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Re: Coronavirus
Some great explanations of virus evolution here, in particular that mutations have no intelligence and are random. If one thing as come out of all this, it's we all know a lot more about virology and genetics than we did a couple of years ago.
The immune response to the vaccines (or indeed infection) work in two ways. Antibodies to the part of the spike that binds the cells being infected will block that binding (neutralising antibodies) Antibodies that bind anywhere else on the spike protein 'tag' the virus for destruction but don't stop it infecting cells. Neutralising antibodies are definitely our friends here as they both block infections but also do this immune system tagging.
As nffc said, if the binding site of the spike changes enough to evade antibodies, the hope is that these will not be effective virus. The delta variant was fun as neutralising antibodies don't bind as well but the spike protein binds better to the cells it wants to infect. Luckily both of these effects were small enough that it was a complete disaster.
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