[monksy]

> "and reduces the risk new mutations" likely the opposite is true. It is called evolutionary pressure.

Chicken and egg problem: You can't have evolutionary pressure without an environment to operate in. Vaccines reduce the space in which they can attempt to successfully mutate.

[SailingSperm]

That environment of evolutionary pressure is exactly what is being created. An environment where strains with higher fitness for immune escape are more able to spread, in a compounding manner. Particularly with leaky vaccines as we're using for c19 that do not prevent contraction with high efficacy.

Please read this - even just the 'Prevention' section for a real world example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marek%27s_disease#Prevention

or read how antibiotic resistance comes about, which seems to be less contentious / politicly affected... But the same evolutionary mechanism is at work.