If it mutates to where the vaccine doesn’t work, the virus itself doesn’t work the way it works. At that point, it’ll either lose virulancy and fade away, or we’ll make another mRNA vaccine for a significantly discernible portion of the mutation.
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people in Missouri who have [gotten the covid vaccine secretly because they fear their friends and families will ostracize them.
This situation is going to happen: where all at the family gathering have gotten the vaccine but are closeted and pretending they haven’t and, at the same time, are hurling insults at the brave few who have admitted to taking it.
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That is frequently deliberate.
High pressure and fringe groups very often work very hard to cut people off from their support networks and broader society. This is also common of abusers and sexual predators. It’s a fair bit of what’s mean by “grooming”.
The dependency becomes an avenue of control, and makes enforcement like shunning practically possible.
Sort of an unsung detail about all those Qanon folks who chased off family. Lot of people pointing at in a schadenfreude kind of way. But that sort of thing us very much the goal.
It’s important to stress that there is almost always a way out. Whether in others who have been ostracized, organizations and groups intended to help, or in friends and family people have become alienated from.
And that re-establishing an independent support network is critical to getting people out of these situations.
C) bond together with what are likely many others in the same position. Creating an independent support network and community that can either push back, or make B) a lot less of a reach.
Which is typically what ends up happening. The possibility is inherently undermined by the A) sort of secrecy. And it’s exact outcome practices like shunning, expulsion and public shaming are meant to prevent.
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It would be cool if it were possible to see how many people got vaccinations miles away from their closest vaccination site, and the graph that distance by state or county.
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So health agencies pushing the vaccine should be advertising not just how safe and effective it is, but how confidential it is too. People just need a plausible excuse for the occasional after-shot fever.
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Oof i’m so glad i didn’t have to deal with that…
There’d be no way on earth i’d have been able to hide that i’d gotten the vaccine. On both jabs i got a severe reaction that basically left me bedridden for an entire day each time 
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I’d be interested in those stats just for hilarity here in the UK. As the system to allocate vaccination sites seemed to prefer 50+ mile distances at a time where travelling was severely discouraged*
*not even joking, i was offered sites in central london or in brighton which would entail 50+ mile journeys. One of my schoolfriends now living near brighton was offered a jab site 5 minutes walk from my house, but 50+ miles from his…
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I don’t think anyone can say with certainty, that a virus that the vaccine doesn’t protect against would also be less deadly and/or contagious.
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Leave some empty bottles of wine/tequila out in a conspicuous place. 
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Much as health departments would want more people getting shots, I don’t think they’d be too enthusiastic if someone asked, “You know instead of you monitoring me for 15 minutes, do you mind if I just stay here a couple of days?”
No, we can’t say that it would be less deadly or contagious. But the vaccine specifically targets the part of the virus that makes covid effective at what it does. If that part is gone, then the vaccine wouldn’t work, but covid also wouldn’t be effective at what it does IN the way that it currently does it.
And at that point, we’d whip up another mRNA vaccine.
We make a billion plus flu shots every single year and don’t even think about it. We can make billions of covid shots a year with the same effort and probably make them better because mRNA tech lets us do a lot better with vaccines.
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Well that’s a comedy of errors I wouldn’t watch
FTFY. Evolution does not pause because we find it inconvenient. This beast is an apex predator, and we are now going full Red Queen with it.
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It is never as simple as does-or-does-not work. The Delta variant has gotten the vaccine down to about 80% effectiveness. Still very good, but down significantly from 95% initially. We just cannot say that there is no way for epsilon, omicron or omega to get that number down further while remaining virulent. Evolution is amazingly ingenious when it has literally billions of chances to roll the dice. I would prefer very much to not play that game. (Cue War Games gif)
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Oh totally, but even if we had 100% uptake of the vaccine in the US, we were ALWAYS going to have mutations because the rest of the world is only at 27.8% of people getting just one dose, and 1.1% of people in poor / developing countries with just one dose.
There are always going to be variants and boosters needed for this, and that’s been the case from the start.
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Sounds like certain people on the Right have vaccinations and abortions on the same list.
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I have had this argument before. It is not impossible to get this under control. We did it with smallpox, we are within an eyelash of doing so with polio. (Thanks, CIA, for using the polio vaccination program as cover to get bin Laden. Now there are areas off limits to vaccination.) Not impossible, just very, very hard. Won’t happen this year, and there will be variants, and the bug will find ways to escape the vaccine. If they are not highly transmissible, they will not explode into public awareness. But some will.
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Was actually how i dealt with it…
Bonk horrible flu symptoms with a vast amount of cider 
(not ideal, but effective 
)
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I was suggesting using the empty bottles as props if you need to hide the effects of the vaccine from friends and relatives; but I don’t object to your course of action, either! 
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What would be a nice outcome is a highly virulent but low morbidity and mortality variant to start spreading. Also with minimal long term health impacts.
It will probably not happen but there is no reason it could not.
