Quote (NetflixAdaptationWidow @ 5 Jul 2021 02:59)
"PAUL BIENIASZ: They might serve as sort of a breeding ground for the virus to acquire new mutations.
HARRIS: That's because the virus is always mutating. And if one happens to produce a mutation that makes it less vulnerable to the vaccine, that virus could simply multiply in a vaccinated individual. But even if that happens, that's only one step in the process."
In other words, they don't push immune variants, they act as a replication point for immune resistant variants, which would happen regardless of how the immunity was acquired.
That's not what Paul Bieniasz and other virologists were arguing.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/01/could-too-much-time-between-doses-drive-coronavirus-outwit-vaccinesQuote
Paul Bieniasz didn’t mince words in a sarcastic New Year’s Day statement he tweeted. If he wanted to create a new, vaccine-resisting version of the pandemic coronavirus, the Rockefeller University virologist wrote, “having developed a remarkable two-dose vaccine, [I’d] … ADMINISTER IT TO MILLIONS OF PEOPLE – BUT DELAY THE SECOND DOSE. … If we let immunity wane for a little while, say 4 to 12 weeks, we just might hit the sweet spot”—and create a virus that could foil the vaccine.
Bieniasz was reacting to the United Kingdom’s 30 December 2020 decision to allow up to 12 weeks between doses of two authorized vaccines, rather than the 3 or 4 weeks tested in the vaccines’ clinical trials. Desperate to tame a massive surge in cases and alarmed by the spread of a new, more contagious variant of the virus, U.K. vaccine experts were aiming to quickly get at least some protection into the arms of as many people as possible.
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Bieniasz and other virologists worry that extending the dosing interval might result in millions of people with only partial immunity as they wait for their second dose—a potential breeding ground for vaccine-resistant mutations. “If we end up with everybody just getting one dose with no doses available for a timely boost, that would in my opinion, be a problem,” says Florian Krammer, a virologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
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Virologists worry lengthening the dosing interval from, say, 3 weeks to 3 months, could speed the emergence of such mutants by creating a pool of subimmune people who have enough antibodies to slow the virus and avoid developing symptoms—but not enough to wipe it out.
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Some data support the possibility that partial immunity could spawn new variants. For example, a case study published recently in The New England Journal of Medicine reported how, in a prolonged, ultimately fatal case of SARS-CoV-2 in an immunocompromised man, the virus kept mutating at a rapid rate compared with virus circulating in the general population.
At the end of the day, the voices in the expert community who preferred a more rapid rollout of the vaccines, even if it meant stretching the interval between the first and second dose, prevailed over those arguing that this would push new mutations - but the latter group did absolutely exist, and by the looks of it, they were not just a tiny fringe group.
This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jul 4 2021 07:32pm