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Comment by DeusExMachina | Hacker News Reader

There is no way to eradicate covid everywhere, simultaneously or otherwise. It's now widely accepted that the virus continues to circulate even in vaccinated people.

Besides, you are not even going to vaccinate 100% of any western country, let alone all of them or the entire world.

Milder mutation are what is actually going to make the virus endemic, like it happened to the Spanish flu. Reports from the South African government seem to suggest that this variant is mild, although it's early to say.

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This is a misconception: it is not known that the virus will become less deadly over time; in fact, there is good reason to believe that it may become more deadly because virulence is positively associated with tramissibility.

https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/will-covid-19-evolve-be-mo...

So what happened to Spanish Flu ?

the flu is contagious once it has symptoms, which mean severe symptoms lead people to self-isolate naturally before it spreads, thus it survives better if its symptoms are less severe.

covid has no such issue as it spreads well before it has any severity and for a few days before any symptoms. all the deadly stuff happens a week later once you've been transmitting for many days.

the above link explains this well

> So, unless SARS-CoV-2 becomes so virulent that it causes people to become severely ill and self-isolate before they transmit the virus to other people, there is no pressure on it to become less deadly.

There do exist viruses that have been virtually eradicated with vaccines, even if they weren't 100% effective (cf Polio). We probably won't eradicate Corona with the first gen vaccines, but that isn't the point anyway. The point ist that we should reduce it enough so that mutations are less likely.

Polio was a different kind of virus, though, with a different kind of vaccine. We never got a vaccine for other coronaviruses either, it's unlikely that we will get it for this.

Also, there is solid literature on the fact that vaccines during an epidemic cause stress that induces the virus to mutate. https://www.voiceforscienceandsolidarity.org

None of Geerts papers are peer reviewed or based on scientific research/data.

Stress doesn't cause mutations. Mutations happen because of genetics and whatever mutations increase their suvival end up being the mutations prevelent in society.

What viruses need though are willing hosts who aren't vaccinated who carry the virus, allow it to thrive and mutate and more importantly - those who spread it.

Blaming vaccinations is like blaming immune systems when the real issue is people who carry the disease and allow it to continue to spread.

> None of Geerts papers are peer reviewed or based on scientific research/data.

They have an extensive list of peer reviewed studies from plenty of other scientists:

https://www.voiceforscienceandsolidarity.org/blog/supportive...

Go read all those papers, none of them support the claims that the vaccination accelerates or causes mutation.

It's unfortunate scientists love to stake a claim on trying to win a huge argument when they can't see the forrest from the trees and they exclude as much evidence as they cherry pick.

We've defeated things before with immunization. No one ran around saying get the whooping caugh because if you get a shot it will mutate...

> none of them support the claims that the vaccination accelerates or causes mutation.

Says who? Vanden Bossche has been a credentialed expert in vaccines for 20 years. I'll take his opinion over some HN comment.

> No one ran around saying get the whooping caugh because if you get a shot it will mutate

That was never his argument.

The main known facilitators for those virus mutations are on one hand the number of contaminations (particularly cross-species but not only), and on the other when the infection lingers in one individual due to a compromised immune system. Considering how at its worst the vaccine reduces the length of the infection, it's entirely implausible that it would also increase the likelihood of mutations. Not impossible, but very implausible. Is there a precedent for this kind of things?

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