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Comment by Trasmatta | Hacker News Reader

> But since eradication seems highly unlikely, I'm hoping that we'll find the basic vaccines we've come up with so far can be modified to target new variants

My understanding is that one of the major benefits of mRNA vaccines is how easy they are to both design and produce (although storage and transportation is a challenge). It seems likely we might need yearly boosters, and I think the mRNA vaccines will be up to the task.

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An important, as of yet unresolved question, is whether those changed vaccines will lead to the generation of new antibodies vs. a boost of the existing ones, a phenomenon called original antigenic sin. Fingers crossed...

For those curious about Original Antigenic Sin [1].

It's basically the immune system keeping and using an old weapon that is no longer effective just because the intruder has the same haircut as his great great grandfather.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_antigenic_sin

This is my biggest worry. I can't help but wonder (with a very uneducated and uninformed opinion here) if we are stoking or entering the next stage of an arms race.

I agree.

There is a natural balance, between host and virus and population, that keeps the mutability and lethality in check.

Basically a natural kind of population control. Vaccines and technology in general do in a sense change this dynamic.

It's possible that the immune system becomes decoupled and evolutionarily atrophied when an artificial immune system becomes the primary defense.

That was definitely a thought that passed through my head at some point, but the problem is, I question the premise. Where is the proof that it's a natural kind of population control -- what if it's potentially a driving factor of genetic fitness and evolution itself? Not to get too anthropocentric, but what if, grotesquely, there is a form of sentience to which we are merely the raw calories and nutrients for it to metabolize into something else?

I don't have a good enough bio background to give a great answer here. But I can reference a paper that has provoked all manners of thoughts on my end [1].

So if you take a read through that paper, perhaps you can begin to wonder what I am so nervous about. If vaccines previously mediated human evolution to some degree, what's going to happen when humans begin to seize control of that mediator? What's the runaway feedback loop look like?

[1] "Role of viruses in human evolution" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7159740/

Seems unlikely when most minor illnesses dont have vaccines, and vaccines work by pretending to be the virus. If the immune system stopped working against normal viruses it would probably stop working against vaccines too.

Just to be clear (to address the downvotes) I am _NOT_ anti-vaccine. Just contemplating the affect vaccines have in immune system evolution (in the distant future).

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