@Mooreupp -- It entirely depends on how many passes through the mess this thing is maintained for AND whether we get sterilizing immunity.

If there is sterilizing immunity then the pathway to this problem does not exist. I don't think we'll know that for another year, however, and some, none or all of the vaccines may produce it -- we do not know.

Assuming at least some of them don't then the question becomes how prevalent they are and for how long that situation persists. If some produce sterilizing immunity then the others can be forced off the market -- if people demand it. Mutation goes on all the time, but for it to bite you a "bad" mutation has to be advantaged either once and it's a really bad one, or several times and it's a progressively bad one. If the vaccine becomes akin to a flu shot where some number of people get it every year but others say "aw fuck that" then the odds are pretty low.

But if it turns into a fearfest for the foreseeable future with people getting stabbed left and right every year then the odds go up quite a bit, because this is a time-dependent risk.

I can't really quantify this except to say that our experience with animal husbandry says that given enough time and non-sterilizing vaccines it is extremely likely it will happen to some extent.

Over the next year? Low odds -- one chance in a thousand, or perhaps one chance in 100? Maybe not even that.

But over decades if non-sterilizing vaccines continue to be used? A SARS-style lethality mutation becomes odds-on if you give it enough time.

The problem isn't the odds -- they're not very high. It's the consequence if it happens.

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