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Re:Covid-19 now exists in two forms, indicating it's already... by Zod666 on Thursday March 05, 2020 @09:35PM (#22500558)
If there are 111 different mutations, does that mean that a common vaccine is highly improbable/impossible?
Re:Covid-19 now exists in two forms, indicating it's already... by Cogito on Thursday March 05, 2020 @10:34PM (#22500788)
Not at all.

The effectiveness of a vaccine is related to the effectiveness of the bodies immune response to the virus.

As long as different mutations do not affect the effectiveness of a given immune response provided for by a vaccine, that vaccine will be effective against those mutations.

Mutations can affect many aspects of a disease, and often this means a different level of effectiveness of an immune response, but it really does depend on the specific mutation.

For now, there are no selection pressures on different strains from vaccines; it will be interesting to see what mutations become prevalent once testing of vaccines starts.

Re:Covid-19 now exists in two forms, indicating it's already... by sizzle on Friday March 06, 2020 @12:24PM (#22505400)
Why does it take so long to develop a deactivated vaccine version of the virus to teach our immune system what to attack?
Re:Covid-19 now exists in two forms, indicating it's already... by Cogito on Saturday March 07, 2020 @12:20AM (#22509911)
Safety. You have to understand what 'deactivated' means for this virus, and that people won't get significantly sick if you feed it to them. That takes time.
Re:Covid-19 now exists in two forms, indicating it's already... by johnisgood on Thursday March 05, 2020 @10:35PM (#22500794)
While this is not exactly a direct answer to your question, these pages may be helpful:

https://shotofprevention.com/2018/03/14/how-flu-strains-are-...

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/viruses/change.htm