[ro-_-b]

I remember that in March somebody posted here an entry saying that mutation of the virus will make vaccinations only useful in the short term. Were these concerns already addressed at this stage?

We have seen mutations due to minks recently which could make the vaccinations ineffective. These mutations might have been controlled but similar situations may arise in the next years.

For these reasons I am not entirely sure this is the beginning of the end.

[Wintamute]

Coronaviruses like SARS-COV-2 mutate relatively slowly and minimally compared to others. So mutation isn't expected to be a huge concern, unlike say influenza which mutates relatively rapidly and requires an annual tweak to the vaccines.

What's more, any new strains we do see spreading more widely will do so because their mutations confer a competitive advantage. In practice that usually means more drift towards higher infectiousness but less severe symptoms - the same mechanisms that have left us with 4 other endemic but mild common cold coroanviruses.

The new SARS-COV-2 vaccines may be a useful tool to get us over this hump where the virus is still novel to a large proportion of the population, but are unlikely to be required indefinitely.

[bipson]

It was said (arguably in the news, so, nobody knows if true) that the mutation found in the mink populations in Denmark has a significantly different response to antibodies, in particular, they are less effective.

This is why OP is asking and mentioning the minks in Denmark.

[aphextron]

>I remember that in March somebody posted here an entry saying that mutation of the virus will make vaccinations only useful in the short term. Were these concerns already addressed at this stage?

Regardless of whether the mutations are significant enough to affect vaccine efficacy, it won't likely be a problem. These new mRNA vaccines have a development/production time measured in weeks and months, not years. It changes vaccines from a hardware problem to a software problem. Once the underlying delivery technology is proven safe and effective, reacting to new strains will be as swift as patching a codebase. It's hard to overstate what a massive advance in vaccine tech is happening here.

[aj_g]

Fascinating--do you have any links to further reading/watching about this?

[aphextron]

>"Fascinating--do you have any links to further reading/watching about this?"

https://www.nature.com/articles/nrd.2017.243

The basic idea is that now rather than needing to culture live viruses in chicken eggs, we can literally just encode the RNA for a specific antigen into a synthetic substrate and produce vaccines through a chemical process like any other drug. The RNA is then absorbed into your cells, and your own body creates the proteins which stimulate an immune response.

[carlmr]

Considering Denmark is also one of the richest countries on earth we can neither expect other countries to a) detect such a mutation early and b) handle the issue promptly.

So I think it's somewhat likely that we'll see mutations emerge all over the world.

Whether this vaccine works depends on how early we get most people vaccinated. It may only be a short term patch, which we will see once it's rolled out, you can't really predict the long term without any measurements.