Novel Way To Quickly Mutate Dangerous Viruses

Medical News Today was a bit kinder with it's headline of Novel Way To Protect Against All Flu:

"A novel way of slowing down the rate at which a flu virus infects the body could well become an effective protector from all types of influenza, even pandemics, say researchers from the University of Warwick, UK. Animal studies have shown this procedure protects against a wide range of influenza viruses.

The researchers took away some genetic material from a flu virus, making other viruses less effective at spreading rapidly in the body. This slowing down gave the body time to develop an immune response and fight it off.

Current vaccines stimulate the body's immune system so that antibodies are produced. These antibodies stick to the surface of the virus and destroy it. The problem with the flu virus is that its surface is changing all the time. As soon as you have a vaccine a new strain appears with a different surface, against which the vaccine is useless.

The research team took away 80% of the virus' genetic material from one of 8 individual segments of single stranded RNA, rendering it harmless. As soon as another flu virus enters the body, this harmless one reproduces, slowing the rate of spread of the new virus - in other words, it competes with the new virus. This gives the body time to develop an effective immune response to the new virus. It completely prevents flu symptoms developing."

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Am I the only one seeing the forest for the trees here? Okay, let's break it down. We have two viruses competing against eachother - one basically castrated and the other a regular virus.

1) Castrated Virus A - mutates to compete with Alpha Male Virus B
2) Alpha Male Virus B has to compete with the growth of Eunuchitis, thus mutating to become faster (in the short term being slowed).

Meanwhile Virus A, Castratoencephalitis, is mutating all the while to "become a real boy again".

How is this not a system for making already strong viruses stronger, and making entirely new strains of viruses out of weak ones that we have way of knowing how they'll end up?

Thus the products of this "novel way," as far as I can tell, would be:

1) Stronger regular viruses
2) Entirely new and bizarre viruses

Good lord let's just stick with our fancy pants protein-inhibitor vaccines before we careen off into new virus land, m'kay?!?

Maybe Dr. Nigel Dimmock will happen to google his own name and then let us know how wrong I am about this whole matter.