This is a strange virus. It mutates rapidly, think BA.5, and it reinfects, whatever that means, frequently. The antiviral really does not work, but apparently no one wants to say that. BA.5 infections can lead to BA.5 reinfections. But is it a new infection or just a restart? There are so many unanswered questions.
The answers all lie in the electrical binding properties of two proteins: the spike and the ACE2 receptor. The latter does not change in humans. The former mutates a lot since the virus is a single stranded RNA virus and it tends to infect immunocompromised people allowing for many mutations.
However, and this is critical, as the spike mutates it becomes less and less able to bind to ACE2. When that happens that mutation becomes benign, never infecting. Theoretically.
Unless, and this is also critical, the original design was such that mutations were delimited to only non-ACE2 binding sites. Can this have been achieved. Possibly, especially in a human engineered virus.
It may take decades to sort this out as the virus continues to mutate. New evasive antibody changes but no ACE2 receptor changes. Yet no one seems to recognize this effect! Alas it is out Government wizards at work.
Now as a follow on thought, perhaps the COVID virus forms granulomas, allowing the virus to persist and return again. We see that in a variety of diseases, perhaps here as well.
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