Variants have been one of the hallmarks of this pandemic, with ever more infectious forms of the virus apparently mutating themselves into existence at regular intervals. However. it is easy to forget that prior to 2021 variants were a rarity and the only sign of our variant ridden future was the emergence of the scarily named Kent variant (later renamed Alpha) late in 2020. The UKHSA Vaccine Surveillance Report started mentioning variants in May of 2021, but only in passing. However, as 2021 wore on new variants started appearing more frequently, and in recent reports there are 10 times more references to ‘variants’ compared to their debut. (To be fair, there used to be an entirely different vaccine report devoted to ‘variants of concern’, the Technical Briefings.)
But ‘variants’ weren’t simply a natural process of viral evolution – not when there were people to blame. By summer 2022 there had been multiple articles published explaining that it was the unvaccinated that created these variants, adding to the cries for (mandated) universal vaccination. I believe that the idea that it was the unvaccinated that were causing the problem arose due to a misunderstanding of the role of the mechanisms that drive viral evolution. While it is true that for many vaccines the main source of vaccine escape variants is the unvaccinated, this is only true for sterilising vaccines (which stop any viral load on infection), and isn’t the case for non-sterilising vaccines such as the COVID-19 ones. To explain this effect further we need to delve into the evolutionary process.
Evolution is a natural process that explains how organisms become better at surviving within a given environment. It occurs when certain differences between otherwise similar organisms are favoured for some reason, resulting in that particular difference becoming more prevalent in the organism’s population. Evolution requires two things to occur – a population of the organism with heritable diversity and selective pressure. The ‘population’ part refers to how many of the organisms in question exist; selective pressure refers to the ‘strength’ of the drive of the evolutionary process, which might be described as ‘survival of the fittest’, i.e., those specific organisms that happen to be better at surviving and reproducing will be more likely to pass on their genes to future generations, thus on average making the future species better at surviving and reproducing.
At first glance the ‘population’ part appears obvious as clearly there can’t be evolution without anything to evolve. However, it is a little more complex than this. When it comes to cuddly mammals it is generally fairly easy to see what ‘population’ means (you can count them). However, when it comes to viruses there are two factors: the viral load in any given infected host and the incidence of infection across a population. Evolution ‘cares’ about both factors, and it is important to consider these two ‘populations’ in the discussion that follows.
Most vaccines given to humans are fairly sterilising, that is, they stop any meaningful quantity of the virus developing in a vaccinated individual. Thus it is clear that by vaccinating a very high proportion of the population with a sterilising vaccine the evolution of that particular virus can be slowed to a crawl. No one vaccinated will have any meaningful viral load, and there will be only few in the population where evolution could occur (the unvaccinated). Note that there is still selective pressure for the virus to evolve to escape the vaccine-derived immunity – as soon as a viral mutation emerges that offers the virus a better chance of thriving within a vaccinated individual or infecting other vaccinated individuals it will soon take over as the predominant viral variant even in a largely vaccinated population. Indeed, the very fact that large numbers of people are vaccinated will become the predominant selective pressure for that virus – if the main thing ‘holding back’ the virus from thriving is vaccine derived immunity then that’s what evolution will ‘try to overcome’. However, with sterilising vaccines the only people with meaningful viral loads are the unvaccinated, and thus evolution towards vaccine escape largely occurs within the unvaccinated population. Moreover, because there is no selective pressure within unvaccinated individuals for vaccine escape (there is no vaccine-derived immunity in these individuals), the evolution towards vaccine escape will be muted.
However, the Covid vaccines aren’t sterilising: vaccinated people can still get infected and will have high viral loads when this occurs. We didn’t know this, way back in December 2020 when vaccination started. Arguably this should have been identified before the vaccines were approved, but it was considered a public emergency and normal vaccine development processes weren’t followed. However, it soon became clear that this was going to be a problem – I first became aware of the potential for trouble in March 2021 with the publication of a paper out of Israel. This team found far higher viral loads than expected in the vaccinated-and-infected; certainly enough viral load to allow viral evolution towards vaccine escape. Unfortunately, our authorities ignored this and other emerging evidence and continued to jab their populations indiscriminately.
At the point that it was clear the vaccines weren’t sterilising, the theory behind what might be the ‘correct’ level of vaccination changes completely. With non-sterilising vaccines, ‘herd immunity’ becomes impossible and this goal should have been dropped immediately. But worse than that, the fact that the vaccines weren’t sterilising meant there was a large selective pressure for evolution and a sufficiently high viral ‘population’ in vaccinated individuals, and so this also meant that the virus could more effectively evolve vaccine escape.
Also note that viral evolution to ‘get around’ vaccine protection in non-sterilising vaccines isn’t as simple as the vaccines ceasing to offer protection. There are instances of so-called ‘leaky vaccines’ that have evolved increased pathogenicity (severity) as a result of their evolutionary journey to escape vaccine protection. Perhaps the most famous example of a vaccine driving increased pathogen virulence is the vaccine for Marek’s disease. Marek’s disease was an inconvenience for the poultry industry when the vaccine for it was introduced into chicken farms in the early 1970s. From that point it has evolved to become significantly more pathogenic, requiring widespread vaccination to protect against the disease. The virus responsible for Marek’s disease continues to evolve vaccine escape and the risk of future problems is very real. Fortunately, there’s little evidence that this has occurred with Covid; hopefully this will remain the case.
Another relevant aspect of Covid evolution is the matter of how mutations appear to target the spike protein. Mutations in the viral RNA occur at random during each viral replication, and there is little preference in the RNA of the virus where mutations might occur. However, the proteins that they encode aren’t equally able to remain viable after a mutation in the RNA that encodes them. This means that while a mutation in the part of the viral RNA that encodes a given protein is as likely as anywhere else, the virus won’t survive a mutation in an unfavoured location and thus that particular mutation won’t even have a chance to exist. On the other hand, the Covid spike protein happens to be very tolerant of mutations in the RNA that encodes it, remaining viable even with relatively large numbers of mutations. As mutations in the spike protein change its shape and make-up slightly, this makes it look slightly different to antibodies that have been created by the body’s immune system to neutralise it, resulting in a reduced ability of the body’s immune system to deal with an infection. It is likely that through vaccination we exposed the immune systems of many millions of people worldwide to an identical spike protein, and the virus has responded by evolving rapidly through the introduction of changes in its spike protein which has allowed it to thrive in this new highly-vaccinated world.
There’s also a complication of viral evolution that you don’t find in evolution in most plants and animals, namely that the selective pressure that drives evolution in viruses occurs both between infected individuals and within infected individuals, and this is particularly relevant for vaccine escape. With normal vaccines there is no meaningful viral presence in vaccinated individuals, thus mutations occur within unvaccinated individuals. Sometimes these mutations happen to lead to partial escape of vaccine protection, but before evolution can select for this mutation it has to leave the unvaccinated individual and try to infect a vaccinated person – it is only then that the mutation is ‘tested’. However, if the vaccine escape mutation offers no selective advantage in an unvaccinated individual it won’t thrive before it gets a chance to try its higher infectivity in other, vaccinated individuals. The fact that the virus ‘doesn’t know’ if a given mutation that occurs in an unvaccinated individual actually achieves vaccine escape until the virus is transmitted to a vaccinated individual slows down the effective rate of viral evolution towards vaccine escape significantly.
On the plus side, as the virus has had such a very strong selective pressure to overcome the immunity offered by antibodies to the original (Wuhan) spike protein, this could have made it less likely to mutate to overcome the diverse range of antibodies (and other immune responses) generated after natural infection (i.e., after exposure to all of the proteins in the whole Covid virus).
There’s an additional nuance to this effect. The interplay between mutations and viral fitness is complex, and it is possible that a mutation might result in a virus that achieves some escape of vaccine-derived immunity (positive for the virus) but which also has a slightly inferior ability to infect upper respiratory tract cells (negative for the virus) compared with the variant then prevalent in the population. In a community with low vaccination levels the fact that the mutation resulted in an inferior infectivity would probably result in that mutation dying out, because the vaccine escape mutation wouldn’t offer much benefit if few individuals were vaccinated. However, if a community has high vaccination levels then the escape of vaccine derived immunity will give the mutated virus a selective advantage even with lower infectivity in non-vaccinated individuals and the mutated variant could take over as the dominant variant in that outbreak. Furthermore, once that mutation has become established it might be possible for a further mutation to occur that regained the original virus’s infectivity, so that it has both high infectivity and vaccine escape. It is for this reason that it can in some circumstances be advantageous to only vaccinate the most vulnerable in circumstances where sterilising immunity is not obtained and where the vaccine targets mutable parts of the virus’s genetic code (particularly for RNA viruses, which mutate much faster than DNA viruses). Too late for that now, though.
One more minor point of note about the Covid variants. Back in 2021, the World Health Organisation decided that it should name each new variant using the Greek alphabet. It is likely that this response arose due to media news organisations being keen on naming variants from the area of the world where they were first discovered. The WHO had enough problems insisting that people didn’t refer to Covid as the ‘Chinese Virus’, although it is a bit weird that it was so passionate about this relatively irrelevant aspect of a worldwide public health emergency. (To be fair, the avoidance of ‘stigmatising’ names for new diseases has been WHO policy since 2015.) The strange thing is, there have been no more Covid variants named by the WHO since Omicron came along. Omicron is rather highly mutated compared with the original Wuhan strain and all prior variants. Indeed, there is an argument that the Omicron variant really should have been called COVID-21 given the evolutionary distance from and clinical differences with COVID-19. All of the major subvariants of Omicron are at least as valid as ‘new variants’ as the variants that came prior to Omicron, and so the WHO stopping at Omicron is odd. Then again, if the WHO had continued to name new variants it would probably have run out of Greek letters by summer 2022 (they were even two short, as they decided to not use Nu or Xi for some strange reason). Anyway, I imagine that the succession of complex named variants (XBB!, BA2.75.2! etc.) suggests to many that the evolution of Covid has become a scientific curiosity and doesn’t reflect an ever increasing rate of viral mutation compared with the Greek letters of 2021. Perhaps this is of convenience to some parties.
Amanuensis is an ex-academic and senior Government scientist. He blogs at Bartram’s Folly – subscribe here.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Whether or not white Americans feel guilty about slavery, they certainly wish they’d picked their own damn cotton (h/t the great Kathy Shaidle).
Good article highlighting the one-sided hatred and violence coming from the radical, mentally deranged ‘Trans’ extremists, being all the while enabled and supported by the authorities;
”If Clive or Sadiq or the Trans+ Pride crew could point me in the direction of any counter examples, of prominent gender-critical women calling for transgender activists to be physically assaulted, or getting stuck in themselves, or refusing to condemn those who do, I’d be keen to see them. But we all know they don’t exist. For all the allegations of transphobia hurled at gender-critical campaigners over the years, they are not the extremists and haters in this debate – and they never have been.
Putting to one side the thorny issue of incitement in this case, and the thin line between venting one’s rage and directly inciting violence, there is simply no comparison to be drawn between the so-called TERFs and the trans activists. One side is robustly defending their rights against a tide of bigotry and routine harassment by the police. The other are the trans activists – who not only have genuine extremism among their ranks, but also get a free pass for it from Labourites, universities and even the police.
Violent woman-hating has made a comeback in politically correct form. Men are being cheered on at rallies for calling for women’s rights activists to be punched in the face. Meanwhile, politicians and activists, who on any other day might fancy themselves as valiant warriors against ‘the patriarchy’, are either staring at their shoe laces or making excuses for them.”
https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/07/10/punch-a-terf-the-violent-misogyny-of-the-trans-movement/
Probably sharing this is just giving this absolute certifiable POS even more exposure but I do feel we need a reality check on just what kind of nasty mentalists are in our midst. I actually hope this ‘person’ gets everything they deserve off the back of sharing this video and he is condemned from all sides. Just vile.
https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1678892214682890241
https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1678892214682890241
That is one specimen that does not belong on the planet. Seriously that is one of the most corrupted, evil, anti-human things I have seen. Mengele territory.
I know, hux. It’s bad enough to even have those thoughts or record those thoughts ( everybody is entitled to the privacy within their mind, after all, and as far as I’m aware actual ‘thought police’ do not exist ) but to actually post those seriously f*cked up, offensive thoughts and opinions onto the web so that everybody becomes aware….well, I just hope his video backfires and Karma pays him a visit. I’m not going to shed a tear if there’s one less sicko inhabiting the planet alongside decent folk. I hope his parents are proud of what they produced!!
America’s guilt about slavery is understandable? Really? None of them were alive at the time FFS! What cobblers. Nonsense like this is partly why we’re in the mess we’re in.
“Parochial xenophobia” is a useful, but incredibly shortsighted, way of defending your own country. By failing to distinguish the real issues, you leave yourself defenceless against them when they are in fact shared by the other nations. We should be building bridges with those of like mind abroad, not crowing about our supposed superiority.
So apart from the “we abolished slavery quicker than the Yanks did” thing, consider how we cover up our own involvement in recent war crimes by pointing the finger at the US and Guantanamo Bay; how we are blind to our leadership in State tyranny by talking about “Chinese style social credit” when they appear to have less of it than we do; saying the French are prone to rioting when they’re just further down the slippery slop than we are, etc.
I’m well aware of my own country’s (England) shortcomings. I tend to think it’s superior to many other places (for which I take no personal credit, just put it down to good fortune) and a lot of people from many places seem to agree with me as people seem very keen on coming here. But I am not overly interested in cultural pissing competitions – other people might feel their countries and culture are superior and if so, good luck to them. England suits me – probably because I grew up here and I am used to it, and know what to expect. Change is inevitable but can be managed in a way that gives people time to get used to it.
I agree we should build bridges with those of like mind abroad, though goodness knows there seem to be very people of like mind to me anywhere, at home and abroad. There’s an argument that we need new countries, some of which would be places where the vast majority of the population had a strong belief in individual responsibility and freedom, small government, rule of law. Would I like to live in such a country? Yes, probably – but would I like to live there if the people there mainly of a completely different culture to me, with different social mores and ways of behaving? I don’t know. Covidian sheeple who know how to queue vs. anarchists who don’t know how to queue. I don’t know and won’t ever have the choice, though I think it might depend on how bad things get here.
Exactly! When is the cut off date for reparations?
How about modern day Italy having to pay reparations to the thousands of persecuted Christian slaves killed in the gladiator games for entertainment!.. their later generations have a claim,.. and through human history, where does this list end?
“Secret blacklists have no place in a modern democracy.”
On the contrary they appear to be an indispensable feature of modern democracy.
Now, if you were talking about the old, unenlightened and primitive form of democracy (you know, the kind where Christian views are not beyond the pale and where voting meant something), then I’d agree.
Dr McCullough’s opinion on this whole ”chest-feeding” nonsense ( 1min clip ) and I did think this bit on his substack was funny. He’s right though.
”Instead of fantasizing about being a women, men can focus on helping the mother who just delivered with work around the house, cooking, supervising other kids in the home, and keeping their appointments for psychotherapy.”
https://petermcculloughmd.substack.com/p/cdc-becomes-public-laughing-stock
About Chicago paying reparations to black residents – I thought this definition of reparations was perfect, apologies if youv’e read it before;
“Where people who aren’t guilty are forced to give money to people who aren’t victims”.
In the HART article “The inversion of the ‘precautionary principle’” listed above, there is a link to another of their publications, which is quite instructive: https://www.hartgroup.org/fact-check/ “Government funded take-down looks increasingly ridiculous”. Changing the definition of things so as to manipulate public understanding of something is pretty close to fraud, Languages are flexible enough to accommodate new terms to correctly describe, or label, the functionality of anything new.
“Pupils struggle more with three Rs than before pandemic” – Barely three in five children in England are meeting standards in reading, writing and maths
It’s all that white privilege they’re having to mug up on…..
“How Bill Gates wants to hack the weather to
savelead usfromto extinction”There, sorted.
Well done.. and for those that don’t know they’ve been hacking it since 1946, and in full blown technological earnest since the mid 90s.
Geoengineering’s the name.. weather warfare’s the game..
https://usawatchdog.com/biden-blocking-sun-destroying-earth-dane-wigington/
George! You came back!!
OK you can stop messing with our minds now. 
Yes I’m back.. well rested.. and have my alter-ego back under lock and key.. haha..
Absolutely – you can see & hear the on/off con trail planes overhead here (South West) almost all the time, following which the sky often looks like complex tartan before shading into that sickly milk white. (Didn’t do it during Glastonbury Festival I noticed as it would look bad on the telly, but got back with a vengeance after.)
Yes.. its pretty damn despicable isn’t it. When I’m back in UK I spend a lot of time in the SW and have witnessed the massive amount of spraying going on down there..
Transgenderism can be seen as a politically correct ideology along with feminism, anti-racism and the others. The main things it has in common with them are a hatred and denial of nature and an impertinent urge to overcome it.
https://www.unz.com/article/transgenderism-as-a-pc-ideology/
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/how-much-longer-can-this-junk-money-charade-go-on/
A brief why and how our monetary system must collapse. It’s all about debt and value.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-wrong-sort-of-fools-running-our-lives/
“If this is the case, then the drive to combine Artificial Intelligence with humanity in the form of transhumanism is redundant, not only in its evil intent, but in the possibility of humanity’s own natural development. Perhaps, as that brilliant and humane historian Neil Oliver says, ‘We are not a finished piece – we are a work in progress’.
It seems to me that the court jester would be infinitely preferable to the fools in charge at present.”
A worthy short read.
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/commentary/excluded-for-the-crime-of-whiteness/
A cracking essay by the wonderful Frank Haviland laying bare the crap and lies of “diversity.”
Anyone else think the BBC might have sat on the presenter scandal throughout June in order to stop the story emerging during Pride Month?
We deserve more than the woeful response to Sarah Jane Baker’s ‘punch TERFs’ rant
Even the author of this piece has failed to understand that Baker’s rant was an incitement to violence and not just hatred. The clue is in the word ‘punch.’