Viruses mutate due to many reasons such as background radiation, UV exposure, environmental constraints, and a host of other reasons. This goes on independently of vaccinations which don't attack the virus, they stimulate an immune response in potential hosts. The mechanisms are different.Freedomforall wrote: ↑Tue Sep 28, 2021 1:53 pmYou said viruses mutate according to nature. Introducing a vaccine is not nature.
There is no intelligent design at work here; if a random mutation causes a virus to be more "successful" than it was before the virus will benefit. If a random mutation causes a diminution of capability, then it will suffer and not be able to compete.
What we were trying to do with the vaccines was to provide a bit of defence -- provided by our own bodies' reaction to the vaccine -- against infection and the symptoms that can kill us. The intent was to attenuate the spread of the virus so it would eventually go extinct in the wild because it couldn't spread, and if it can't spread it can't replicate.
I have no motivation as to motive.Do you think the doctor pursuing an agenda against the other vaccine companies? What do you think his motivation for saying this is?
Flu, as we know it, takes too many forms to be easily vaccinated against, and the immunity is temporary. Every year, an educated guess is taken at which strains will likely be problems later in the year, and those strains are targeted -- and the number of strains is large enough that an omnibus vaccine isn't practical.Are you saying that we could have stopped the Flu from mutating and introducing new strains every year, using that same logic?
With SARS-CoV-2, on the other hand, we initially had something that was entirely new to the human species and easily identified and defences prepared against. Stopping the spread with vaccines was a long-shot and there were too many in the population who, for various assorted reasons, opted not to get the vaccines. This allowed the virus to continue spreading and replicating in the wild -- and to further mutate which is what is being seen in the "variants". It's not the result of the hand of man, it's man trying to fend off nature with his technology. I don't know that we could have stopped it, but I know that we -- as a species -- blew a marvellous chance at trying.