'The best of all worlds': How a new variant like omicron could help diminish pandemic

[Quixote1818]

Snip: The fast spread of omicron has many concerned. However, scientists say the spread of a new variant doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be more problematic.

“In theory, if it turns out this is highly transmissible but less virulent, less aggressive, that might actually be a good thing,” said TriHealth Dr. Stephen Blatt.

Blatt is an infectious disease expert. He said, if a variant is more contagious, it could replace the more deadly variant and make people less sick.

“That’s what some people have been predicting, that eventually, this virus would become what we call endemic,” Blatt said. “That would be the best of all worlds if it didn’t cause severe disease, maybe we wouldn’t have to worry about it as much.”

It’s far too early to tell if omicron is that variant.

More: https://www.wlwt.com/article/the-best-of-all-worlds-how-a-new-variant-like-omicron-could-help-diminish-pandemic/38426581#

[localroger]

1. This is something I have been thinking about re the vaccines

People are worried that new variants might be vaccine resistant, but the vaccines are based on the spike protein which the virus needs in order to get into a cell. A mutation sufficient to make the vaccine ineffective would likely make the virus ineffective too because that's why they targeted the spike protein; without that doing its major function, the virus goes nowhere.

[LisaL]

2. Mutations in a spike protein doesn't mean virus doesn't have a spike protein anymore.

Virus still has a spike protein, it has mutated residues in it.
Virus can still be highly effective in infecting cells but antibodies might not recognize it.

[localroger]

3. Point being, for the same reason antibodies might not recognize it

...it might not be as effective at gaining entry into the cell, altering its contagion pattern. This in fact seems to be the case with omicron based on what little has been released so far. Which would be good, because a disease that is highly contagious but not very lethal is something we can tolerate and live with, as we do with the modern flu variants and the common cold. A disease which is less contagious but kills 1% of the people it does manage to infect is a catastrophe.

[IbogaProject]

4. I'm getting J&J booster

I wanted the J&J all along, but it wasn't available when I was scheduling when it was withdrawn for awhile.

Why I wanted it was it uses the full rather than a subset of the original spike protein.

So I'm going with it now as a mismatched booster. Caution that combo has an ever so slightly elevated side effect risk.