3 ms·
And this part I'm less confident in, but my understanding is the protein spike is unlikely to mutate because it's exactly what allows the virus to bind where it
by macksd 5y ago
And this part I'm less confident in, but my understanding is the protein spike is unlikely to mutate because it's exactly what allows the virus to bind where it does. If that mutated and that mutation was still somehow successful, I believe it likely wouldn't be as bad a virus.
- maxerickson 5y agoMy understanding is that virologists and immunologists can't really estimate the chance of a more virulent strain that escapes antibodies analytically, because the probability space is too big. A mutation might escape antibodies but also greatly inhibit how fast it spreads, and so on.
- lamontcg 5y agoIts been passed around on TWiV and immunologist twitter awhile back that there's ~20 different epitopes on the spike protein that would need to mutate in order to achieve immune escape. The read on that is that immune escape should come at a cost to fitness and less virulence and transmissibility. The virus will have to "pay" with fitness in order to buy stealth. At the same time though there have very obviously been multiple different mutations on the spike protein which have enhanced binding / viral load / transmissibility / virulence. So the virus clearly has some room to maneuver in that space.