How worrying is the new Covid variant?

From all of the experts I'm following, I'm hearing that it will take a couple of weeks to determine if this variant is able to evade vaccines or if it is more severe. What they do know now is that it has a lot of mutations and highly increased transmissibility. Sounds like governments and public health professionals should be on alert, but the average person should focus on getting vaxxed and wearing masks.

Worst case scenario (immune elusion):

BioNTech/Pfizer already said that they need 90-100 days to put together an entirely new vaccine.

The infrastructure for distribution is already in place given that the 1st vaccination round is not over yet and people who had the first round are now getting boosters.

The Merck/Pfizer pill should not be affected by mutations given that it's oriented at the effects. They are both approved in the US and are about to be approved in Europe, the US purchased 10M doses in advance.

Masks , temp check, vaccination status check are already commonplace.

THIS IS NOT US GOING BACK TO MARCH 2020. EVEN IN THE WORST CASE SCENARIO.

I would not throw away those masks just yet [1]

They're working on it [2]

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03552-w [2] https://www.who.int/news/item/26-11-2021-classification-of-o...

The prediction market Kalshi [0] is showing a ~50% chance that the CDC will designate a variant of high consequence [1] by March, up from a ~20% chance 36 hours ago.

A biostatistician friend of mine pointed me to this relatively optimistic Twitter thread [2], though this response [3] is much more pessimistic.

[0] https://kalshi.com/markets/VOHC-001

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/variants/variant-i...

[2] https://twitter.com/jbloom_lab/status/1464005676842184705

[3] https://twitter.com/theodora_nyc/status/1464257411582148608

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29344274

It's sad to say but we should have just let this thing rip in March 2020. We would have a lot of death I know, but we would have been back to normal by June. Variants would have never been a thing and it just becomes a cold.

I'll come back to this message in 10 years to see how history looks at this situation.

The issue is that worse-case scenario is really bad. If this a) has an R0 > 9, b) can evade vaccines, and c) breaks containment, I really can't imagine what will happen. Like I can't comprehend what will happen because it's so bad.

First of all, how would we lockdown? Completely ignoring any mental health effects, I don't see how lockdowns are sustainable, because of the economic implications and how they affect education. How the fuck are we going to produce goods and raise children without (minimal, masked) in-person interaction?

But the virus seems so transmissible, that anything below a full lockdown will almost useless. The virus could be so transmissible that even if people only go shopping and to work, and wear masks, it will still spread to everyone. Even if it's not that transmissible, I don't see how governments can institute anything near full lockdowns without something like martial law, because people are not going to want to lock down. So with an R0 > 9 it's going to spread fast.

Then if the virus is remotely dangerous, hospitals will be significantly more overwhelmed. Considering that hospitals had to triage from the last two outbreaks - I can't imagine how many people would die.

Fortunately, the worst-case scenario is still very unlikely. The virus does seem to be very transmissible. But it also seems like vaccines still prevent hospitalization and death, and the virus itself might be less deadly. The probability for any mutation to completely break resistance from a vaccine / prior infections is very, very low.

Lastly, there's still a chance we can contain and eradicate this variant. That's why scientists are holding emergency meetings, countries are rapidly instituting travel bans and infected people / regions will probably be quarantined. We have hindsight that we didn't in 2020, and we even have technology to do fast testing and contact tracing. So there's a chance that your life may not be infected by this variant at all.

I'm reading everything you're reading, and my takeaway is: it's simply too early to be sure. The best thing to do is roughly what's happening - take some sensible precautions while we figure out what's going on.

My back-of-the-hand barely-estimated odds are something like:

50% chance it's similar to, a little more prevalent than Delta, with similar immune escape. A slightly worse version of the current problem. 25% chance it turns out to be way more dangerous than Delta for some reason (requires a new vaccine, more deadly, way way more infectious etc). 25% chance it ends up being no big deal/not worse than delta/less deadly/little to no immune escape

But this is based on how these things have seemed to shake out over the last two years, not any sure science. Don't rely on me.

> The news coverage I'm reading

That's the real problem here. Turning off the TV and stopping reading the news, crafted precisely to generate anxiety, is the solution. It will probably be a nothingburger, but the media need something to divert from the "mysterious" heart attacks. Remember, two years ago covid was presented as a very deadly virus and it turned out to be only dangerous for a very specific and small segment of the population (70+ yo and obese people).

Most concerning part to me is the threat of it evading the mRNA vaccines which use spike protein sequences.

One continued ray of hope: Paxlovid, the upcoming Pfizer drug, is designed against a viral protease and so we would not expect this variant to decrease this drug’s efficacy.

There's always gonna be room in the 8 billion people on earth for a variant to come around, just like this. We need a combination of fast vaccine updates for the elderly/etc, and also just increasing collective health to get some herd immunity.

As a layman I see it as FUD. Scientists will draw conclusions not journalists.

What concerning is that some of the articles tell about many reinfections. Natural immunity is said to be stronger as the immune system is trained on the whole virus, not just the spike protein. So guess what.

Not the slightest bit

The news has a financial incentive to keep you anxious - just look at how many websites you've visited on this bit of anxiety alone.

You aren't going to find a well-informed answer on a forum for software engineers.

Given that the CDC lied to the US & World about the proper approach to self-protection (wearing masks), they certainly do not have my trust.

I'll take my chances. I will not trust the Federal government's dishonest "experts".