If A Virus Is Like A Pattern-Matching Algorithm...

If a virus is like a pattern-matching AI algorithm, then by inoculating a huge swath of the population with the exact same vaccine we are effectively feeding it the training data it needs to learn how to become more infectious. The mutations that survive the training will be those that weren't stopped by the vaccine-prompted immune response. They'll have "learned" how to sidestep any previous vaccination.

So you'd need some new vaccines to fight the survivors. But if you then universally inoculate with those, too, the surviving mutations would now be resistant to two vaccines. Each time you escalate the war, you would be directing the evolution of ever more resistant strains.

If this is indeed an accurate way to describe how natural selection works, then clearly mandating the same vaccines for everyone is monumentally risky. It would be much safer to save the vaccines for people at risk. It would be much better for the vast majority of people who can survive the virus naturally to do so, in the hopes of diversifying the immune responses.

It would be much better to focus on treatment, on keeping people out of actual danger, rather than to focus on preventing infection.

I myself am very much in the at-risk population, and my bout with COVID-19 made me very uncomfortable – not the worst flu I've ever experienced, but not a walk in the park either. The virus strain that hunted me down all the way from Wuhan, China to Fairfax, VA went right past any defenses I had from previous vaccinations, that's for sure. One hears that the vaccinations help lessen the severity, but my symptoms seemed to track right down the middle, so I'm not so sure. They were certainly wrong about the vaccines preventing infection. It wouldn't surprise me they would be wrong about its effects, too.

But I'm glad I've got some natural immunity to add to the group, now. Hopefully if some strain of this beast comes near me and mine again, my body will spring to action and I can help beat it back.

Photo Credit: "Pattern Matching" by k.landerholm is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0