In Zvi’s most recent Covid-19 post, he puts the probability of a variant escaping mRNA vaccines and causing trouble in the US at most at 10%. I’m not sure I’m so optimistic.
One thing that gives reason to be optimistic, is that we have yet to see any variant that has substantial resistance to the vaccines, which might lead one to think that resistance just isn’t something that is likely to come up. However, on the other hand, the virus has had more than a year for more virulent strains to crop up while people were actively sheltering in place, and variants first came on the radar (at least for the population at large) around 9 months after the start of worldwide lockdowns, and a year after the virus was first noticed. In contrast, the vaccine has only been rolling out for half a year, and only come into large-scale contact with the virus for maybe half that time, let’s say a quarter of a year. It’s maybe not so surprising that a resistant variant hasn’t appeared yet.
Right now, there’s a fairly large surface area between non-resistant strains of Covid and vaccinated humans. Many vaccinated humans will be exposed to virus particles, which will for the most part be easily defended against by the immune system. However, if it’s possible for the virus to change in any way to reduce the immune response it faces, we will see this happen, and particularly in areas where there’s roughly half vaccinated people, half unvaccinated, such a variant will have at least a slight advantage over other variants, and will start to spread faster than non-resistant variants. Again, it’s taken a while for other variants to crop up, so it’s not much information that we haven’t seen this happen yet.
The faster we are able to get vaccines in most arms in all countries, the less likely this is to happen. If most humans worldwide are vaccinated 6 months from now, there likely won’t be much opportunity for a resistant variant to become prominent. But I don’t expect vaccines to roll out so effectively; I’ll be pleasantly surprised if they are.
There’s further the question of whether the US will be able to respond effectively quickly enough if such a variant arises. I’m very pessimistic about this, and if you’re not, you either haven’t been paying attention, or are overestimating the difference in effectiveness between the current administration vs the previous administration, or are more optimistic about our ability to learn from our mistakes (on an institutional level) than I am.
All in all, saying no more than a 10% chance that a resistant variant will arise, with the US government not responding quickly enough, seems far too optimistic to me. I’m currently around 55% that such a variant will arise, and that it will cause at least 75,000 deaths OR will prompt a lockdown of at least 30 days in at least 33 US states [edited to add: within the next 7 years].
In Zvi’s most recent Covid-19 post, he puts the probability of a variant escaping mRNA vaccines and causing trouble in the US at most at 10%. I’m not sure I’m so optimistic.
One thing that gives reason to be optimistic, is that we have yet to see any variant that has substantial resistance to the vaccines, which might lead one to think that resistance just isn’t something that is likely to come up. However, on the other hand, the virus has had more than a year for more virulent strains to crop up while people were actively sheltering in place, and variants first came on the radar (at least for the population at large) around 9 months after the start of worldwide lockdowns, and a year after the virus was first noticed. In contrast, the vaccine has only been rolling out for half a year, and only come into large-scale contact with the virus for maybe half that time, let’s say a quarter of a year. It’s maybe not so surprising that a resistant variant hasn’t appeared yet.
Right now, there’s a fairly large surface area between non-resistant strains of Covid and vaccinated humans. Many vaccinated humans will be exposed to virus particles, which will for the most part be easily defended against by the immune system. However, if it’s possible for the virus to change in any way to reduce the immune response it faces, we will see this happen, and particularly in areas where there’s roughly half vaccinated people, half unvaccinated, such a variant will have at least a slight advantage over other variants, and will start to spread faster than non-resistant variants. Again, it’s taken a while for other variants to crop up, so it’s not much information that we haven’t seen this happen yet.
The faster we are able to get vaccines in most arms in all countries, the less likely this is to happen. If most humans worldwide are vaccinated 6 months from now, there likely won’t be much opportunity for a resistant variant to become prominent. But I don’t expect vaccines to roll out so effectively; I’ll be pleasantly surprised if they are.
There’s further the question of whether the US will be able to respond effectively quickly enough if such a variant arises. I’m very pessimistic about this, and if you’re not, you either haven’t been paying attention, or are overestimating the difference in effectiveness between the current administration vs the previous administration, or are more optimistic about our ability to learn from our mistakes (on an institutional level) than I am.
All in all, saying no more than a 10% chance that a resistant variant will arise, with the US government not responding quickly enough, seems far too optimistic to me. I’m currently around 55% that such a variant will arise, and that it will cause at least 75,000 deaths OR will prompt a lockdown of at least 30 days in at least 33 US states [edited to add: within the next 7 years].