Media fueling panic over new Coronavirus variant originating in South Africa.

 

A social distancing sign in the United Kingdom. Reuters. 

A new variant of the Coronavirus is causing major concern in the United Kingdom. Reuters. The new variant has not been given a popular name but is called  B.1.1.529. The new variant is majorly mutated on the spike protein, raising concerns that vaccines will not be effective against it. The variant was discovered in South Africa and has spread to the neighboring African countries, leading to a travel ban from the United Kingdom. However, it is unclear if the variant is more deadly or spreads easier than the original or Delta variants.  

My Comment:

Here we go again. As expected new variants are evolving and it looks like this one is the one the media is going to focus on. This was always going to happen but it remains to be seen if the new variant is more dangerous or infectious than the currently dominant Delta variant. 

 Indeed, there is reason to believe that new variants will be less dangerous than the original virus. That is what usually happens with viruses. They become easier to spread but much less deadly. So this new variant would be gamechanger if it is less deadly than Delta variant. 

The media is panicking over the possibility of the virus being resistant to the vaccines and it seems pretty obvious that will happen. Indeed, that is probably the reason why we are having so many problems with Delta. That variant is not totally suppressed by the vaccines and this new mutant type could be even worse, possibly. 

This should have been totally expected given the common knowledge of viral mutation and the fact that the vaccines were developed for the original virus. That virus is pretty much extinct now and has been for awhile. None of our vaccines are going to be effective against this virus because it has a different spike protein. 

The real fear is that the new variant might trigger original antigenic sin. In short, the immune system has trouble dealing with viral threats that they have dealt with before if the new virus is similar but distinct. The immune system gets locked into responding to the old virus and will not be able to deal with the new virus. However, it is unclear if this will happen with this variant or not at it seems like the threat has not materialized with earlier coronavirus variants. 

The limited effect of vaccines on new variants and the threat of OAS means I think we should transition away from our current vaccines. It's been clear for awhile that we will not vaccinate our way out of this mess, at least not with the current vaccines. It's insane to me that treatments are not getting more coverage and funding and even worse, we aren't trying to update the current vaccines or create new ones. Given the danger of new variants, including this new one from South Africa, we should change course.