Why do some people think that mass COVID vaccination programs are responsible for creating COVID variants?

Folks like Sherri Tenpenny will likely never change their mind about vaccines, no matter what evidence they are given.
Folks like Sherri Tenpenny will likely never change their mind about vaccines, no matter what evidence they are given.

The usual suspects...

Mass Vaccination is Not Creating COVID Variants

Of course, it isn't our mass vaccination programs, but rather that so many people are still unvaccinated and unprotected that is allowing the SARS-CoV-2 virus to mutate, creating these variants.

But that doesn't keep some folks from blaming COVID vaccines...

I hope that Peter McCullough is a good cardiologist, because he seems to get a lot wrong when he talks about vaccines, variants, epidemiology, and infectious disease topics...
I hope that Peter McCullough is a good cardiologist, because he seems to get a lot wrong when he talks about vaccines, variants, epidemiology, and infectious disease topics...

Consider Peter McCullough, a cardiologist who has been pushing a cocktail approach to treating COVID that most experts say doesn't work.

"What's going on is the Delta variant. This is one of a sequence of variants that really has arisen as a result of mass vaccination."

Peter McCullough

In addition to pushing the idea that COVID vaccines are not effective, Peter McCullough says that the COVID vaccines are responsible for the variants we are seeing.

"And then a critical analysis by Niesen, and colleagues, from the Mayo clinic in Boston has shown that when a population gets to be more than 25% vaccinated, that's enough of an evolutionary pressure to allow one of these mutant forms to become the dominant strain. Vaccination is reducing the viral diversity and making a more compressed environment with fewer number of mutant strains and allows one to become more dominant. In the case of India, it was the use of the Sinovac vaccine that really prompted the emergence of the Delta variant. And now we are seeing Sinovac again as the stimulus for the Lamda variant out of Peru."

Peter McCullough

While Peter McCullough rarely seems to be right, it is easy to spot the problems with his theory.

For one thing, only about 12% of people in Peru are fully vaccinated. Far below the level for McCullough's "evolutionary pressure" from a vaccine.

And in India, when the Delta variant first appeared in December 2020, they had not yet started their COVID vaccination program! It wasn't until the following month, in January 2021, that India started using the Covishield and Covaxin COVID vaccines.

Need more evidence?

Consider that another SARS-CoV-2 variant, the Alpha variant, first appeared in the UK in September 2020. As you will likely remember, the COVID vaccination program in the UK didn't begin until three months later, in December 2020.

So, if COVID vaccines caused these variants, as Peter McCullough proposes, then why do they typically appear before vaccination programs ever begin?

"As long as the coronavirus spreads through the population, mutations will continue to happen."

New Variants of Coronavirus: What You Should Know

Of course, he is wrong.

It is not our mass vaccination programs, but rather large groups of unvaccinated people in which SARS-CoV-2 continues to spread, allowing it to mutate, that is responsible for the variants we are seeing.

"Current measures to reduce transmission – including frequent hand washing, wearing a mask, physical distancing, good ventilation and avoiding crowded places or closed settings – continue to work against new variants by reducing the amount of viral transmission and therefore also reducing opportunities for the virus to mutate."

The effects of virus variants on COVID-19 vaccines

Getting everyone vaccinated and protected is the way to stop the pandemic and stop these variants, at least it is if we can do it before they mutate enough to become resistant to our current COVID vaccines!

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