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.
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.