Thread by @davidboxenhorn

"It didn't seem to me that anybody had described a mechanism in which variants can be increased by vaccination"

OK. I will do so now.

First of all, @ScottAdamsSays is absolutely correct that the more people have covid, the more variants there will be

That is, the more copies of the virus that are out there, reproducing, the more mutations there will be, and the more variants will be created. So reducing the number of people with covid is absolutely a good thing. But that is not exactly the question

The question is how can vaccinations increase the number of variants. In particular, how can they increase the number of variants that we *care* about?

I will start by describing a similar situation with breeding dogs, and then apply it to the virus.

Let's say that you have a population of dogs that average 100 lbs., and you want to breed a population that averages 10 lbs.

You wouldn't start by killing all the dogs that weigh more than 10 lbs., because all your dogs weight more than 10 lbs. - all your dogs would be dead

But if you killed the dogs that weighed over 95 lbs. and repeated it for many generations, gradually lowering the cut-off weight, eventually you would get a population of dogs weighing only 10 lbs. - and, in fact, this is the way that small dog breeds were actually created

Now, let's apply the scenario to covid. Back when vaccination offered high protection against the virus, it seemed like we were in the 1st scenario. The vaccine prevented the virus from spreading, and this was an unmitigated good thing

But now we have the delta variant, so clearly some variants got past the vaccine. This looks a lot more like the 2nd scenario. Now, if we come up with a better vaccine will some variants be able to get past *that*? Are we gradually breeding a variant that can get past anything?

It is a plausible scenario.

However, I hasten to add that I am still pro-vaccine

Part of the reason why I am pro-vaccine is that I know something about the delta variant that not many people know. The delta variant has the same spike protein that the original variant had, so the same vaccines are effective against it

The delta variant evades vaccines by another mechanism. It has a gene that seems to suppress the immune system in general. As a result, people with a weak immune response can be overwhelmed by the disease before their immune system kicks in

In addition, it seems that the covid vaccines wear off pretty quickly. We don't understand the immune system very well, and it is a mystery why some vaccines seem to last a lifetime, and others need boosters

Unfortunately, the covid vaccines, at least the ones that we have now, seem to wear off in about six months. Israel has just begun a campaign to give everyone a 3rd shot. The data is not in yet, but what we have suggests that booster shots will work. In a few weeks we know

"From studies we conducted, we saw that the chances of those who were vaccinated in January being infected with coronavirus are twice as high as those who were vaccinated in April. The level of protection decreases over time..."

jpost.com/israel-news/is…