Quote (NetflixAdaptationWidow @ 13 Jul 2021 23:47)
Was curious if there was any information on spike protein mutations in delta and how they might affect antibody response. This was the first paper I came across.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03777-9In other words, it's almost certainly escaping immunity via spike protein mutations. This is.... not great. We just have to hope that as it mutates it also reduces symptoms. On the long run viruses tend to become more infectious and less deadly, so hopefully this one heads down that path sooner rather than later.
There's basically two ways it could mutate without creating problems: becoming more infectious and less deadly, or developing a stronger* immune escape without simultaneously increasing transmissibility. The latter would also be okay because a more lethal strain which doesnt prevail against other, more transmissible strains is no problem. See the Beta variant which hasn't gotten traction in any region where Alpha or Delta have been circulating.
It should also be noted that fully vaccinated persons are both getting infected and spreading the virus to others are greatly reduced rates, so that each vaccination effectively reduces the R_0 of the virus. Once the vaccination campaign wraps up and we lift the remaining restrictions, there will be a short wave among the unvaccinated children and young adults who have lots of social contacts but almost never severe symptoms or hospitalization, and then the immunity rate in the population will be high enough to keep the spread of Delta at bay while the vaccinations of the risk groups keep hospitalizations sufficiently low. This balance can only be broken up by a new variant which is, at the same time, more infectious and more resistant to vaccinations than Delta. Also, the president of BioNTech has already stated that his company could adjust its vaccine to new variants in around 6 weeks.
*a full immune escape which drops the effectiveness of a complete vaccination by a huge chunk would of course be devastating, but most experts I've heard from agree that such a full immune escape is very unlikely and that we will most definitely only see partial immune escapes of varying degree.