I think how we relate to this mostly comes down to the properties of the variants, current and future, and whether we trust people to be able to resume tracking microcovids/wearing masks/being cautious again, if it turns out they need to.
I took the CDC strain prevalence data and organized them into a spreadsheet. Note that all of the prevalence-percentages are as of a sample collection period ending March 27, so to get the current prevalence, you have to extrapolate from growth rates. Strain P.1 (informally known as the “Brazil strain”) stands out; this strain made headlines for spreading through a population that had previously had a 75% attack rate, and it has a 2.5x growth rate between the last pair of two-week intervals sampled. Naively extrapolating based on this growth rate, the prevalence in the US will have grown from 1.4% to ~10%, and it will be the dominant strain in less than a month. It is also reported to be more severe.
I have been checking ~daily for data on vaccine effectiveness on this strain. So far there is lab data on this, but no human trial data.
The way these things usually work is, mutation reduces vaccine effectiveness, but only partially. Being fully vaccinated, I think I’m pretty fine with acting normally given the existence of P.1 for now (though I still wear my Versaflo when I visit indoor retail).
What most concerns me is not so much the current variants, as the next ones. Roughly speaking, my model is: The rate of mutation is roughly proportional to the worldwide rate of infections, and the strength and type of selection depends on the vaccines that people had. The worldwide prevalence of COVID is currently very high, and there are a lot of vaccinated and unvaccinated people in close contact with each other. So we’re currently selecting fairly hard for vaccine evasion, but have only started doing so recently. So if vaccine-resistant strains are coming, they will probably come soon. I think we will probably notice reasonably quickly; there’s a lot of sequencing happening, especially in the US.
We also have the recent experience of B.1.351 (the South Africa variant) mostly evading the AstraZeneca vaccine, at least for mild-to-moderate cases. There’s reason to think the mRNA vaccines produce a stronger immune response, which might make them harder to evolve around, and that boosters against future variants will be coming.
Some of the variants have evolved increased severity, but none are reported to have evolved decreased severity. I suspect that there might be a common mechanism, where if the spike protein evolves to be able to enter cells more effectively, this increases both transmissibility and severity together. I’d be interested in someone with more knowledge about virology commenting on this.
Overall, I think fully-vaccinated people in the US currently should not be cowering in their homes, but that it would be a potentially large mistake to disengage and stop paying attention to COVID. The current situation is analogous to one where a snowstorm has just ended, the roads are partially salted, and we’re discussing whether people still need seatbelts. And… yes, obviously? A lot of people went overboard, but the low-hanging fruit of disease prevention is obviously still worth it, and was worth it before the pandemic started. People should still wear masks in public, ventilate their spaces, take vitamin D, and check the news from time to time.
Thanks for this detailed comment. I do think the conclusions of the OP apply for now and one should act on them only so long as a vaccine-evading variant hasn’t become prominent enough to affect overall vaccine protection, and one should be on the lookout for it happening. (I may soon create a mailing list for people to get updates.)
After a few hours of hunting, I ended up finding that GISAID seems to be the central place for getting data on variant data. I couldn’t get access since I don’t have an institutional account, however outbreak.info both has an open-access API and pretty good dashboards for tracking variants.
I’ll have more of a look at them today.
I think now is a bit more like a [potentially brief] Spring and people ought to enjoy the weather before things get frosty again. Though I might update upon looking at the data.
I think how we relate to this mostly comes down to the properties of the variants, current and future, and whether we trust people to be able to resume tracking microcovids/wearing masks/being cautious again, if it turns out they need to.
I took the CDC strain prevalence data and organized them into a spreadsheet. Note that all of the prevalence-percentages are as of a sample collection period ending March 27, so to get the current prevalence, you have to extrapolate from growth rates. Strain P.1 (informally known as the “Brazil strain”) stands out; this strain made headlines for spreading through a population that had previously had a 75% attack rate, and it has a 2.5x growth rate between the last pair of two-week intervals sampled. Naively extrapolating based on this growth rate, the prevalence in the US will have grown from 1.4% to ~10%, and it will be the dominant strain in less than a month. It is also reported to be more severe.
I have been checking ~daily for data on vaccine effectiveness on this strain. So far there is lab data on this, but no human trial data.
The way these things usually work is, mutation reduces vaccine effectiveness, but only partially. Being fully vaccinated, I think I’m pretty fine with acting normally given the existence of P.1 for now (though I still wear my Versaflo when I visit indoor retail).
What most concerns me is not so much the current variants, as the next ones. Roughly speaking, my model is: The rate of mutation is roughly proportional to the worldwide rate of infections, and the strength and type of selection depends on the vaccines that people had. The worldwide prevalence of COVID is currently very high, and there are a lot of vaccinated and unvaccinated people in close contact with each other. So we’re currently selecting fairly hard for vaccine evasion, but have only started doing so recently. So if vaccine-resistant strains are coming, they will probably come soon. I think we will probably notice reasonably quickly; there’s a lot of sequencing happening, especially in the US.
We also have the recent experience of B.1.351 (the South Africa variant) mostly evading the AstraZeneca vaccine, at least for mild-to-moderate cases. There’s reason to think the mRNA vaccines produce a stronger immune response, which might make them harder to evolve around, and that boosters against future variants will be coming.
Some of the variants have evolved increased severity, but none are reported to have evolved decreased severity. I suspect that there might be a common mechanism, where if the spike protein evolves to be able to enter cells more effectively, this increases both transmissibility and severity together. I’d be interested in someone with more knowledge about virology commenting on this.
Overall, I think fully-vaccinated people in the US currently should not be cowering in their homes, but that it would be a potentially large mistake to disengage and stop paying attention to COVID. The current situation is analogous to one where a snowstorm has just ended, the roads are partially salted, and we’re discussing whether people still need seatbelts. And… yes, obviously? A lot of people went overboard, but the low-hanging fruit of disease prevention is obviously still worth it, and was worth it before the pandemic started. People should still wear masks in public, ventilate their spaces, take vitamin D, and check the news from time to time.
Thanks for this detailed comment. I do think the conclusions of the OP apply for now and one should act on them only so long as a vaccine-evading variant hasn’t become prominent enough to affect overall vaccine protection, and one should be on the lookout for it happening. (I may soon create a mailing list for people to get updates.)
After a few hours of hunting, I ended up finding that GISAID seems to be the central place for getting data on variant data. I couldn’t get access since I don’t have an institutional account, however outbreak.info both has an open-access API and pretty good dashboards for tracking variants.
I’ll have more of a look at them today.
I think now is a bit more like a [potentially brief] Spring and people ought to enjoy the weather before things get frosty again. Though I might update upon looking at the data.