Natural immunity targets far more locations than just the spike. Whereas the Pfizer vaccine only targets that spike.
So it presents a scenario with crippled natural immunity vs the full capabilities of the mRNA vaccine.
Which means in this "super mutant" scenario, the mRNA will always need natural immunity be effective, but natural immunity will only need vaccination if both the spike is mutated as described, and if non-spike targets are also mutated to be resistant.
Which is far more unlikely than the already unlikely "super mutant" spike.
> And their conclusion is that even then a good dose of vaccine allows the body to eliminate it.
That's not the same thing I got from the conclusion, it sounded like you needed to have a previous infection + the vaccine to clear it. What am I missing?
If the cell is infected by multiple viruses, sometimes there's crossover where the instructions for one get mixed with the instructions for another. So, yes, multiple mutations can end up being combined of they infect a single individual.
It actually doesn't even have to be the same virus. This is how many zoonotic diseases develop -- take a piece of a virus that can attack humans and combine it with a different virus that doesn't attack humans.
Mutant ABC is the target. First Mutant A becomes the predominant strain. There might be some Mutant AB or AC in the population, but the controlling factor is currently Mutant A.
Eventually, Mutant A therapies/vaccines are introduced and Mutant A starts to lose its hold. Mutant AB isn't treated by the new treatments (or they're less effective, or Mutant AB goes undetected longer, etc.). Mutant AB becomes king of the hill. Repeat with Mutant ABC.
All this would assume that there's no Mutant B or Mutant BC or Mutant AC that increases in prevalence. All the mutations would have to build up over time or occur simultaneously by coincidence (or you could get a combination).
It's just basic evolution - organism follows the niche. We have a hard time recognizing it because generation turnover is so rapid. Instead of taking ~30 years for 2.5 offspring, it's a few days for millions of offspring.
I don't think mode of reproduction matters much when we're talking at this scale. While the virus creates stable clones across generations, I would think they're more susceptible to mutations and any viable mutation is quickly amplified exponentially. Just like the old high school bio experiment to demonstrate antibiotic resistance, only your respiratory mucus membranes are the medium. Those bacteria reproduced asexually.
> By aggregating VOC-associated and antibody-selected spike substitutions into a single polymutant spike protein, we show that 20 naturally occurring mutations
Aggregating ... into a polymutant spike. That means they put all 20 mutations together, each of them carefully selected from variants of concern or antibody attachment sites, into one single spike protein. Basically they created the most crazy supermutant resistent spike they could. The chance of which would be astronomically small in nature. And their conclusion is that even then a good dose of vaccine allows the body to eliminate it.