Thread by @MonicaGandhi9

I see there is a circulating concern here that SARS-CoV-2 will mutate into a more virulent virus from vaccines. That is not what usually happens. The reason that #HIV researchers/physicians think about mutations/variants a lot is that HIV's polymerase
journals.plos.org/plosbiology/ar…

has a very high mutation rate. SARS-CoV-2 and other coronaviruses on the other hand don't actually mutate that fast; their polymerase has a high fidelity to "proofreading" when they mutate. You just have been hearing about mutations lately in news.
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21593585/

HIV doctors think about mutations a lot because HIV mutates readily to evade medications we use commonly so we have to always think about how to combine medications for HIV to avoid or overcome those mutations. But mutations come with a cost to virus
jvi.asm.org/content/81/6/3…

Doubt this virus will mutate itself to evade our natural immunity or vaccine-induced immunity. T cells form very complex and in-breadth responses to multiple epitopes multiple parts of spike protein or virus) so virus likely can't evade our immunity
sciencedirect.com/science/articl…