Comment by criticaltinker | Hacker News Reader

Comment by criticaltinker | Hacker News Reader

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> If you can find an article that shows that vaccines cause evolution of variants, then post it

Here are several more peer-reviwed primary sources that present strong evidence & theories supporting the fact that "vaccines cause evolution of variants" [1][2][3][4].

Note that, no one is claiming that ONLY vaccines cause evolution of variants - obviously a virus will evolve naturally through random mutation as well, and that is acknowledged in the cited sources.

> You are again posting evidence that does not back your argument

If you take a few minutes to read the sources I've linked to in the this thread, you will see that they corroborate everything I have stated. These ideas are relatively new in the last decade or two, so you may not have heard of them before. That does not mean they are unfounded or based on logical fallacies as you claim.

> Given that the evolutionary millieu had low vaccination rate and that the variants are more infective in non-vaccinated populations, we know this is not the case.

You continue to use the same unsupported points and build on them with logical deduction. I have given you plenty of counter-arguments supported by peer-reviewed literature.

If you have nothing else to add to the discussion, then I will not be continuing it.

[1] Imperfect Vaccination Can Enhance the Transmission of Highly Virulent Pathogens https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371%2Fj...

[2] The adaptive evolution of virulence: a review of theoretical predictions and empirical tests https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/c...

[3] Why does drug resistance readily evolve but vaccine resistance does not? https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rspb.2016...

[4] Monitor for COVID-19 vaccine resistance evolution during clinical trials https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jou...

Actually, literally none of the article you linked have evidence that any of the current variants are due to vaccines.

They provide a plausible mechanism by which future variants may be cause by vaccines. But simply none have done so by now.

I'm going to stop replying because you are actively mischaracterizing your argument, ie, arguing one thing and then providing evidence and arguments from another.

It seems we've been talking past each other, so as a last ditch effort to reconcile our perspectives - we are in agreement that there is no definitive evidence that vaccines are the sole origin of the current variants. In fact it's likely that neutral genetic drift was the origin.

What I provided evidence for, and what we also seem to agree on, is that "They provide a plausible mechanism by which future variants may be caused (or enhanced) by vaccines".

> But simply none have done so by now.

Time will tell - we just don't have the scientific evidence to support a conclusion either way on this yet.

Every single dominant variant has originated in a country without mass vaccination. There is data. We know that no variants of concern have been caused by vaccines.

We all know that if vaccines are not effective enough for herd immunity, then cases of variants due to vaccines are likely to happen. They haven't yet, and it is possible they never happen.

Check your timelines. Every single variant, dominant or not, originated before vaccines were available...

Sudosysgen, while a number of your assertions would be interesting to debate, they have been very broad and without supporting evidence, which makes any meaningful discussion beyond trading opinions impossible.

Edit- added "meaningful"

Which ones exactly? It's simply true that all VOCs have originated from low vaccination environments.

If you're debating the existence of vaccine-driven VOCs, then there is data. If you are going to debate whether vaccines will cause variants, that's a fundamentally speculative assertion for which there is no hard evidence, only speculation.

Just because someone cites evidence doesn't mean it's actually evidence for what they are pushing. So far we had evidence that : Very ineffective vaccines see eventual immune escape, academic articles that link targeted therapies to immune escape but without any evidence that the current vaccines are as targeted as the examples they took, and evidence that a variant that is less neutralized by antibodies can evolve, without taking into account general reduction of infections that mass vaccine rollout necessary for it to be evolutionarily fit or other aspects to immune response, etc...

That is to say, evidence is not necessarily evidence for one's argument. There is no evidence variants will evolve because of vaccination, and I can't prove a speculative negative as a matter of logic.

>> Which ones exactly?

All of them.

>> It's simply true...

"Everyone knows..."

>> If you're debating the...

I am honestly not debating any issue with you. I was pointing out that the statements you have made in posts above are supported, in those posts, by nothing more than your assertions. They are in effect tautological, nothing more.

While you propose some good points that would otherwise be interesting to debate, without supporting evidence these points are nothing more than strongly held opinions, cleverly defended. In this case, there is nothing to be gained on either side through the debate of opinions- other than satisfaction from preening in the light of one's intellect or the presentation of a clever argument.

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