COVID, like influenza, may be able to mutate to avoid vaccines for decades - March 2022

We Study Virus Evolution. Here’s Where We Think the Coronavirus Is Going

New York Times
By Sarah Cobey, Jesse Bloom, Tyler Starr and Nathaniel Lash
Dr. Cobey studies the interaction of immunity, virus evolution and transmission at the University of Chicago.
Dr. Bloom and Dr. Starr study virus evolution at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.
Mr. Lash is a graphics editor for Opinion (NYT)

• "It’s impossible to say whether future variants will have more big Omicron-like jumps or more typical stepwise changes, but we are confident SARS-CoV-2 will continue to evolve to escape immunity."
• "While transmissibility of viruses does plateau at a certain point, other human viruses that escape immunity keep doing so. The influenza vaccine has been updated annually for decades to chase viral evolution, and some influenza viruses show no sign of slowing down. Immune escape is an endless evolutionary arms race, because the immune system can always make new antibodies and the virus has a vast set of mutations to explore in response. For instance, Omicron has just a tiny fraction of the many mutations that have been observed in SARS-CoV-2 or related bat viruses, which are in turn just a small fraction of what lab experiments suggest the virus could potentially explore."
• "The influenza vaccine has been updated annually for decades to chase viral evolution, and some influenza viruses show no sign of slowing down. Immune escape is an endless evolutionary arms race, because the immune system can always make new antibodies and the virus has a vast set of mutations to explore in response."

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Vitamin D is one of the many proven ways to reduce the risk of COVID infection (probably without causing mutations)

VitaminDWiki – COVID-19 treated by Vitamin D - studies, reports, videos
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Some just-in-time COVID treatments also might prevent the spread and mutation

• Review of Early Treatments of COVID-19 (within a few days of symptoms)