Study: Evidence of major differences between Omicron BA.2 and BA.1:
BA.2 has
1. Higher R 1.4X (growing around the world)
2. More vaccine evading
3. Resistant to BA.1 induced immunity.
4. Higher severity (pathogenicity): More rapid and more extensive lung damage in hamsters
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Fascinating how people are willing to ignore/deny plausible scenarios because no-solution-exists is not a condition people used to high agency can deal with. It’s an extreme version of solution aversion (bias where people deny problems because they don’t like solutions on offer)
I like this as a mental model for a scenario z world. How would you drive in a world where a quarter of population routinely drives drunk and can’t be policed? Not drive Friday/Saturday nights I guess.
If omicron has a natural vaccine on effect, there’s a chance we’re getting off the Scenario Z path and might be actually done by summer. If it turns out future deadlier breakthrough variants blow past omicron natural immunity, we’re not done. $64m question: which is it? twitter.com/vgr/status/135…
BA.5 has the most transmissibility and immune escape of any version of the virus since the pandemic began. Although its spike(S) sequence is nearly the same as BA.4, there are several mutations in other parts of the virus that may account for itsfitness http://outbreak.info
For the science & epi of BA.5, I encourage you to read @EricTopol’s terrific @SubstackInc review. https://erictopol.substack.com/p/the-ba5-story
We’ve now gotten used to Omicron sub-variants – each about 20% more infectious than the prior one – and so it’s easy to be lulled into thinking… (2/25)