Viruses naturally attenuate towards becoming less lethal and more transmissible, that is how Pandemics like these end. I have naturally recovered, by you choosing to get this experimental treatment you are introducing evolutionary selective pressure for a more virulent pathogen with mechanisms for evading the human immune system. Your actions will proliferate variant strains and are extending this pandemic from this already endemic trajectory. Your decision to participate in these experimental trials will lead to a further postponement for me to return to work and is fortifies government over-reach that infringes upon my rights of freedom to travel and exist as a private citizen. You are complicit with manufacturing further risk to the 100+ Million fellow Americans who are naturally immune and hurt the efficacy of life-saving treatments such as monoclonal antibodies that have prevented thousands of deaths.
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It's analogous to creating an antibiotic resistant superbug by overuse of antibiotics
Precisely! MRSA didn't exist until people were irresponsibly using mass antibiotics. This could possibly be a worse situation though because of its aerosolized spread and difference between adaptation which is different and takes longer than the horizontal gene flow like in Eukaryotes.
I'm not totally convinced about the selection pressure in vaccinated people producing more virulent viruses in this case, but it's a huge risk to take anyway.
Why not? Evolutionary theories still hold up here. People still spread, viruses that proliferate in the host will have adaptations (typically around the binding site) and those are the ones nature will select for. It reinforces the viruses ability to enter the cell. If those that are vaccinated have less severe cases the virus will need to become more virulent to induce coughing and transmission or will need to for alternative modes of transmission. Regardless for whether or not this creates ADE, pathogenic priming, or alternative binding sites it will result in a virus with an ever higher affinity for our receptor sites.
Is it possible to deliberately channel a new manufactured virulent variant (from the lab) through vaccinated people as vectors to the unvaccinated ?
That would be dasterdly!
Well, when you put it like that!
I suppose that the virus becoming more virulent doesn't necessarily come with a corresponding fitness cost for that mutation.
I had it in my head that high virulence was unstable and that there was a selection pressure away from it towards transmission. But, yes, you are right, masking symptoms with vaccinations changes that selection pressure, possibly towards virulence to increase symptoms for transmission.
I get it a bit better now Thanks