Leigh Van Valen was an interesting person – maybe even a rebel – ahead of his time even; upset…
with journal page charges (which by the way is a funny system that non-scientists can not comprehend) he decided to make his our own journal – Evolution Theory… he also cracked it with the “National Science Foundation for not funding his work, reducing him to theoretical work”; funding systems and bodies needs it’s special series of articles – basically it’s shit J.
Anyway, the Red Queen Hypothesis is a theory of co-evolution; without going into the intricacies – the hypothesis might be pertinent to the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 in its quest to “survive” in its human (us) host. We have already seen elements of the Black Queen mode of evolution in coronaviruses where rearrangement and in cases loss of open reading frames alters the pathological features of the virus. The Red and Black Queen hypotheses are intriguing and would be very interesting to map features with the evolution of SARS-CoV-2; complicated stuff.
To simplify the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 has already yielded the well-known delta variant which now predominates globally, and responsible for driving the third major global wave of COVID-19. Luckily, the vaccine are only somewhat less effective against the delta variant compared to previous iterations of the virus. The available vaccines definitely protect from severe COVID-19 disease and correctly there is a global push to vaccinate as many people possible as quickly as possible.
However, we now have a situation where large parts of the population are vaccinated. Although we have less severely sick people, the problem is that we have a large “reservoir” of people who can still get infected acting as a sort of incubator for viral replication. Viral replication we know leads to mutations and given the enormous numbers we are dealing with, with time a vaccine-resistant variant IMO is almost an inevitability.
Already there is a “mu” variant lurking however, it appears this particular variant can not out compete the delta variant… but “mu” is more resistant to neutralization and on the road to a vaccine-resistant variant.
Definitely interesting times ahead and I don’t think, even with the remarkable vaccination effort which progressing at impressive rates, that we have seen the backside of COVID-19 just yet!
Until next time …