The Atlantic Why did this coronavirus change faster than scientists expected? In the early, uncertain days of the coronavirus pandemic, scientists delivered one comforting pronouncement: The virus that caused COVID mutates rather slowly. If that remained true, the virus would not change much to become more dangerous soon, and any vaccine could provide years of durable protection.
What actually happened was that SARS-CoV-2 began mutating quickly, first to be more transmissible and then to evade our immunity, causing breakthrough infections and reinfections. Five years and an alphanumeric soup of variants later, most of us have gotten COVID at least once. The vaccine is still being updated to match new circulating variants. And the virus itself is still changing.
In truth, scientists were both right and…