IBM invents new anti-viral which may be effective against all viruses

I am currently taking some classes in virology so I'll try and answer best I can. If anything I say is wrong anyone feel free to correct me so I can learn.

I believe the short answer would be no. Chicken pox symptoms come from the infection being viremic and disseminating through the body, this article sounds like the molecule should either stop initial infection in the upper respiratory tract before it starts or deactivate virus in the blood or stop them from reproducing in cells before they go viremic or form the pox rash. It could make you more susceptible if say you need a booster of this vaccine molecule every so often, your immune system may depend on the molecule as opposed to manufacturing its own antibodies like it does when you get infected now. So if you missed a booster there could be a window of opportunity to become symptomatic.This could be useful though in that chicken pox is also a latent infection that lies dormant in your dorsal root ganglia neurons and when it is reactivated can cause shingles. But, if this molecule is making viral replication unattainable in cells due to its basicity, there's a possibility it could stop that as well. I think chichen pox is a hard example to look at though because most people do only become symptomatic once, maybe twice if they get shingles later in life, so it could be different for other viruses. I don't think there would be a worry about more symptoms, that's probably higher risk using current vaccine methods which can cause symptoms in some patients. I think the worry instead would be making our immune system dependent on a molecule in case that molecule isn't permanent and then our immune system hasn't learned through trial by fire and is vulnerable if that molecule becomes depleted.

/r/Futurology Thread Parent Link - fastcompany.com