Scary stuff!! Read it and weep…or get angry.
Unvaccinated people are 'variant factories,' infectious diseases expert says - CNN
Unvaccinated people do more than merely risk their own health. They're also a risk to everyone if they become infected with coronavirus, infectious disease specialists say.
That's because
the only source of new coronavirus variants is the body of an infected person.
"Unvaccinated people are potential variant factories," Dr. William Schaffner, a professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, told CNN Friday.
"The more unvaccinated people there are, the more opportunities for the virus to multiply," Schaffner said.
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Every time we see the virus circulating in the population, particularly a population that has pockets of immune people, vaccinated people, and pockets of unvaccinated people, you have a situation where the virus can probe," Pekosz said.
If a virus tries to infect someone with immunity, it may fail, or it may succeed and cause a mild or asymptomatic infection. In that case, it will replicate in response to the pressure from a primed immune system.
Like a bank robber whose picture is on wanted posters everywhere, the virus that succeeds will be the virus that makes a random change that makes it look less visible to the immune system.
Those populations of unvaccinated people give the virus the change not only to spread, but to change.
"All it takes is one mutation in one person," said Dr. Philip Landrigan, a pediatrician and immunologist at Boston College.
BBM
