Viruses love to mutate. And some viruses mutate more than others. The biggest challenge for our immune system and any vaccination strategy that uses it, are viral mutations.

So why did the polio vaccine work while most of the #COVID19 vaccines will not?

A short thread.

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The development of the polio vaccine was heralded as a major public health triumph. And it really was.

But did we just get lucky?

You see, polio has a higher mutation rate than HIV (which there's no current vaccine for). So why didn't polio escape vaccine?

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Because being good at mutating is one thing. And being able to out-mutate and escape vaccine is another. Being able to do both and still be a functional virus that can successfully infect a host is something altogether different.

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Researchers studying polio were puzzled as to why it wasn't mutating its way around the vaccine. That led some people to believe that it wasn't that polio couldn't escape vaccine but rather in doing so, it mutated itself into oblivion.

It stopped being able to work as well.

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So what's polio got to do with #COVID19?

Corona's been mutating from the very beginning (counter to what the experts predicted) and unlike polio it's been getting better, not worse, at infecting and killing.

What does this mean for our vaccine strategy?
It's bound to fail.

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