system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
If the coronavirus keeps mutating to evade our vaccines, like the South African mutation, and we keep on updating vaccines to protect against the new variants, would the virus ever “run out” of new mutations to try?

Just thinking of the worst case scenario where every time we create a new vaccine the coronavirus mutates again to get around it. Is the number of possible mutations that could affect vaccine response limited in any way?
gpt
Influenza is effectively doing this. It's constantly mutating. Every year, vaccines are adapted in an attempt to catch the latest mutation. Problem is the latest mutation can be quicker than our efforts leading to larger outbreaks of influenza once every couple of years.