Tweaked COVID vaccines in testing aim to fend off variants

Still, no vaccine is 100% effective — even without the mutation threat, occasionally the fully vaccinated will get COVID-19. So how would authorities know an update is needed? A red flag would be a jump in hospitalizations — not just positive tests — among vaccinated people who harbor a new mutant.

“That’s when you’ve crossed the line. That’s when you’re talking about a second-generation vaccine,”

This is the most important part to get home, for all the noise from people with an interest in considering the vaccines as easily made obsolete in reality the vaccines are good enough to offer protection from complications and death against all the variants identified until now, and this is a natural thing to expect, because it is based on stimulating the immunity the same as the natural infection does (except with much less risk) so if there has been no clusters of reinfections between people getting the immunity from the infection then it is normal to expect the same thing from those getting their immunity from the vaccines.

Mutations occur whenever any virus makes copies of itself. Usually those mistakes make no difference. But if a lot of changes pile up in the spike protein -- or those changes are in especially key locations -- the mutant might escape an immune system primed to watch for an intruder that looks a bit different.

What has likely contributed to the appearance of variants has been the treatment of immunocompromised patients with Remdesivir, which is a known mutagen that has been shown to increase the mutation rate. These treatments are often follow by treatment with convalescent serum, with is ideal for selecting those mutants that will escape the immunity of previously infected people.

this is a natural thing to expect, because it is based on stimulating the immunity the same as the natural infection does (except with much less risk)

There is very little about these vaccines that is natural. A number of experts have been warning us that these vaccines will have negative effects on our innate immune system.

And we cannot say that they are less risky in the long term. Their long term effects are not yet known.

No drug has ever been correlated scientifically to the appearance of variants, the real factor of importance is immune problems that let the virus adapt in an infected person for weeks. Personal beliefs are not worth of consideration without evidence to support them.

The same goes about the supposed negative effects on immunity, no important negative effect in immunity have been identified in any of the vaccines, much less to the very important degree that the natural infection does. This also goes for long term risks, COVID already have been correlated to those, vaccines not. This means it is perfectly valid to say that the vaccines are less risky in the long term, and this will be true as long as no problems are identified at least on the same degree as the infection.