>> The immune system doesn't lead to variants, randomness + time does.

I disagree. It has been shown over many years of research that viral mutations may be driven by both antigenic drift as well as selective immunological pressures, with the question being more the degree to which these factors influence mutation in different viral species.

Not to present an argument against vaccination, rather an argument against making blanket statements that fail to accurately represent the current state of collective knowledge on the subject, to wit: We do not know with any certainty the degree to which either of these factors drive SARS-CoV-2 mutations. A naked statement that the un-vaccinated population drives the mutation rate of this virus is nothing more than speculation; issues surrounding a field of study as incredibly complex as this may not ever be definitively put to bed through analysis of (conflicting?) study outcomes- let alone through arguments made in the commons of popular science.

I don't argue that emerging SARS-CoV-2 mutations are driven more by one factor or the other, I argue that we do not know the degree to which mutations are driven by 'random' antigenic drift vs selective pressures. Unfortunately, the issue has been politicized to the point where study outcomes that suggest dominance of one over the other are likely to be attacked or even ignored, regardless of the strength of study.

Citations? Efforts to find evidence here prioritized time invested over strength- this may not represent the best arguments out there, however it took only a scant few moments to gather, and points to a much larger body of literature supporting the position that both antigenic drift and selective immunological pressures drive viral mutations (SARS-CoV-2 being no exception) and that we do not know the degree to which each is a factor... and therefore stating OR implying that the un-vaccinated population drives the viral mutation rate in this pandemic is inaccurate. Once again- we simply do not know.

CF

"Given that the antibody response to the spike protein is so focused, could mutations in these restricted sequences lead to a less efficacious vaccine, if the human immune response is specific to the vaccine sequence? These mutations might be driven by antigenic drift, or by selection, either during natural infection or due to the vaccine itself. When a virus is grown under the selective pressure of a single monoclonal antibody that targets a single epitope on a viral protein, mutations in that protein sequence will lead to the loss of neutralisation, and the generation of escape mutants. This sequence of events has been shown in the laboratory for polio, measles, and respiratory syncytial virus,7 and in 2020 for SARS-CoV-2.8"

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2...

McCarthy, K. R. et al. Recurrent deletions in the SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoprotein drive antibody escape. Science 371, 1139–1142 (2021).

Plante, J. A. et al. The variant Gambit: COVID’s next move. Cell Host Microbe 29, 508–515 (2021).

Ravindra Gupta, Steven Kemp, William Harvey et al. Recurrent independent emergence and transmission of SARS-CoV-2 Spike amino acidH69/V70 deletions, PREPRINT (Version 1) available at Research Square https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-136937/v1(2021).