SARS-CoV-2 Thoughts

Disclaimer : This is an opinion and a prediction that includes as many sources and the best logic possible. Do not base your personal health decisions on it. Plain Language Introduction SARS-CoV-2 is a novel virus with its closest relatives in bats, emerging in the human population at some point in late 2019. As a newly introduced pathogen, there was only one variant at first. Now we have thousands of strains that have been identified, with countless individual virus particles with countless mutations. The genetic diversity of SARS-CoV-2 is much greater than scientists thought it would be by this point in time. Recombination and Evolution That's because we failed to notice that SARS-CoV-2 relies heavily on recombination for evolution. With recombination, in a host that is infected with two strains of the virus, the virus can effectively create a child from two parent virions(a virion is a single virus) through a process called strand switching. When creating a new vi

There are five fascinating things about our choice to use booster shots. I will try to explain each, but unfortunately, some introduction is necessary first. COVID Vaccines: How Good are They Really? Global governments have bet the farm on vaccination eradicating (remember when we used to talk about "herd immunity"?) or greatly prolonging the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 as a widespread pathogen to such a great extent that they're deploying vaccine passports for routine, daily activities , demonstrably not a great idea almost regardless what you want to achieve. It was immediately apparent that SARS-CoV-2 was very contagious. Later studies found it to have had a base initial R0 of around 5.7, compared to around 1.3 for the average influenza strain. That meant that achieving an effective vaccine was always going to be extremely hard: a 40% effective flu vaccine could bring Reff close to or below 1, but a 40% effective SARS-CoV-2 vaccine would come nowhere close. The

First, the good news: it looks like global Reff for SARS-CoV-2 is approaching 1 . However, what lies next? Do we see sharp case declines like India and Indonesia did after Delta passed, will we see a lingering high level of cases like South Africa , or something else entirely? Second, the bad news: it's unlikely to stay at or below 1 for long. That could always have been anticipated due to the high R0 and evolutionary rates of SARS-CoV-2 . https://origin-coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/new-cases Unlike India and Indonesia, heavily vaccinated countries like the UK are demonstrating protracted Delta waves, which raises independent questions about whether vaccination prevents cases or just delays them. The US is as well. Still, Reff is trending towards 1 here, albeit at a very high level of cases. We can expect it to hover there as it moves north with the changing seasons. A brand new letter to the editor in the NEJM depicts this perfectly. You will see that infection h