Coronavirus (COVID-19) Discussion Thread

[Mnementh]

SvennoJ said:

@haxxiy Omicron has me wondering. Is it possible to genetically alter a virus on purpose to make it non lethal, more contagious while teaching your body the antibodies to ward off the deadly variant? Basically using a virus to make a self replicating 'vaccine' against that virus.

Setting the obvious moral and ethical problems aside, is it possible to release a self replicating vaccine into the wild (and get stuff like The Rain...)

I don't think our current gene editing techniques are good enough to reliably make such changes. First of all we usually don't know what effect changes on the genome result in. And then we have to specifically edit this parts. So currently no. But with future tech... I think that might be possible.