Like many others here, I am concerned about the influence that large corporations have on public health policy and personal health decisions.
Is it fair to legally require these corporations to disclose conflicts of interest (eg investment in vaccines, or manufacturers thereof) given decisions of this magnitude?
Can they be held accountable if scientific consensus changes, such that it in hindsight it becomes obvious that forcing vaccinated people to return to densely populated indoor buildings further jeopardized public health in general? To be more concrete with respect to how such a situation may unfold, please see this peer reviewed paper published in April 2021 "Risk of rapid evolutionary escape from biomedical interventions targeting SARS-CoV-2 spike protein"[1].
Some key highlights from [1]:
- "Evidence from multiple experimental studies showing that single RBD point mutations can lead to resistance to neutralizing convalescent plasma from multiple donors suggests that specific single mutants may be able to evade spike-targeting vaccinal immunity in many individuals and rapidly lead to spread of vaccine-resistant SARS-CoV-2."
- "Our work suggests that it is likely that standing genetic variation alone has already produced a substantial population of viruses with single and double nucleotide changes that confer nAb resistance. These variants will establish quickly in the population under selection pressure. In fact, there is already a precedent for this behavior, as one such selective sweep occurred early on in the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic when the D614G mutation rose to nearly 80% frequency in under 6 months [33]."
- "The speed at which nAb resistance develops in the population increases substantially as the number of infected individuals increases, suggesting that complementary strategies to prevent SARS-CoV-2 transmission that exert specific pressure on other proteins (e.g., antiviral prophylactics) or that do not exert a specific selective pressure on the virus (e.g., high-efficiency air filtration, masking, ultraviolet air purification) are key to reducing the risk of immune escape. In this context, vaccines that do not provide sterilizing immunity (and therefore continue to permit transmission) will lead to the buildup of large standing populations of virus, greatly increasing the risk of immune escape."
- "The juxtaposition of a relatively constrained immune response against the high degree of evolutionary plasticity of the spike RBD (visible even under neutral drift conditions) suggests that SARS-CoV-2 has extensive capacity to evolve to evade nAbs targeting a small number of antigenic regions. This capacity will negatively impact SARS-CoV-2 immunity in humans, whether active (vaccinal or natural) or passive (nAb prophylactics)."
Is it fair to legally require these corporations to disclose conflicts of interest (eg investment in vaccines, or manufacturers thereof) given decisions of this magnitude?
Can they be held accountable if scientific consensus changes, such that it in hindsight it becomes obvious that forcing vaccinated people to return to densely populated indoor buildings further jeopardized public health in general? To be more concrete with respect to how such a situation may unfold, please see this peer reviewed paper published in April 2021 "Risk of rapid evolutionary escape from biomedical interventions targeting SARS-CoV-2 spike protein"[1].
Some key highlights from [1]:
- "Evidence from multiple experimental studies showing that single RBD point mutations can lead to resistance to neutralizing convalescent plasma from multiple donors suggests that specific single mutants may be able to evade spike-targeting vaccinal immunity in many individuals and rapidly lead to spread of vaccine-resistant SARS-CoV-2."
- "Our work suggests that it is likely that standing genetic variation alone has already produced a substantial population of viruses with single and double nucleotide changes that confer nAb resistance. These variants will establish quickly in the population under selection pressure. In fact, there is already a precedent for this behavior, as one such selective sweep occurred early on in the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic when the D614G mutation rose to nearly 80% frequency in under 6 months [33]."
- "The speed at which nAb resistance develops in the population increases substantially as the number of infected individuals increases, suggesting that complementary strategies to prevent SARS-CoV-2 transmission that exert specific pressure on other proteins (e.g., antiviral prophylactics) or that do not exert a specific selective pressure on the virus (e.g., high-efficiency air filtration, masking, ultraviolet air purification) are key to reducing the risk of immune escape. In this context, vaccines that do not provide sterilizing immunity (and therefore continue to permit transmission) will lead to the buildup of large standing populations of virus, greatly increasing the risk of immune escape."
- "The juxtaposition of a relatively constrained immune response against the high degree of evolutionary plasticity of the spike RBD (visible even under neutral drift conditions) suggests that SARS-CoV-2 has extensive capacity to evolve to evade nAbs targeting a small number of antigenic regions. This capacity will negatively impact SARS-CoV-2 immunity in humans, whether active (vaccinal or natural) or passive (nAb prophylactics)."
[1] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...