(1:37:00 mark)
https://thehighwire.com/videos/episode-242-the-vanden-bossche-interview/https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0250780"
Risk of rapid evolutionary escape from biomedical interventions targeting SARS-CoV-2 spike protein"
"When nAbs are broadly present in the population, population-level selection for antibody-evading, infection-competent viral mutants may result in a rapid resurgence of SARS-CoV-2 infections."
"Evidence from multiple experimental studies showing that single RBD point mutations can lead to resistance [36] to neutralizing convalescent plasma from multiple donors [16,39,40] suggests that specific single mutants may be able to evade spike-targeting vaccinal immunity in many individuals and rapidly lead to spread of vaccine-resistant SARS-CoV-2. One variant that can escape convalescent plasma neutralization is already circulating in South Africa [41] and could experience greater positive selection pressure once vaccines are deployed widely."
"Finally, the overall size of the pandemic in terms of number of active infections will play a significant role in whether the virus can be brought under control with nAb prophylactics or vaccines. The speed at which nAb resistance develops in the population increases substantially as the number of infected individuals increases, suggesting that complementary strategies to prevent SARS-CoV-2 transmission that exert specific pressure on other proteins (e.g., antiviral prophylactics) or that do not exert a specific selective pressure on the virus (e.g., high-efficiency air filtration, masking, ultraviolet air purification) are key to reducing the risk of immune escape. In this context, vaccines that do not provide sterilizing immunity (and therefore continue to permit transmission) will lead to the buildup of large standing populations of virus [47], greatly increasing the risk of immune escape."
"In this context, vaccines that do not provide sterilizing immunity (and therefore continue to permit transmission) will lead to the buildup of large standing populations of virus [47], greatly increasing the risk of immune escape."
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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7941658/"
The emergence and ongoing convergent evolution of the N501Y lineages coincides with a major global shift in the SARS-CoV-2 selective landscape"The emergence and rapid rise in prevalence of three independent SARS-CoV-2 “501Y lineages”, B.1.1.7, B.1.351 and P.1, in the last three months of 2020 prompted renewed concerns about the evolutionary capacity of SARS-CoV-2 to adapt to both rising population immunity, and public health interventions such as vaccines and social distancing."
"As a consequence, all have gained epidemiological and immunological properties that will likely complicate the control of COVID-19."
