Who is Racaniello to say? He wrote the book on viruses. Literally. A coauthor of the text, "Principles of Virology,” Racaniello has been researching viruses like polio since the 1970s, and started his own lab in the early 1980s...

"The narrative is screwed up in a way,” says Vincent Racaniello, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University. For one, he says, there is only one known strain of the novel coronavirus -- the original one, SARS-CoV-2, first discovered in Wuhan. And, two, there's no evidence so far of a variant that can meaningfully evade vaccines, though there are several variants out there...

While Racaniello appreciates the threat of COVID-19, he believes people have been too narrowly focused on how antibodies respond against the coronavirus’ spike protein – and how some variants have appeared to limit the effectiveness of these antibodies in blocking infection. But that’s not the whole story, he says...

I am not worried at all that this virus is going to out-evolve vaccines. People have been looking at it the wrong way. People have been looking at antibodies. People say, "ah, the variants are less susceptible to antibodies. But, you know what? They are ignoring T cells. It turns out, none of the variants have changes that would impact the ability of the T cells to kill an infected cell...

I just saw an article today that showed that the U.K. variant ... made no difference in the outbreak in the U.K. It made no difference. The people who know, they are not worrying that the vaccines are going to be compromised by a variant. That’s what I can say with certainty.

TheStreet: And for there to be an actual new strain, as opposed to just these variants, it would have to be significantly different, right?

Racaniello: That’s right. It would have to have some substantial biological difference. Just think, there is still just one strain of H.I.V., despite infecting tens of millions of people for 40 years. So, this has been a really bad dialogue."

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