When multiple genetic mutations start showing up in infected individuals, it is called a variant.
Omicron
Delta
You asked:
In your opinion – Whats our window to get people vaccinated vs the new variant becoming dominant. Please correct me if I’m wrong – South African Variant not working so well with vaccines. UK Variant is working well with vaccines?
I replied:
Well, it depends what you mean by “people”. Most people in the USA are only talking about themselves, but as you can see by the names of the variants. We need to get 90% of the world population vaccinated. They don’t really know how effective the vaccines will be on the variants, but you are correct… it is believed the South African variant is more evasive and the vaccines are less effective. So, the timeline gets ugly quickly. Current estimates are 7 years for the world to be vaccinated. In 7 years, it is unlikely any of the vaccines will be effective against 7 years of variants. The good news is the mRNA are fairly easy to tweak. Moderna and Pfizer claim they will be able to make boosters for the variants. Probably need a booster every 3-6 months, as long as the variants don’t continue to become more transmissible. The more transmissible the variant the more mutant variants it spawns. In the short term, they believe the UK variant will be dominant in the USA by March.
I’m working on a better way to explain all of this. It’s called “To the nth Degree”. I’m not worried about a mutation. Nor, am I worried about a bunch of mutations ganging up to be a variant. Looking back, I wasn’t worried about variants squared… not even variants cubed. But, when you start talking variants to the nth degree… that’s a different story.
You added:
I think everyone is hoping for the best this summer but with the way the vaccine rollout has been combined with these new variants I feel as if everyone is going to be very disappointed. If we can just untie, mask up and do the right thing for 6 weeks we could tamper down the numbers enough to enjoy a nice summer. I just don’t see this happening.
I’m also trying to wrap my head around a time frame on getting the vaccine (everyone who wants it) vs these new variants taking control. It’s going to be a moot point sooner then later.
I responded:
You are 100% right on. We can not chase this virus with vaccines. We must stop it. As long as it is out of control due to community spread, vaccines will not help. In fact, I’m concerned we may create a vaccine resistant virus. Or, we may have already created a vaccine resistant virus — a zoonotic virus already known to be associated with bats, pangolins, humans, mink, dogs, cats… big cats… lions, tigers, even a puma. We need to remove ourselves from the nth degree.
“So we have a number of examples, around the planet, in which patients’ viruses suddenly have a whole mess of new mutations all at once,” says virologist Jeremy Luban at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. And other cases have likely gone undetected, he says.
“Laboratory experiments have shown that some of those mutations help the virus bypass detection by antibodies.”
The patient went on to get monoclonal antibodies. “Toward the very end of his life, he was treated with monoclonal antibodies, from Regeneron,” Li says. “And shortly thereafter, we saw evidence that suggested the virus was developing resistance or escaping from these antibodies as well.” — From Extraordinary Patient Offers Surprising Clues To Origins Of Coronavirus Variants
COVID variants in the State of Pennsylvania / 2-8-2021