resurrecting a thread to demo how quick things are changing:
Fears that the vaccines would be powerless against new variants intensified at a scientific conference held online on Saturday, when South African scientists reported that in laboratory tests, serum samples from 21 of a group of 44 Covid-19 survivors
did not destroy the variant circulating in that country.
The samples that were successful against the variant were taken from patients who had been hospitalized. These patients had higher blood levels of so-called neutralizing antibodies — the subset of antibodies needed to disarm the virus and prevent infection — than those who were only mildly ill.
The results “strongly, strongly suggest that several mutations that we see in the South Africa variant are going to have a significant effect on the sensitivity of that virus to neutralization,” said Penny Moore, a virologist at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases in South Africa who led the study
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/20/h...-immunity.html
it’s only been a year or so and so much of what we ‘know’ about this organism is still sort of tentative. And what was entirely correct not too long ago is only MOSTLY correct today.
Vaccinations do appear to give more infection against the mutant strains than mild asymptomatic infections though.
So far at least.