The Washington Post is officially concerned about the new variant that just dropped. No paywall on the article.
But BA.2.86 stands out in the omicron family tree because of how much it has morphed. It has more than 30 mutations on its spike protein, the part of the virus that pierces through the cell and that vaccines train the body to fend off. Experts believe the antibodies forged through battles with earlier variants will have a difficult time recognizing this new foe.
“This is a radical change of the virus like what happened with omicron, which caught a lot of people defenseless,” said Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute. “Even if they had a vaccine or prior infection, it could still get into them and infect them again or for the first time. We are facing that again.”
The biggest unknown is whether the BA.2.86 will be transmissible enough to cause a surge. A variant adept at evading immunity would not take off in a population if it does not spread efficiently and multiply.
“It is still a possibility we either see this variant spread very widely as happened with the original omicron,” said Jesse Bloom, a computational biologist who monitors coronavirus variants at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, “or it doesn’t end up spreading very widely and we continue to have these XBB variants.”
This one might fizzle out, or it might not. That we are finding it in multple countries already is a bad sign, but the important thing is that we do nothing.
The CDC has been winding down surveillance of covid this year and saying "we have the tools" and to not be alarmed by this, it's to be expected and all part of the plan, etc, but this new variant was spotted by people volunteering their time and positing their findings on twitter, not the CDC.
This new variant was spotted by people volunteering their time and positing their findings on twitter, not the CDC.
Jesus.
in a sane country, people would be being tried for criminal negligence over this
Nothing will... You know the thing.
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All I can do is tell jokes or I'll go postal.
The slow trickle of data on BA.2.86 is part of a larger, dramatic plummet in COVID-19 surveillance and reporting in general. Last October, WHO's technical lead for COVID-19, Maria Van Kerkhove, noted, "The number of sequences that the world and our expert networks are evaluating has dropped by more than 90 percent since the start of the year. That limits our ability to really track each of these [omicron subvariants]."
The genetic surveillance landscape has eroded further since then. In a press conference Friday morning, Van Kerkhnove highlighted that even basic reporting is failing. Of 234 countries and territories, WHO is now only getting case count data from 103 countries. Only 54 countries are reporting deaths, just 19 are reporting hospitalization rates, and 17 are reporting data on intensive care utilization.
Global COVID monitoring is crashing as BA.2.86 variant raises alarm
Ashish K. Jha, MD, MPH@ashishkjha
Agree. EG.5 was totally predictable
Even BA.2.86, which is a little more out of left field (antigenically), is not a surprise
Key is to track these emerging variants with strong surveillance
And make sure our countermeasures (tests, treatments, vaccines) continue to work
This is literally our plan to fight covid now.
Show
It would be fedposting if I said 1/10th of what I wanted to about Jha. What an evil, grasping, greedy fucker. Like all the rest.
Key is... And make sure...
Trump was the biggest gift in the world to the lib power structure. The lib base would never admit it - but just like Trump's hogs - they too are willing to believe lies and propaganda as long as the messenger is a lib. Jha is a perfect messenger. Even his voice is soporific. The lib power structure learned they can copy Trump as long as they are polite and mild mannered.
They say one thing but do something else and if they are ever challenged (which is super-rare in lib media) - they just lie and double down. Deaths by meteorite are insanely rare. I think there's something like 5 verified in all of recorded history. If Jha got hit by meteorite I would stop being an atheist and become a practicing Jew. God are you there? Are you listening?
We have the tools, but we sure as hell won't use them.
I really hate these articles because I have little control over whether or not I get COVID. I can’t work from home. Masks are of limited efficacy unless others are wearing them too and there is a less than zero chance the yokels where I live will ever mask again even if some super contagious hybrid of HIV and Ebola was making the rounds.
On top of getting all the vaccines I can get, wearing n95s at work and in public has kept me from catching anything for about two years.
There are also nasal sprays available that probably help. There's not a lot of studies on them, but what is available show they can reduce your chance of catching covid by 60-80%. It may end up being better or worse than that with more data, but using them while masking with a well fitted n95 should help your odds a bit. If covid does break through that, it should be a lesser viral load, and the sprays are supposed to help you clear the virus faster. The nasal passage and throat are where the current virus strains are replicating. I've been switching between covixyl and betadine cold spray.
Some people are also using mouthwash that contains cpc, as it's supposed to kill viruses. I think it's something lab researches have been doing just as an extra layer of protection, and I'm not sure there's much data to back up the practice.
