More than once in these missives (and other musing elsewhere), I've opined that any vaccine, whether mRNA or adenovector or protein, that targets the Spike of Covid(s) is doomed to fail in time. A better target is necessary. It's just a matter of how much, if by 'fail' we agree that a proper vaccine is neutralizing. The approved vaccines are neutralizing... against wild-type Covid-19. They were formulated to that specific Spike, so they stop transmission so long as Covid-19 doesn't breed variants. The key to eliminating Covid, in the way smallpox and measles have been, is finding a stable, yet still neutralizing, target that isn't Spike. And, of course, getting said vaccine into arms. We might have, and this is just my fever dream, contained Covid if the Red staters had gotten shots in the first place. Covid had half a country's worth of morons to breed inside. No wonder it's won so far.
Of course, we soon learned that Covid-19 doesn't stand still, unlike measles which is frequently offered as the archetype of successful vaccination. Well,
confirmation.
Companies are working on vaccines that would target more stable regions of the virus, including the stem of the spike protein, that doesn't appear to mutate as much. That might create more durable immunity that could stand up to to the shape-shifting of the viruses' variants.
[my emphasis]
The report doesn't say how it is that targeting Stem, or any location other than Spike, would be neutralizing. There was good reason to target Spike, after all.
Of course, finding a target that is both stable and neutralizing will be no mean feat. If at all.
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