FluMist is back on the approved list again. (After many years off). The efficacy is still far less than the injectables but it is better than the terrible initial performance. I’m not sure what they did to the formulation, but I have heard it is better nowadays.
I’m going with cautious optimism…
HIV mutates a lot. That’s been one of the biggest stumbling blocks to getting an effective vaccine.
This reveals an extremely high mutation rate of (4.1 ± 1.7) × 10−3 per base per cell, the highest reported for any biological entity.
Had to check the date on that. 2015. Pre-covid. Not sure if this a “Hold my beer” situation, but it has to be close.
I won’t pretend I understand most of this article. Well beyond my knowledge base. But I think it is saying that HIV mutates much more rapidly than SARS-COV-2 on a per-infection basis but the overwhelming number of cases of COVID active at any given time plus the high transmissibility means we are seeing more SARS-COV-2 mutations in a given time frame.
What I could understand was very interesting
Science, fuck yeah!
That is a deep dive. I will probably have to go through it a few times to get it all. But it looks like you are correct, the overwhelming number of chances at the dice for covid makes up for the slightly greater number of dice HIV is throwing (bad analogy is bad, but hey…)
The article doesn’t mention it, but it’s possible that a successful vaccine will also be a successful cure. If the virus is below detectable levels, and the immune system is able to fight it due to having a vaccine, then it would also be a cure. I’m curious if this comes up as this vaccine gets further along.
Also the article says it’s the 40th anniversary of HIV. I suppose it’s the 40th anniversary of the isolation of the virus itself, but it’s been in humans for at least 100 years, and it’s been in the USA for at least 60 years.
My belief is they’ll know when they test it, way too unpredictable to say beforehand. Not inherently a trait of RNA vaccines, AFAIK.
HIV has a reverse transcriptase ( one of the major proteins involved in making more copies of itself) that has a really high error/variant rate. So, as a person gets sick, and incubates the virus, each person has a very heterogeneous population of mutant HIV. Thought to be a reason it can “evolve” to overwhelm it’s carrier’s immune defense. HIV/AIDS has a bucket load of variants built in, as most individuals with full blown AIDS are thought to carry a gamish of HIV with mutations. Covid’s reverse transcriptase is more reliable, but larger number of infected individuals and larger number of susceptible species means there have been a large number of distinct strains in a short period of time
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