What’s with all these variants?

In the early days of the pandemic, I remember reading that the coronavirus seemed to be very different from other viruses because it didn’t mutate very much. And I remember that, in April or May, Los Alamos National Labs (known more as the birthplace of the atomic bomb than a medical research center) said that they’d identified a new variant that was more transmissible than the current one. The traditional medical research establishment responded to the effect of “These people should stick to finding new ways to kill people, not save them.” They also pooh-poohed the idea that the LANL researchers had found a more-transmissible variant.

So there was surprise when the British identified a variant that was not only more transmissible, but in 3 months became the dominant variety there (and killed a lot of people in the process. They’ve determined it’s also more deadly); that variant will become dominant in the US by late March, according to the CDC.

That was bad enough, but it was followed by the South African and Brazilian variants, which not only were more transmissible and probably more deadly, but in some cases (especially in Brazil) reinfected people who had already had “normal” covid. There’s been a California variant for a while, and there’s now a New York City variant – both seem to be more transmissible, if not more deadly.

Why are these variants all popping up now? Is it something to do with the weather being colder? Dr. Ashish Jha wrote a great article three weeks ago in the Post, which includes the following:

Where outbreaks are contained, there are few opportunities for mutations, and those that occur are unlikely to become widespread. But where infection is uncontrolled — especially in specific circumstances, such as when immune-compromised people are infected — mutations are given an opening to establish themselves.

This is why variants have emerged where the virus has run rampant in countries that have flirted with building natural “herd immunity” as a strategy, such as Britain, Brazil and even the United States. As you’ll notice, no variants emerged in Japan or South Korea because these countries successfully controlled infections, limiting the number of virus mutations and preventing them from becoming established.

So there you have it: where you have a large concentration of infected people, you get more variants. And these new variants are inherently more transmissible, because otherwise how will they take over the current Big Dog in variants? That’s the way in most areas of endeavor: If you want to make a place for yourself, you’ve got to be better than your competition. It’s inevitable that new variants will be more transmissible, if not more deadly.

Dr. Jha’s conclusion is that, as long as there are concentrations of Covid infections anywhere in the world, there will always be new variants, and they’ll inevitably spread faster than the incumbent variants. That’s why it’s important to get the whole world immunized (literally) – or at least to the herd immunity level.

Of course, the big question here is vaccines. And here there’s good news. Yes, vaccines can’t be expected to be effective against all variants, and some will be virtually ineffective with some variants. But I just read today that, if you’ve been vaccinated but later become infected by a variant that resists the antibodies produced by the vaccination, you are less likely to develop a serious case.

Which leads to what may be the end game here: The coronavirus will never be eliminated, just like the flu is never eliminated, simply because it can mutate so quickly. But just as we all have some degree of immunity to flu and that reduces the chance that we’ll die of it, we will all someday have some degree of immunity to the coronavirus. In fact, a writer in The Atlantic said this week that “success” against the coronavirus will be when the number of annual deaths from it is like those from the flu, which is a range of 12,000-60,000 in the US in recent years.

Of course, this isn’t great. But if we want to lower it any more, we could require everyone to get an annual coronavirus vaccine, just as we could probably bring flu deaths lower by requiring everyone to get a flu shot every year – which immunizes against the current variants (at the time the vaccine was developed).

Not a great scenario, but at least one that lets us get back to something approaching “normal” life. 

I would love to hear any comments or questions you have on this post. Drop me an email at tom@tomalrich.com.