Originally posted by aslyfox I respectfully disagree to some extent
there are folks who have not been given the choice of receiving the vaccines or declining the vaccines
true enough that is dependent on where those folks live
and true enough there are folks who have decided, for what ever reasons, to refuse the vaccines
and decline to protect themselves, their loved ones and the rest of us by ignoring things that can help out on the spread of the virus
variants, as I understand the process, occur naturally,
what happens after a variant or mutated virus occurs is affected by protection protocals and how effective current vaccines are against the variant/mutated virus
Variants are a bit of bad code, so, when the virus is replicated, it's possible with every replication that the DNA does not replicate perfectly, hence the mutation. The more hosts who get infected, the more chance for mutations to occur. In time, the thing may well mutate to a weaker disease, or it may go the other way and mutate to a more dangerous version. The less people that get infected, the less variants there will be, but also less chance for the virus to become either more infectious or less infectious or more dangerous or less dangerous.
So, it's a bit of a two-edged sword. But, fact remains that the vaccines protect best against the version of the diseased they were designed for. So, in that respect, it would make sense to get vaccinated and slow the spread of the virus. At the same time, it will likely be making people ill for the next several hundred years, so lets hope it mutates to become no worse than the other main corona viruses that strike us every winter - the common cold.
Not disagreeing, but pointing out that our current best defense is for those people that can be vaccinated to be vaccinated.