[ianch99]

Originally Posted by Paul

Nope I stopped becasue its complete nonsense, much like your post.

Disagree. Not liking something does not make it wrong. If you can actually read what I posted, it referred to the fear of vaccine escape from a vaccinated population. I was replying to spiderplant 's post where he said:

You are right that more infections increase the chances of mutation, but there wouldn't be an evolutionary advantage to the virus developing vaccine resistance if there weren't plenty of vaccinated people to infect.

But hey, let's not let what I actually posted get in the way of a good rant, eh?

---------- Post added at 22:55 ---------- Previous post was at 22:46 ----------

Originally Posted by Pierre

All I have done is the read four month old article, measured it against what actually happened and judged it as bollocks. I don’t need to be virologist to do that.

You are of course free to point out all the accurate forecasts the article got right.

Dr Pierre I presume?

Here's another interesting article on the subject of vaccine escape since this is your specialist area. After all, it was vaccine escape that I was discussing, nothing else but I guess you knew that

Vaccine escape in a heterogeneous population: insights for SARS-CoV-2 from a simple model

As a counter measure to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic there has been swift development and clinical trial assessment of candidate vaccines, with subsequent deployment as part of mass vaccination campaigns. However, the SARS-CoV-2 virus has demonstrated the ability to mutate and develop variants, which can modify epidemiological properties and the potentially also the effectiveness of vaccines.

The widespread deployment of highly effective vaccines may rapidly exert selection pressure on the SARS-CoV-2 virus directed towards mutations that escape the vaccine induced immune response. This is particularly concerning whilst infection is widespread. By developing and analysing a mathematical model of two population groupings with differing vulnerability and contact rates, we explore the impact of the deployment of vaccine amongst the population on R, cases, disease abundance and vaccine escape pressure.

The results from this model illustrate two insights (i) vaccination aimed at reducing prevalence could be more effective at reducing disease than directly vaccinating the vulnerable; (ii) the highest risk for vaccine escape can occur at intermediate levels of vaccination. This work demonstrates a key principle that the careful targeting of vaccines towards particular population groups could reduce disease as much as possible whilst limiting the risk of vaccine escape.

I hope you agree that this scenario is especially relevant for us today in country? I realise your papers are not yet published but if you could share any draft copies, we would all be grateful.