The UK government decision to administer the two jabs twelve weeks apart is madness, and has many virologists alarmed:
Paul Bieniasz, @PaulBieniasz, 30 Dec 2020:
– I can’t be the only one who is unexcited by the prospect of a purportedly more transmissible SARS-CoV-2 variant, possibly with mutations conferring partial antibody resistance, propagating in a UK population that is ‘semi-immunized’ for 12 weeks. Experiments in viral evolution…
– Precisely! When our goal is to select resistant viruses in laboratory experiments, we maximize viral population size and diversity, and then titrate in selection pressure. If I was designing a scenario to select vaccine-resistant SARS-CoV-2, I’d do what they are doing in the UK