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Mutant Coronaviruses Threaten To Undermine Vaccines

“Essentially, the huge number of cumulative infections worldwide provides a large number of opportunities for viruses to acquire beneficial mutations and then spread preferentially,” said Thomas Friedrich, a vaccine expert at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “This is kind of like playing an evolutionary slot machine. One individual slot may be unlikely to hit the jackpot — but if you are able to play millions of slots in parallel, hitting the jackpot on a few becomes much more likely.”