Coronavirus spreads. But don't panic! (topical thread)

[mordant]

It appears that the Army, via Walter Reed Medical Center, is developing a Covid vaccine that is designed to handle any future mutations.

It's unclear from the article when it will be available, and is still in human testing.

https://www.defenseone.com/technology/20...ts/360089/

The article doesn't quite say this although the headline seems to imply it. It would be nigh impossible mathematically to make a Covid vaccine that is designed to handle any future mutations. Even if it were possible, why wasn't that done in the first place?

Is there a limit to how much the coronavirus can mutate? | Live Science

[W]e can't begin to predict all of the possible mutations the virus could undergo, virologists told Live Science. The number of possible genetic mutations is greater than all the atoms in the visible universe, said Vincent Racaniello, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Columbia University in New York City. 

Vaccine research is already evolving with the virus and will continue to evolve. But releasing a vaccine that will handle any mutations down the road? Why? Many mutations turn out to be harmless to its human hosts. 

Robust surveillance can help scientists scan for changes in the virus's genome through random sampling of the infected population. Once they identify potentially important mutations — for example based on where the changes appear in the genome — they can plug those mutations into a computer model of the spike protein interacting with the ACE2 receptor to make predictions on how the variant will behave. But to ultimately understand how the mutation changed the behavior of the virus, they have to do experiments on the virus or proteins, Moore said.

Yeah the click-bait-y headline, the lack of specifics on the tech, the fact it has not been followed in the media plus that it's a military initiative doesn't make me particularly optimistic that it's some kind of game-changer. It was just an out-of-left-field realization that there's another technology in the works, much less that the military is behind it.

I'd guess the impetus is to protect troops better so they can provide the common defense even if people are dying in the streets?? I guess time will tell.