I am in such despair at this point. I miss everyone. I miss hugging and being able to play board games in person and getting coffee and having a job. My whole family works in the arts, and we are drowning. The vaccines aren't rolling out fast enough. No one in the US is willing to give the aid we need to shut down, and even if we had it no one has the guts to actually enforce the kind of complete shutdown we need to stop this. I feel we are looking at soon having a mutation that the vaccine won't work against and never being able to do anything ever again. Endless isolation until society collapses. I'm so tired.
I'm sorry that you feel this way. I definitely understand why you do. I'm glad you felt comfortable sharing it with me this way. I really do think things are going to get better.
I don't think we are in serious danger of an escape mutant defeating the current vaccines in development. While viruses do often mutate, we are fortunate to have an excellent mechanism for immunity in the form of the adaptive immune system. The adaptive immune system doesn't react to just one part of a viral sequence, but rather to many different parts of the virus protein that generates the immune response; these parts are called "epitopes." Antibodies and T-cell responses are generated to a variety of epitopes along the virus protein. If one epitope mutates, there is another epitope to react to that has not mutated.
Not every epitope can mutate enough to escape the immune system. Something that needs to be kept in mind is that virus proteins are not just used for recognition by the immune system; they have actual functions in the virus life cycle that must be fulfilled. If they mutate to an extreme degree, then these functions will be disrupted. Every amino acid in a protein has subtle effects on the total structure of that protein. There is not always a big "mutational space" that the virus can explore. Most mutations are not terribly helpful to the virus, and some even actively harmful to the successful completion of the virus life cycle.
Under these constraints, it's pretty hard for a virus to easily escape a good vaccine. Influenza virus is able to gradually escape vaccines for a variety of complicated reasons, not least of which is that it has a very high mutation rate. It also has a segmented genome, which means it can trade segments with other variants of influenza. Finally, it has won a kind of genetic lottery by evolving a mechanism by which specific sites on one of its surface proteins, the hemagluttinin protein, are much more likely to generate an immune response than other parts of the virus are. These sites also happen to be very mutable. The influenza virus can therefore change its immune signature with some amount of freedom, but this is still not a quick process. It typically takes a year or so for the virus to even begin to escape, and can take up to 5 years for cross-reactivity with antibodies to old lineages to be lost. So even for the virus that most commonly requires revaccination, this type of mutational escape really isn't easy.
Most viruses are not so capable of mutational escape. Measles virus, for example, doesn't seem to mutate at all to escape the vaccine that we have made against it. That vaccine is highly effective, and it has to be, because measles is extremely contagious.
The SARS-CoV-2 vaccines seem to produce a diverse response to the antigen that they present, which is great because that reduces the chance of mutational escape. Likewise, the virus does not have as frequent a mutation rate as influenza virus or even measles virus. I really doubt that the virus will be capable of easily escaping the vaccines that have been developed.
However, even if such a variant should arise, we are well-protected by the advent of new technologies in the form of mRNA vaccines. Because the principle of the vaccine is that it just provides an mRNA sequence, it can be readily modified to reflect any strains that might emerge. The factories can begin to churn out any new vaccine the day that a new sequence is discovered. Instead of having to come up with an entirely new vaccine, the makers will just need to edit some sequences within the existing manufacturing program. This is going to have a big impact on seasonal influenza virus vaccination as well, I imagine.
I can't really comment on the political situation. I wish that the government in the US were doing more to fight this. I suspect that soon it will be. This morning, Anthony Scaramucci tweeted that there are just "two Scaramuccis" left until Biden is inaugurated, and he has indicated that he plans to aggressively deal with the pandemic in ways that we haven't yet. I'm hopeful for that to come to pass. I think it's going to get better.
is there any hope left at all?
I am in such despair at this point. I miss everyone. I miss hugging and being able to play board games in person and getting coffee and having a job. My whole family works in the arts, and we are drowning. The vaccines aren't rolling out fast enough. No one in the US is willing to give the aid we need to shut down, and even if we had it no one has the guts to actually enforce the kind of complete shutdown we need to stop this. I feel we are looking at soon having a mutation that the vaccine won't work against and never being able to do anything ever again. Endless isolation until society collapses. I'm so tired.
I'm sorry that you feel this way. I definitely understand why you do. I'm glad you felt comfortable sharing it with me this way. I really do think things are going to get better.
I don't think we are in serious danger of an escape mutant defeating the current vaccines in development. While viruses do often mutate, we are fortunate to have an excellent mechanism for immunity in the form of the adaptive immune system. The adaptive immune system doesn't react to just one part of a viral sequence, but rather to many different parts of the virus protein that generates the immune response; these parts are called "epitopes." Antibodies and T-cell responses are generated to a variety of epitopes along the virus protein. If one epitope mutates, there is another epitope to react to that has not mutated.
Not every epitope can mutate enough to escape the immune system. Something that needs to be kept in mind is that virus proteins are not just used for recognition by the immune system; they have actual functions in the virus life cycle that must be fulfilled. If they mutate to an extreme degree, then these functions will be disrupted. Every amino acid in a protein has subtle effects on the total structure of that protein. There is not always a big "mutational space" that the virus can explore. Most mutations are not terribly helpful to the virus, and some even actively harmful to the successful completion of the virus life cycle.
Under these constraints, it's pretty hard for a virus to easily escape a good vaccine. Influenza virus is able to gradually escape vaccines for a variety of complicated reasons, not least of which is that it has a very high mutation rate. It also has a segmented genome, which means it can trade segments with other variants of influenza. Finally, it has won a kind of genetic lottery by evolving a mechanism by which specific sites on one of its surface proteins, the hemagluttinin protein, are much more likely to generate an immune response than other parts of the virus are. These sites also happen to be very mutable. The influenza virus can therefore change its immune signature with some amount of freedom, but this is still not a quick process. It typically takes a year or so for the virus to even begin to escape, and can take up to 5 years for cross-reactivity with antibodies to old lineages to be lost. So even for the virus that most commonly requires revaccination, this type of mutational escape really isn't easy.
Most viruses are not so capable of mutational escape. Measles virus, for example, doesn't seem to mutate at all to escape the vaccine that we have made against it. That vaccine is highly effective, and it has to be, because measles is extremely contagious.
The SARS-CoV-2 vaccines seem to produce a diverse response to the antigen that they present, which is great because that reduces the chance of mutational escape. Likewise, the virus does not have as frequent a mutation rate as influenza virus or even measles virus. I really doubt that the virus will be capable of easily escaping the vaccines that have been developed.
However, even if such a variant should arise, we are well-protected by the advent of new technologies in the form of mRNA vaccines. Because the principle of the vaccine is that it just provides an mRNA sequence, it can be readily modified to reflect any strains that might emerge. The factories can begin to churn out any new vaccine the day that a new sequence is discovered. Instead of having to come up with an entirely new vaccine, the makers will just need to edit some sequences within the existing manufacturing program. This is going to have a big impact on seasonal influenza virus vaccination as well, I imagine.
I can't really comment on the political situation. I wish that the government in the US were doing more to fight this. I suspect that soon it will be. This morning, Anthony Scaramucci tweeted that there are just "two Scaramuccis" left until Biden is inaugurated, and he has indicated that he plans to aggressively deal with the pandemic in ways that we haven't yet. I'm hopeful for that to come to pass. I think it's going to get better.