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> and now do little for the latest variant.

Actually, the current vaccines still seem to be doing a pretty good job, even with the latest variant (and there are always more variants). While none of the vaccines have ever claimed to prevent you catching covid 100%, they have prevented 90%+ against catching the disease and have reduced the severity of the disease in those who have caught it. It’s why emergency rooms around the world are largely filled with unvaccinated people, and most of the ones in hospital who go on to die are the unvaccinated.

Think of it as giving your body a natural head start to fighting off the infection. In the end, it’s your immune system that saves you, not the vaccine — but the vaccine stacks the deck significantly in your favour for a full recovery.

Of course the virus is mutating, and it’s possible that the next one will escape the mRNA vaccines that currently exist due to the different shape of the protein; but we have essentially developed a whole new science of how to create vaccines quickly from a known protein spike, so it will be a matter of months from discovery of an escaping strain to a protective vaccine for it.

In any case, the approaches used here are valid for more than just covid; an exciting HIV vaccine is undergoing trials at the moment And there’s potential to treat other kinds of viral diseases in this way.