Reply To: covid forecast

P>vaccine doesn’t increase a chance of a mutation. it increases non-mutations’ demise but the probability of a mutation occurring not only doesn’t increase, it actually decreases.

We often use similar expressions. Wind “blows”, economy grows. We have “yad Hashem”, etc.
To be precise with language, a half-baked vaccine or a half-baked vaccination increases a chance that a mutation that can survive the vaccine takes over the world.

Scenario 1: everyone is vaccinated quickly, virus propagation decreases rapidly, and it stays in small pockets in remote areas with small chances of mutation. (number of mutations is proportional to number of virus available = (number of people carrying it) X (virus per person)

Scenario 2: partial vaccination with fixed vaccine. Rt less than 1, say 0.98. Amount of virus slowly decreases, while having a lot of chances to mutate. The less there is of the virus, the less careful people are, the more chances for the virus to stay in the game. Each mutation that can fool the vaccine will have higher chance to survive, so while overall prevalence is decreasing with increasing resistance. At some point, it can get to a mutation that vaccine is not helping against, it then starts propagating fast because people are not careful, so it ends up[ with mutation “growing”

Scenario 3: mRNA vaccine will be quickly re-targeted, this is being tried right now, and surveillance will identify new mutations quickly.

Scenario 4: Russians and Chinese come up with stronger strains that do not kill only people who drink vodka or eat bats. L’Chaim and bono appetito.