JRPGfan said: You thought the new british mutation (B.1.1.7) of their corona virus was bad? |
When there's a given mutation that is better at avoiding neutralizing antibodies then obviously it's going to spread and become the dominant strain after vaccination, even if you don't import it. The ones detected in the UK mutated in situ, after all; the seeds are already there, and everywhere.
But your immune system isn't stuck with old antibodies as you put it. Antibodies undergo affinity maturation; they become more sensitive to an antigen with time when encountering it. So even if the virus gets in and wiggles around a little bit, does this count as having Covid or just a common cold? Or course, you could still pass it on to someone who never had it, or hasn't been vaccinated, or is severely immunosuppressed...
(This is why people erroneously think viruses get "weaker". They don't. Your immune system just learns how to react to it. For instance, H1N1 mutates every year to become an order of magnitude less sensitive to last season's neutralizing antibodies, and yet it isn't constantly causing 1918-style pandemics.)
I understand some people want it squashed, but it likely isn't going to magically disappear even if you inoculate everyone in the world with mRNA vaccines every trimester. It's going to linger in the background as all the other viruses that have caused pandemics in the past.