https://uk.news.yahoo.com/nowhere-left-covid-mutate-deadly-175101538.html

 

Nowhere left for Covid to go to mutate into a deadly variant, says Oxford vaccine creator

She is not the first to make this observation.

How much can it change the spike and still be able to interact with human cells?

Who knows?

 

"If it changes its spike protein so much that it can’t interact with that receptor, then it’s not going to be able to get inside the cell. So there aren’t very many places for the virus to go to have something that will evade immunity but still be a really infectious virus.”

That headline is misleading. Here's what she said

"Covid is unlikely to mutate into a much deadlier variant because there “aren’t many places for the virus to go”, the lead scientist behind the Oxford vaccine has said."

She did not say the virus has nowhere to go.

Yes, a cat can't change in to a tiger.

 

Hopefully, all future variants will basically not be much different from the ones around today.

This person cannot see into the future, so we do not know what will happen with this virus.  It is true that viruses tend to mutate from being more deadly to less deadly, but that is not necessarily always the case.   Coronaviruses produce less mutations than many other classes of virus, but making predictions is tricky.  Ebola had a mutation that made it more virulent and more deadly.   The same is true of the West Valley Nile Fever. 

Certainly anyone who has been around for a while has seen that the Influenza virus is capable of more deadly and virulent strains.  

 

Let's hope she is right but we have a ways to go to get through our current situation.  

 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/07/14/fact-check-viruses-can-mutate-become-more-deadly/7839167002/

 

I wonder, did she predict the Delta Strain would come along and scythe it’s way through populations?

 

Or is that the exception that proves the rule?!

 

 

 

 

Things we all don't know but future will tell us . If it gets more deadly , it will do so , and we will react , if it gets less deadly , our regulatrions will get looser , and if so will give more chance of the virus to survive .

Can there be a virus which is much more deadly and contagious also , im no scientist , so i think there is a chance. However in the survival of the virus , it means in the more direct way , slight variants are prob more contagious , but less deadly .

Recombination is the real issue there, more than mutations.

 

Coronaviruses are very good at recombination.

 

This ability to "exchange" genetic material with another... virus.

 

Source : https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/JVI.01394-09

23 hours ago, Chomper Higgot said:

I wonder, did she predict the Delta Strain would come along and scythe it’s way through populations?

 

Or is that the exception that proves the rule?!

 

 

 

 

I think the article is misleading.

The point she makes that is true is that the spike protein has to retain a geometric shape that allows it to interface with a cell receptor.

If mutations to the spike protein change the shape too much, then the virus can no longer bind to the cell and can't infect humans.