Quote Originally Posted by pendell View Post
There's a lot of unknowns. We're currently trying to find out if Omicron can evade vaccines

There's also a question of it's severity. The original reporter stated the symptoms seemed mild . Although it is apparently driving a rise in hospitalizations .

A vaccine tailor-made for Omicron will take 100 days .

So then what? We go through another year, rinse and repeat for the next variant? That isn't a solution.

Respectfully,

Brian P.
100 days to develop is...pretty impressive. But 100 days, plus whatever length of time it takes to deploy, which is...apparently a good bit if we're talking the entire world, adds up to a big lag time. By the time the specialized vaccine is out, it'll likely have already spread worldwide, boomed and busted and we'll be on to the next variant, given history.

A variant specific vaccine for it, at that stage is...okay I guess, but not all that relevant? The flu virus model only works by predicting which strain will be common in a given year. If we developed flu shots reactively AFTER it had spread, it would...not do much to help.

I have no idea if it's possible to predict how variants will emerge for coronaviruses. That'd be one theoretical pathway, but it's not one we've really done so far. We have been distinctly behind the curve with variants, not ahead of it.

Sadly, the current almost makes the strategy of "everyone not at exceptional risk just gets covid quickly so it burns itself out before it can mutate" not awful by comparison. It's not a *good* strategy, but the variant treadmill is doing us no favors, and poses a very long term threat.

I suppose we could look at immunocompromised support. Not that this is easy, either, but it seems a repeated weakness in humanity's defenses. Anything that helps shore that up in any respect might increase the average time between variants. *shrug* This all pretty speculative looking at the broader problem, but we definitely need something.