With all the bad news that abounds, it is important to keep sight of some of the good news. A few days or weeks back (I have lost a normal sense of time as I am sure you have also!) word came out of China that the coronavirus virus was mutating. One version that was the milder one and a second version that was more serious and responsible for some of the deaths, particularly in the less at-risk individuals. If that was the case, it meant two things. First a single vaccine would not knock out all versions of the virus.  Second, it would mean we were chasing a constantly changing target as each new mutation developed.

The good news this week is that the coronavirus is not mutating significantly as it circulates through the human population. That relative stability suggests the virus is less likely to become more or less dangerous as it spreads and this represents very encouraging news for researchers hoping to create a long-lasting vaccine that would be a single vaccine, rather than a new vaccine every year like the flu vaccine.  It would be more like the measles or chickenpox vaccines — something that would likely confer immunity for a long time.

And this is good news as we plan for the way back out of this crisis because it seems unlikely that we will see flare-ups of multiple strains of the virus. In other words, our recovery may not be delayed by new strains of the virus. I urge you to highlight this in your community as it is important that we share good news as well as bad news in order to be a trusted source of information. 

Here is a news story from NPR on the topic that spells this all out in more detail than you have ever wanted to know about viruses.