ncov VS covariants

Mutations (thanks /u/Mynewestaccount34578)

Nextstrain.org has been using genomic epidemiology to track SARS-CoV2 and it’s evolution since the beginning of the pandemic. Looks like the original strain and even some more recent variants have become virtually undetectable. https://nextstrain.org/ncov/

https://nextstrain.org/ncov all of that data comes from identifying samples and doing full sequences.

Nextstrain

In this Covid19 RNA sequence (Wuhan/Hu-1/2019), there are exactly 499 nucleotides. (Data source1 : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/1798174254 | Data source2 : https://github.com/nextstrain/ncov/blob/master/data/references_sequences.fasta)

You could try getting in touch with these guys

"Publicly available data on the number of analyzed sequences over two-week windows for each country were extracted from covariants.org and Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data (GISAID) initiative databases [3, 4]."

This process has produced thousands of variants already, and a considerable number that have bypassed immunity to previous variants. https://covariants.org/

I've also found covariants to be pretty useful, especially if you're looking at other countries

Variants: As of June 13th, Canada is 56% BA.2, 29% BA.2.12.1,10% BA.5, and 5% BA.4. Although BA.4 and BA.5 are not yet dominant in Canada, they are rapidly replacing BA.2 and BA.2.12.1 as they were each at 2% on the last reporting of May 30th thus representing a ~>3x increased prevalence within that short period of time. As the growth of BA.4 and BA.5 is following an exponential growth pattern, I expect that in the next reporting (June 30th) they will both be dominant. I think it's safe to say that they are already dominant though based on this. Source: https://covariants.org/

A lot of scientists said that using an mRNA vaccine against a coronavirus was completely stupid to begin with. That mass vaccination would favor immune evasion and render the vaccines worthless. And that's exactly what happened. You can see that very clearly on covariants.org . We were lucky, the new variants were a lot less deadly than the old ones. If a variant like Marseille 4 popped up and took over, it would have been a slaughter. We gave it a shot. We saw very clearly that it didn't work, and moreso, that it was dangerous to use a mass vaccination strategy for a virus that mutates and recombines a lot. Cause as immune evasion occurs, and the vaccine shows to be a lot less efficient than we hoped, this makes people at risk just as vulnerable as before.

So it's not really hoping for the best. It's using the best tools we have to reach herd immunity, both natural and artificial. The problem when we mass vaccinate, with mRNA vaccines that focus on a spike, is that variants that can circonvolute the immunity put in place by the vaccine, have it a lot easier than before to take over. You can see this in the data on covariants.org very clearly. This renders the vaccine a lot less effective as those variants have no natural competition. Thus putting the people that really need the vaccine, the people at risk, in a lot more danger, even vaccinated. This is why a lot of experts advised since the start to not mass vaccinate like we did. Sadly they weren't heard.

Viruses are part of our eco-system. We evolve in a world with viruses, bacteria, etc... This means there is natural competition between them. And if you mass vaccinate people against a virus, like the original strain of covid from Wuhan, this makes that particular variant disappear. The variants that can circonvolute the immunity put in place by the vaccine have a lot more chances to take over as they don't have natural competition with the original strain. If you go on a website like covariants.org, you can see that variants take over a lot faster now than they did before the vaccination. Because they have a lot more freedom. These are phenomena that we already witnessed in vaccination of intensively bred chickens and that are well studied. This is why even scientifical authorities, that are part of the consensus and the official voices for the government and the scientific community, like Fauci or Delfraissy, had concerns since the start of the vaccine rollout about this. However, it was worth a shot. Since then, we learned that those doubts were founded. Yet we still prone mass vaccination as some kind of panacea against the pandemic.