the vaccines work great against earlier mutations of the CV, like Alpha and Delta and early Omnicron, but virus gonna virus and the Omnicron Kraken (XBB.1.5) has mutated (think shapeshifting) the areas that acquired immunity and vaccine immunity antibodies normally latch on to. It’s harder for your antibodies to ‘see’ it. XBB.1.5 is most prevalent in the northeast US right now, about 40-70% of cases.
(From the Guardian:)
“The variant has an unusual mutation known as F486P that is helping it spread. The mutation changes part of the Covid virus that many antibodies from vaccination or previous infection target. The change makes the antibodies less effective at neutralising the virus. The parent variant, XBB, has a different mutation at the same position. This makes XBB good at evading immune defences too, but the mutation comes with a cost: the virus cannot latch on to human cells as effectively, so the virus is actually less infectious. The XBB.1.5 offshoot suffers no such handicap: the F486P mutation allows it to evade antibodies without compromising how well it attaches to human cells. In fact, it binds to them even more strongly,,,”
Had they let the virus virus and pushed the various useful therapies we’d be long past it by now. The not vaccines vaccines only helped to introduce mutation chaos as it was pointed out that they would. They were and are all downside. No upside.