Why New Variants will Target the Vaccinated

Nature is ruthless. The weak and infirm are always targeted by predators and parasites. Once a plant has been weakened by aphides, a fungus or some other pest, it soon gives in to other attacks. It wilts. Then it dies. An old or debilitated animal is soon identified by predators. A person with a weakened immune system is constantly sick with disease of various kinds. Only the strong and fit have a standing chance against the dangers of the world.

This is why new variants of the plague will target the vaccinated rather than the unvaccinated. Vaccinated people are all weakened to some extent. The body of the vaccinated is not as fit as it would have been without the foreign agent. Furthermore, modern vaccines introduce homogeneity into what is otherwise a diverse flora of immune systems. Once a virus variant emerges that can take advantage of this homogeneity, it will spread quickly throughout the vaccinated population while leaving the unvaccinated largely spared.

A virus that has become successful by exploiting the weakness and homogeneity of the vaccinated will become dominant. It outcompetes other variants due to its successful spreading through a large part of the population. It does not need to infect the unvaccinated in order to succeed. It can completely bypass the complexities inherent in healthy well functioning immune systems. Competing virus variants that emerge in the unvaccinated population will in this way be defeated.

The irony in this is that we will increasingly see virus variants that target the vaccinated. The more people take the vaccine, the more the unvaccinated get shielded from future virus variants.

To understand this, we need only to look at how computer-viruses spread. Such viruses always target the most common operating systems. The more obscure an operating system is, the less likely it is to be infected. The reason for this is that the weaknesses in obscure operating systems cannot be exploited in the same way that a mainstream operating system can be exploited. There's too few obscure individuals in the network to spread the virus. Computer viruses can only spread in a population of computers with identical or close to identical weaknesses.

This logic holds in nature as well. Homogeneity acts as a highway where pests can spread without resistance, especially in populations that have been weakened in some way. Diversity, on the other hand, acts as a shield. Especially if the diversity is rare. With normal well functioning immune systems becoming rarer by the day, their effectiveness increase. Unvaccinated people can look forward to fewer virus infections in the future, while the vaccinated have set themselves up as targets for new virus variants.

From the look of it, this is already happening. The future has arrived with the Delta variant which is more likely to cause serious illness and death in the vaccinated than the unvaccinated. Going forward, we're likely to see this distinction increase to the point where the vaccinated get ill in much larger relative numbers than the unvaccinated.

Jumping spider looking for prey

By Opoterser - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link