[pdm55]

The fascinating biology, that is happening right here and now, is to witness COVID evolving to evade the effects of our manufactured vaccines. As quickly as we prime our immune systems with RNA vaccines, coronaviruses, duplicating within human cells, produce a variant in some human, somewhere, that can evade our newly generated antibodies. It's evolution at a bewildering pace.

Is this evolution happening because we have devised means of travelling so quickly? Travellers taking the virus to new populations. The more people infected, the more variants arise? Or is it because vaccinations mean we cull the less-virulent variants of the virus? If we had had no vaccinations, what variants would have evolved, and at what pace?

Why can we eradicate some viruses like polio or smallpox, but, seemingly, not this one? One would have to guess that it's because its means of transmission - through aerosol droplets from sneezes and coughs - is so effective.

Will COVID become as common as the common cold, but forever more deadly?