2 ms·
That assumes that this virus doesn't mutate quickly, mitigating the effectiveness of herd immunity and vaccination.
by threatofrain 7y ago
That assumes that this virus doesn't mutate quickly, mitigating the effectiveness of herd immunity and vaccination.
- kennywinker 7y agoTotally true. Obviously nobody knows right now if that will happen or not, but that question was posed on a recent episode of This Week in Virology (great podcast, btw) and they seemed to be saying that the mutated seasonal variant is a fairly unique characteristic of the flu virus, and it would not be _likely_ to happen with COVID-19.
- ska 7y agoTrue, but that seem to be a reasonable assumption according to at least some virologists looking at it. There are so many unknowns right now that any modeling is going to have issues, best you can do is state your assumptions clearly, and explore the ones that seem most likely in some depth. Otherwise you just end up with an ensemble of models that could result if nearly anything.