Tag: variant

bookmark_borderOmicron and Other COVID Variants / the Long Term Pandemic

Posted on by admin

COVID and Cats:
A scientist friend called me last night… wanted to make sure I stocked up on enough masks and supplies for the next round featuring Omicron. We got to talking about severity of variants and what the most likely scenarios are:
1) the virus stays for a prolonged period in an unvaccinated immune compromised individual
2) the virus jumps back into animals and mutates before jumping back into humans
His theory is cats are a reservoir for SARS-CoV-2. And, that cats are spreading COVID to mice and deer… and back into humans. Some studies have shown 20-50% of cats that belong to owners that have had COVID develop COVID. Studies have also found that cats can transmit the virus to other cats. The risk is especially great for pets that share a bed with their owner.

Some other things we discussed:
* the pandemic is going to go on for years
* there is no natural immunity to Omicron
* there may be no immunity from vaccines to Omicron
* the severity of Omicron will take some time to determine… since we don’t know how much immunity / less severe symptoms vaccines may offer, yet. There is some possibility that prior infection may offer some protection to severity, but that is unlikely.
* N95 masks and social distancing offer the best protection to all variants of COVID
* we do not fully understand the long term effects of COVID. Until we do, avoid contracting the virus… and probably after we do understand, it will become clear the reduction in life expectancy and quality of life

bookmark_borderOmicron: What We Know About the COVID-19 Variant

Posted on by admin

We’re starting to find out more about Omicron:
1)”Previous infection used to protect against Delta but now with Omicron that doesn’t seem to be the case,” said Anne von Gottberg, microbiologist at South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases.”
2) risk of breakthrough vaccination is also much higher. Out of 600 fully vaccinated travelers from South Africa, 61 tested positive for COVID. 16 of those were Omicron.
3) a much higher percentage of 20-30 years are being hospitalized
4) an alarming percentage of children under 2 are being hospitalized.
5) the Omicron variant has become dominant in South Africa. Cases of COVID have gone from 200/day, to 400, to 1,000 to 2,000, to 4,000, to 8,000, to over 11,000/day in as many days.
Remember, when you hear of cases being “mild”, that means mild for COVID (eg not hospitalized). All of the cases I’ve studied have been symptomatic individuals that are fully vaccinated.

Omicron Update December 9, 2021
Omicron Update:
* Pfizer says the booster offers protection
* Pfizer says 4th dose may be required
* South Africa says Pfizer offers 1/40th the protection as Delta
* Reinfection is 3 times more likely than with Delta
* South Africa cases are up 255% in a week
* 4x’s more transmissible than Delta
* UK cases could exceed 1 million by the end of this month
* typical seasonal viruses’ severity is up… suggesting recovery from COVID results in a compromised immune system. T cells may lose effectiveness against any pathogen

“In other words, Omicron is spreading in highly immune populations as quickly as the original virus did in populations with no immunity at all. If this holds and is left uncontrolled, a big Omicron wave lies ahead—bigger than we would have expected with Delta. Cases were already surging ahead of winter. The U.S. already had a too-low vaccination rate. And now Omicron threatens to eat away at the immunity we thought we had.”

bookmark_borderThe Recombination Event: SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19

Posted on by admin

When the COVID-19 genome changes, it is called a mutation. When the mutations combine, it is called a variant. When variants combine, it is called a recombination.

The general consensus is SARS-CoV-2 originated from a recombination event. An animal variant combines with a human variant and jumps to humans. When a virus jumps form animals to humans, it is called zoonotic. It is feared recombination events could make SARTS-CoV-2 endemic jumping back and forth between animals and humans.

“Two variants of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that causes covid-19 have combined their genomes to form a heavily mutated hybrid version of the virus. The “recombination” event was discovered in a virus sample in California, provoking warnings that we may be poised to enter a new phase of the pandemic.

The hybrid virus is the result of recombination of the highly transmissible B.1.1.7 variant discovered in the UK and the B.1.429 variant that originated in California and which may be responsible for a recent wave of cases in Los Angeles because it carries a mutation making it resistant to some antibodies,” as reported in NewScientist.

“We may be getting to the point when this is happening at appreciable rates,” says Sergei Pond at Temple University in Pennsylvania, who keeps an eye out for recombinants by comparing thousands of genome sequences uploaded to databases. He says there is still no evidence of widespread recombination, but that “coronaviruses all recombine, so it’s a question of when, not if”.