At this point in the Covid-19 pandemic, you’re surely tired of hearing about a “new variant” of the coronavirus. We’ve got some bad news.
The SARS-CoV-2 virus is going to keep evolving, and that means that different versions of the virus will keep emerging, become dominant, and then get outpaced by a different variant. Part of this has to do with what’s called “immune escape,” or “immune evasion.”
That’s not unique to this coronavirus, of course. Other viruses that we live with are regularly changing as well — they just don’t get nearly the attention this virus has been getting, or get dubbed with Greek letters.
To learn more about how the virus evades our immune defenses:
https://www.statnews.com/2022/08/04/covid-has-settled-into-a-persistent-pattern-and-remains-damaging-it-may-not-change-anytime-
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Viral evolution 101: Why the coronavirus has changed as it has, and what it means going forward
