[lucideer]

No answers on most of those Qs, but the messaging on (2) "Will the vaccines basically be voided by this?" is that no, vaccines should still be effective.

I'm not sure how they can no that without restarting extensive trials, but as a sibling commenter points out, viruses mutate constantly so I guess dealing with variants is pretty common when it comes to vaccination.

[SifJar]

My understanding is as long as the variant has the same spike protein, vaccines "should" remain effective. So while trials haven't been done yet to verfiy the vaccines are still effective, I'm assuming the spike protein has been observed to be the same so there's no reason to suggest vaccines wouldn't be effective.

EDIT: Actually, sounds like a couple of the mutations are in the spike protein and there is some evidence of reduced antibody effectiveness against the mutated version.

[lbeltrame]

N501Y is properly neutralized by vaccination (there's a paper in Science with these data, but I don't have a link handy right now).

The deletion seems to reduce antibody neutralization, but:

- In the preprint where this was shown, only 4 convalescent sera were tested;

- The same 4 sera had large variation in neutralization activity per se;

- There is no investigation on potential impaired T cell reactivity (cellular immunity): FTR, the "mink mutation", although it exhibited slightly lower antibody neutralization, did not change the reaction of T cells to it.

[lbeltrame]

I realized I made a mistake here but can't correct now: the sera used were 5, not 4.

[sjg007]

This is being studied.

[xiphias2]

Safety is the hardest part of trials, and also the vaccines that were approved are in Phase 4 (post market surveillence).