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On your first comment, as far as I know the big contributor seems to be the Delta variant which arose and became prevalent in India at a time when it had very l
by tgb 5y ago
On your first comment, as far as I know the big contributor seems to be the Delta variant which arose and became prevalent in India at a time when it had very low vaccination rates (and from a different vaccine). In a hypothetical world without vaccines, we'd still have delta and just be worse off. I don't see any reason to attribute this to selective pressure from vaccines.
- cletus 5y agoSure but Delta is now the dominant strain everywhere. Evolutionary pressure still applies.
- jsnell 5y agoYour initial point was "It's almost like the existence of vaccines places evolutionary pressure on a mutating virus". That is implying that the existing observations could be explained by evolutionary pressures, not just that it might be happening in the future. Delta would have been the dominant strain everywhere without the vaccine as well. Most of the reproductive advantage of Delta did not come from antigenic drift. Blaming vaccines for it like you did is completely, 100% false. In a world with no vaccines, antigenic drift would happen just the same way, and still gain a reproductive advantage, just from evolving against disease-conferred immunity rather than vaccine-conferred.