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Comment by nradov | Hacker News Reader

I encourage everyone eligible to protect themselves by getting vaccinated but this is unlikely to prevent new variants from evolving. The current thinking is that new variants are most likely to evolve in immunocompromised patients who experience prolonged infections. Vaccines are less effective for them.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/covid-variants-ma...

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I agree with this, and I do not think it contradicts my original statement. You cannot prevent new variants, but you can reduce the rate of their emergence.

The paper you cite supports this: in a case study of a single immunocompromised patient who---because of that---had a prolonged infection, many replications of the virus were observed. This patient represents a "hot spot" of variant emergence in this furthermore antibody treated patients. From the article "the remaining samples [sic: most] are consistent with arising from a consistent viral population".

What I take from this is: we ought to prevent prolonged infections where it is possible. Again, from the article "The effects of convalescent plasma on virus evolution found here are unlikely to apply in immunocompetent hosts in whom viral diversity is likely to be lower owing to better immune control." And a vaccinated individual will on average have the best immune control.

We don't do anything to reduce the rate of emergence of new variants of HCoV-OC43, another betacoronavirus very similar to SARS-CoV-2 in terms of genetics and clinical effects. So far that hasn't been a problem.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S026240792...

That virus has also not caused a global, multi-year long pandemic. In this context, your reference seems tangential to me. Vaccinations ought to reduce SARS-CoV-2 variant emergence rates by virtue of reducing viral replications.

What are you talking about? As far as we can determine, HCoV-OC43 did cause a global, multi-year long pandemic starting in 1889.

Lol, right---I did not recognize this as the agent of one of the "deadliest pandemics" starting in 1889 (Wikipedia) in history. But what is your point? Are you of the opinion that vaccines cannot reduce variant emergence rates?

My opinion on the matter is irrelevant. There is no reliable, quantitative scientific evidence that vaccination actually reduces variant emergence rates. It's an interesting hypothesis but hasn't been proven or disproven.

It is pretty obviously so, and it's also not controversial really.

e.g. https://www.channelnewsasia.com/commentary/covid-omicron-var...

>Do the unvaccinated populations fuel the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants?

> The consensus among the scientific community is yes, they likely do. Unvaccinated people have less protection from the SARS-CoV-2 virus and thus would allow more of the virus to multiply within them.

> The higher rate of virus multiplication in the unvaccinated is likely to result in more possible mutations of the virus, resulting in the emergence of a larger number of variants in unvaccinated than vaccinated people.

I think at this point there is not much more to say here, at least from my end. Have a great day.

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