak there is left untreated, it could potentially cause the virus to mutate, rendering our vaccines useless.”

We all know the photos they’ve been using to show dead people on the street are fake. So what’s the motivation here? Is there something up with the gene therapy injections?

What is your take?

(Sorry for no source on the quote)

Overhead something interesting on the news today. Paraphrasing: “a sudden increase in covid infections in India has motivated the US to send vaccines overseas. If the outbreak there is left untreated, it could potentially **cause the virus to mutate, rendering our vaccines useless**.” We all know the photos they’ve been using to show dead people on the street are fake. So what’s the motivation here? Is there something up with the gene therapy injections? What is your take? (Sorry for no source on the quote)

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[–] • 1 pt (edited )

Introducing a vaccine into a situation where there is an ongoing outbreak will only expose the virus to an under-developed vaccine induced immune response, allowing the virus to quickly evolve to circumvent the vaccine.

That's not how evolution works. The process is completely random, it is not directed. That means the mutations that are going to happen will happen regardless of vaccines. The only difference a vaccine will have is the selection of any resistant mutations that might develop. It won't cause those mutations to happen.

Say you have strain A that is controlled by a vaccine and strain B that is not. If nobody is vaccinated you will see about 50% strain A and 50% strain B after some time. With a vaccine you will see a much higher prevalence of strain B because people are immune to strain A. The vaccine didn't cause strain B, or even cause more people to be infected. It just stopped strain A from reproducing.

[–] • 0 pt

You have just explained, in some more detail than I did, how selection pressures effect the evolution of organisms. Evolution is an emergent response to environmental changes, in this case the presence of specific vaccine induced immune response.

I did not say that the vaccine CAUSES the virus to change directly. It changes the environment within which the virus will evolve to survive (or not). The mutation may be random, but the selection is not.

I don't think we are in disagreement at all really.

[–] • 1 pt

What I mean is that the mutation would have happened without the vaccine, and it would have spread just as much without the vaccine. The vaccine just highlights the new strain by removing the old strain.

[–] • 0 pt

Perhaps it would have, but without the vaccine that mutation may not be more fit than the original strain. If there was no difference in fitness, I'd might just emerge as a spontaneous new strain. For respiratory viruses those your of mutations usually lead to more contagious but less deadly strains. But the creation of new strains is dramatically accelerated by changes in environment.