Creationist mode: 
For devotees of Creationism's intelligent [sic] designer, this finding by an Australian research group should come as no surprise. The experience of the coronavirus pandemic their beloved malevolence inflicted on humanity starting in late 2019, is that just as we seem to be getting to grips with one variant, along comes another even more infectious version.
The Sydney University researchers have found that these later versions, or variants, tend to be less affected by the antibodies our immune systems produce to the earlier variants, and, fortunately, to a lesser degree by those produced by the vaccines designed for those earlier variants. The designer is clearly deeply involved in an arms race with both human medical science and the immune system it supposedly designed to protect us from the viruses it creates to harm us.
Creationist mode: 
Quite why it is having an arms race with itself is anyone's guess, but Creationists have defined it as supremely intelligent, so they must assume this is a hallmark of high intelligence! Cult dogma dictates that this can't be attributed to a natural process like evolution, so intelligent [sic] design is the only option available to Creationists, many of who seem to lack the capacity to work out why normal people find this so risible - which might be related to the reason they became Creationists in the first place.
Of course, to anyone who understands how evolution works, this was entirely predictable and presents medical science with a challenge - how to design vaccines which will also work against future variants, or design production techniques which can quickly switch to new variants as they are detected for annual boosters, like we currently have to do with annual flu jabs.
From the Sydney University News release:
The good news is that the antibodies produced by the vaccines appear to be long-lasting and to have a broader range of effectiveness across the emerging new strains than those acquired in response to infection, which appear to be too highly targeted on the variant that triggered them. It looks like the result of medical science are proving to be superior to the results produced by what Creationist's believe is their intelligent [sic] designer's method, i.e. making the victim sick first and being fortunate enough to survive and ending up with an inferior product so being vulnerable still to another infection.We can learn a great deal from these people who were infected in the first wave in Australia as they were infected with the same variant that our current vaccines are based on.Australian scientists researching how our immune system responds to COVID-19 have revealed that those infected by early variants in 2020 produced sustained antibodies, however, these antibodies are not as effective against contemporary variants of the virus. The research is one of the world’s most comprehensive studies of the immune response against COVID-19 infection. It suggests vaccination is more effective than the body’s natural immune response following infection and shows the need to invest in new vaccine designs to keep pace with emerging COVID variants.
While the approved vaccines are showing good responses, our study highlights the importance of continued vaccine development, especially taking into account the differences in variants.
Fabienne Brilot, Lead author, Associate Professor Sydney University, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
Published today in PLOS Medicine, the study was made possible by a partnership between the University of Sydney, Kids Research, Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network,What this work has shown us is that current observations about vaccines show they offer a much broader protection against COVID-19 and its variants than the body’s natural immune response following infection, which is usually only protective against the variant of the virus that the person was infected with. We, therefore, should not rely on the body’s natural immune response to control this pandemic, but rather the broadly protective vaccines that are available.the Kirby Institute at UNSW Sydney, Australian Red Cross Lifeblood, St Vincent’s Hospital and NSW Health Pathology, as well as other local and international collaborators.
Stuart Turville, Co-senior author Associate Professor
Kirby Institute The University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia
The team analysed the serum of 233 individuals diagnosed with COVID-19 over 7 months and uncovered that the level of immunity over time is dependent on disease severity and the viral variant. They show that antibodies developed during the first wave had reduced effectiveness against six variants, ranging from those observed in the second wave in Australia through to three variants of concern that have driven the global pandemic in the UK, Brazil and South Africa...
Neutralising antibodies are part of our immune system’s frontline arsenal that is triggered during infection and vaccination. Their job is to shield cells that are usually the target of a pathogen (such as the SARS-CoV-2 virus which causes the COVID-19 disease) from being infected. The level of neutralising antibody response can be a defining feature of how effectively our body fights off illness.
What makes this study stand out is the level and depth of analysis to neutralising antibody levels in people recovering from COVID infection over time, including comparison of infection recovering from different viral variants.Key findings
Fiona Tea, First co-author
Postdoctoral fellow
Kids Neuroscience Centre
Children’s Hospital, Westmead, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- SARS-CoV-2 antibody responses are sustained for up to seven months post-infection.
- The immune response remained stable in some individuals, and while it decreased in others, no individual showed a negative response during the seven-month period.
- Levels of virus-neutralising antibodies were associated with COVID-19 severity.
- Antibodies generated after early infection displayed a significantly reduced antibody binding and neutralisation potency to globally emerging viral variants.
Method
10 COVID-19 strains and variants of concern/interest were investigated, including:**Note naming conventions updated to reflect World Health Organisation classifications.
- First known classified SARS-CoV-2 strain (Wuhan -1 D614)
- Alpha (B.1.1.7, United Kingdom)
- Beta (B.1.351, South Africa)
- Gamma (P1, Brazilian)
- Zeta (P2, Brazilian)
The researchers used a comprehensive suite of assays that measured:
- The longevity and type of antibody response against Spike from various variants over time in serum of COVID-19 diagnosed individuals.
- Neutralisation of infectious SARS-CoV-2 over time, by infecting cell lines that had ACE2 on its surface (which SARS-CoV-2 binds and targets on the cell to begin infection) with a particle designed to mimic a version of the SARS-CoV-2 virus particle.
The groups findings are published, open access, in PLOS Medicine:
AbstractPerhaps the most important lesson in all of this is the vital importance of getting a large majority of the world's population vaccinated as quickly as possible to cut down on the rates of transmission of this virus and the opportunities for it to evolve new variants in unprotected victims which can then be passed on to vaccinated individuals to be refined further by natural selection to evolve variant which can evade the antibodies. Cutting down the global viral population to as small a size as possible, is the quickest and most effective way to reduce the probability of new and more deadly strains emerging.
The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) antibody neutralization response and its evasion by emerging viral variants and variant of concern (VOC) are unknown, but critical to understand reinfection risk and breakthrough infection following vaccination. Antibody immunoreactivity against SARS-CoV-2 antigens and Spike variants, inhibition of Spike-driven virus–cell fusion, and infectious SARS-CoV-2 neutralization were characterized in 807 serial samples from 233 reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR)–confirmed Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) individuals with detailed demographics and followed up to 7 months. A broad and sustained polyantigenic immunoreactivity against SARS-CoV-2 Spike, Membrane, and Nucleocapsid proteins, along with high viral neutralization, was associated with COVID-19 severity. A subgroup of “high responders” maintained high neutralizing responses over time, representing ideal convalescent plasma donors. Antibodies generated against SARS-CoV-2 during the first COVID-19 wave had reduced immunoreactivity and neutralization potency to emerging Spike variants and VOC. Accurate monitoring of SARS-CoV-2 antibody responses would be essential for selection of optimal responders and vaccine monitoring and design.
Tea F, Ospina Stella A, Aggarwal A, Ross Darley D, Pilli D, Vitale D, et al. (2021)
SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing antibodies: Longevity, breadth, and evasion by emerging viral variants.
PLoS Med 18(7): e1003656. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1003656
Copyright: © 2021 The authors. Published by PLOS
Open access
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0)
To see how quickly a new variant can spread through a population, see my animation of the daily new cases in the UK and how quickly the δ-variant spread; just as we had reduced the rate of infection to very low levels in most parts of the UK.
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