Soft Reboot?

Reassuring nosies have been coming out of official sources to the effect that Omicron will not 'reset' the SARS-Cov-2 pandemic. 

To a certain extent that is inevitably true. But hold on. The early signs are that the new variant bypasses the two main vaccines used in certain countries (such as the US), even the three-dosers, and re-infects people that have had covid already. 

So on some levels it does need to be (pre-)considered as a new-ish pathogen. 

The key issue now will be disease severity. Anything equivalent to or worse than Delta will be bad news. Less severe disease might give governments the wriggle room they need to fix the mRNA vaccines by Spring. It may also help get us to where we need to go in terms of endemic, non-pandemic covid. 

The mRNA vaccine tech was exciting and new and does offer concrete possibilities for tackling endemic infectious diseases, but we might have to admit that in the rush to deploy it against the more urgent threat, we neglected to consider how pandemic conditions would expose some of its inherent weaknesses — such as only targeting small sections of the spike protein. (17 in the case of Pfizer, just 11 in the case of Moderna.)

A virus in full Ghengis Khan expansion mode would be enjoying just the right conditions to mutate over and over again and it would only be a matter of time before that part of the vaccines' targeting became compromised. 

It does seem that those who have availed themselves of jabs built upon a more old fashioned antibody arousal system — AZ, J&J, Sputnik, Sinocrap — may be more in a position to consider Omicron as a minor bump in the road.

It currently takes a subset of available PCR tests plus a chunk of time to establish whether any given positive test result was triggered by Omicron. This data then needs to be cross-referenced against vaccination and infection histories before we can fully understand the new situation. The UK — mostly AZ and with a large number of prior infections — could be the canary in the coal mine. 

And good luck to anyone in charge of working out the rules for travel in 2022. 

Perhaps not...

UPDATE

It is surely too soon for anybody to make definitive prognostications about either the healthcare or economic impacts of a potential Omicron surge. 

Nevertheless, both Biden and Boris are starting to make glass-is-half-full statements that they may later regret. Boris fairly typically so. 

The Germans may be getting a bit goose-steppy about this, but they have seen the most alarming increase in case numbers and like the US and Israel, they have largely been Pfizered up to now. (Even the UK is seeing case numbers not seen since July.)

Biden seems suddenly keen to offload his Pfizer stockpile on the ROW! How considerate of him.

Let's just suppose that, worst case, he has to go cap in hand to the Russians, the Chinese or the Brits for an order of one of those oldy worldy, no compression, full spike vaccines, which one do you think he will pick?

Pfizer and Moderna may have a fix by March, but it will still be a JPG not a TIF formula, so the problem might just come around again in 2023.