Dan Barouch, an expert from Harvard’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, pointed out that the mutation rates for coronaviruses are much lower than for other viruses such as HIV. But there are many possible downsides to using a vaccine that doesn’t work. According to scientists, a similar evolutionary mutation pressure can be observed in bacterial pathogens, which, when treated with antibiotics, can develop further and adapt in order to evade the drugs, i.e. develop resistance.
The British virologist Jones emphasizes that vaccine-induced virus mutations are rare. The more effectively a vaccine blocks a virus, the lower the risk that the virus will spread in the body and “learn” how to evade the antibodies. “But when it does invade and replicate, there is selection pressure to dodge the antibodies that the inefficient vaccine produced. And you don’t know what the result will be.”
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