The developer of the AstraZeneca shot says the Delta variant has made herd immunity impossible

[knome]

i think it’s it, until there’s a vaccine resistant variant.

this guardian article has a slightly bigger quote from him.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ant-renders-herd-immunity-from-covid-mythical

I'm probably not fully understanding the science.
Should I be thinking in terms of a vaccine stimulating immune responses and antibody production rather than the vaccine fighting a virus?

 

[zouzounaki]

I'm probably not fully understanding the science.
Should I be thinking in terms of a vaccine stimulating immune responses and antibody production rather than the vaccine fighting a virus?

i think so, as far as i understand it.

 

[Mitz]

What am I missing?
Won't Pharma be working on new vaccines to try and fight variants?
Or, is that it?
Has Sir Andrew Pollard been selectively quoted?
Questions, questions, questions?

As I read it, it doesn't really matter as far as stopping the virus goes. The dominant strain now is Delta and Delta can be caught and transmitted by as many as half of all vaccinated people. That means even if every single person was vaccinated 50% of people could still catch and then pass the virus on. So the vaccines help fight severe disease and death but they cannot stop the spread. Any variant we face is most likely going to be a variant of Delta which means it will still have the capability to infect vaccinated people. And due to parallel evolution, demonstrated by variants appearing in different geographical locations with similar or identical mutations, it's very likely any serious mutations we face, regardless of where it comes from and even if it's not actually a Delta variant, will be able to continue spreading regardless of domestic and global vaccination rates. With global vaccinations climbing, just as each mutation so far has made each variant more and more transmissible, future variants will likely become more and more transmissible between vaccinated people. Basically, we cannot eradicate the virus even if we vaccinated every man, woman and child on the planet. All we can do is reduce severity and death and tweak the vaccines to fight emerging variants so that the vaccines don't stop reducing severity or death. With some variants now showing the ability to infect and reinfect, we are, to use the correct scientific terminology, fecked.

There's a reason the world's best scientists have been warning for months that vaccination alone is not enough and mitigation to reduce infections must go hand in hand with vaccination IF we're ever going to get anything even close to a handle on this virus.

That's how I read it anyways.