Ashfordian wrote:I never said the Covid vaccine was harmful.
Really? Then the point you are making escapes me.
Ashfordian wrote:I said that over deploying increases the risk a vaccine resistant mutations occurs.
Yes. You said this. You also said, or at least implied, that while you knew this 'truth' the "experts" didn't. I failed to agree with you, I still do.
Ashfordian wrote:The text you posted yesterday rightly confirms that vaccine resistance mutations occur less frequently but a huge contribution to the reason for this is that other vaccines prevent infection and/or prevent transmission.
But the point made in that extract (prior to COVID-19 I believe) was nothing like your suggestion.
As I see it the point being made in the text I posted was, crudely put:
You have say 1000 ill people, all suffering from the same pathogen. You give them all an identical drug - say penicillin, as the pathogen is a bacterium. The drug directly targets the pathogen, in an identical manner in all 1000 suffering patients. Mostly the pathogen is killed and they recover. Some pathogens, in some patients, survive - perhaps through natural, evolving mutations, even while patients are being treated. They have evolved to dodge that particular chemical agent in penicillin. They are penicillin resistant and can then spread.
Now, you have 1000 non ill, non patients. There is a new infectious pathogen about. You give all 1000 non ill people a vaccine against the pathogen. The vaccine does not target any (hopefully) non present pathogen, it 'targets' the persons immune system - or rather each of the individual persons immune systems targets the vaccine's active ingredient, each in there own individual manner. Every person has a different reaction to the vaccine, some get quite unwell, some (such as myself) seem unaffected in any way. How each person's immune system actually reacts is likely different (I don't know) in every case - assuming none of the 1000 are identical twins. How this leaves each of the 1000 people, if they should in future meet the pathogen in the wild, is unknown and unpredictable. It won't be the same in every case. Maybe none of the 1000 people will ever encounter the pathogen, maybe none of them will be infected, maybe they will be. Some of their immune systems will now be very effective against the pathogen, some less so. Will a new variant of the pathogen evolve? Quite possibly - they do with COVID-19. Will it have evolved because of the vaccine? Perhaps, I don't know. But if it does evolve rapidly it will anyway, vaccine or no vaccine. Anyway, if say one person in the 1000 does have a vaccine resistant strain in then - that is an immune system response resistant variant - can they pass it on to somebody else? Quite possibly, where it will meet a different person with a different immune system (whether vaccinated or not), the new pathogen might survive and thrive there, it might not.
Ashfordian wrote:The Covid vaccine does neither and is in effect a proactive drug treatment(therapeutic) as all it does is assist with fighting the infection.
That is, more or less what any vaccine does - the job is actually done by the person's own immune system, not the vaccine. How effective any vaccine is perhaps depends on the pathogen and its capacity to change, as well as the immune system of the individual - just as with non vaccinated people, really. Smallpox was so slow and AFAIK had very limited co-hosts in the wild that it was eventually eradicated. Other pathogens differ.
Ashfordian wrote:Hence increasing deployment into people who don't require this assistance increases the risk to the vulnerable because the risk of a vaccine resistant mutation occurring increases. This is really quite simple.
Well, you say it is... So, are you a real "
expert"? Or just someone who 'knows better' than the experts?
Ashfordian wrote:And this goes back to one of my original points, you would think 'experts' would know this!
You would. Well, I would! Don't know about you. Anyway, I will always favour the opinions of informed experts rather than 'opinions' from random people on bulletin boards. Guess that's just me.
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Vaccine resistance evolves less readily than drug resistance (Fig. 1). Elsewhere, we have argued that two key differences between drugs and vaccines explain why (6)."