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Ask HN: How worrying is the new Covid variant?

36 points by cl42 ↗ HN
The news coverage I'm reading (BBC, FT, NYT, etc.) seems very concerned in saying this new variant has a strong chance of evading vaccines, existing immune responses, etc.

Whenever they quote scientists, however, it sounds more like "We don't know, so better safe than sorry."

Are there any HN readers who know a thing or two about biotech that could shed light on the science of what we know and the current risk of this variant?

53 comments

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randomopining
There's always gonna be room in the 8 billion people on earth for a variant to come around, just like this. We need a combination of fast vaccine updates for the elderly/etc, and also just increasing collective health to get some herd immunity.
yosito
From all of the experts I'm following, I'm hearing that it will take a couple of weeks to determine if this variant is able to evade vaccines or if it is more severe. What they do know now is that it has a lot of mutations and highly increased transmissibility. Sounds like governments and public health professionals should be on alert, but the average person should focus on getting vaxxed and wearing masks.
crate_barre
This variant will be global within those few weeks. It’s like we don’t learn about the speed in which all this happened. Travel restrictions to and from South Africa need to happen yesterday.
ogogmad
Slow down, mate. The WHO would like a word with you: (all quotes from the Guardian)

  - The World Health Organization cautioned countries against hastily imposing travel restrictions linked to Omicron, saying they should take a “risk-based and scientific approach”. It would take several weeks to determine the variant’s transmissibility and the effectiveness of vaccines and therapeutics against it, WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier said, noting that 100 sequences of the variant have been reported so far. People should continue to wear masks whenever possible, avoid large gatherings, ventilate rooms and maintain hand hygiene, he added.

  - South Africa condemned the decision of other countries to impose travel restrictions as ‘unjustified’. The health minister, Joe Phaahla, Phaahla said South Africa was acting with transparency, and that travel bans introduced by a number of countries against southern African nations are “completely against the norms and standards” of the WHO. Phaahla called on all South Africans over the age of 12 to come forward and receive the vaccine, which he said remained a “major bulwark” against infection and severe illness.

  - South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa will discuss reimposing lockdown restrictions at a meeting on Sunday, as the country scrambles to assess the potential for Omicron to unleash a deadly fourth wave. As I’ve mentioned above, the government appealed for people to get jabbed as soon as possible - only around 35% of South Africans have been vaccinated.
tfehring
Of course the WHO and South African government oppose travel bans. That doesn't mean imposing those bans isn't in other countries' best interest. Taking a risk-averse approach in a highly risky and uncertain situation isn't inconsistent with the WHO's recommendation to take a "risk-based and scientific approach."

I'm not saying that restricting travel is necessarily the right approach (though it probably is), but nothing in your comment really strikes me as compelling evidence that it's the wrong approach.

ogogmad
I didn't say it was the wrong approach. I'm actually exasperated by what the WHO and South Africa are saying. They're saying we're not supposed to exercise any precaution until they've waited two days to decide whether to impose a lockdown against a variant which has (with current knowledge) a high chance of evading previously acquired immunity. The variant is highly transmissible, and infections can grow rapidly in that period. This might lead to a reckoning for the WHO.

> Taking a risk-averse approach in a highly risky and uncertain situation isn't inconsistent with the WHO's recommendation to take a "risk-based and scientific approach."

South Africa interpreted the WHO's statements as being against imposing travel bans. The first sentence of your comment implies you agree that that's what they meant. It's either that, or the WHO's statements are meaningless verbiage.

This looks like the events of early 2020 repeating.

908B64B197
It would be great if the WHO was focused on saving lives and preventing infections rather than pushing China's agenda [0].

[0] https://www.foxnews.com/media/who-china-taiwan-interview

cercatrova
Fox News is not a credible news source, they themselves termed it as entertainment that no reasonable person would take as news.
pasabagi
Ah, fox. Finally, a reputable source!
yosito
I wouldn't be surprised if the variant is already global. There is a known case in Belgium from November 11th. Travel restrictions are mainly political at this point.
ogogmad
What about testing and tracing? And doing travel bans.
yosito
What evidence do you have that travel bans stop covid?
ogogmad
Infectious diseases spread by human contact. Reducing contact between infected and uninfected people should therefore slow down spread. We can use this time to gather information about this variant in order to make better decisions about how to deal with it. The precautionary principle dictates that we act by assuming that a very bad outcome is likely until we get more information.

A very bad outcome (which we don't have enough information to rule out) is hospitals being overwhelmed with sick people, so that some patients are left untreated, with a greatly increased rate of dying as a result. The reason this is possible is because there are a large number of mutations in this variant, which might allow it to bypass people's immunity. This can make immunity acquired through previous infection or vaccination ineffective.

yosito
Last time I checked, there were infected people on both sides of the border.
ogogmad
Which border? What infections? I'm not living in Belgium.
spookthesunset
There is none. There is scant evidence that any of these NPI's do anything at all besides give the appearance that government is "taking this serious".

People that claim this kind of stuff "just makes sense" aren't taking into consideration the second order effects on human behavior that might make things even worse. For example closing outdoor parks probably made things much worse because people would meet inside instead...

threeseed
This comment is simply wrong.

Health professionals were factoring in second order effects. The problem is that there isn't a wealth of research or evidence which shows which option is more likely to work. So a lot of at least in the early days was trial/error.

What would do know is that increased mobility translates to increased cases. And so opening parks whilst much safer than being inside results in increased mobility as people need transport to/from those parks.

threeseed
In Australia at least we had mandatory hotel quarantine for all foreign arrivals with many of them being infectious.

If you didn't have that quarantine they would be out in the wild infecting people. Not what you want when many parts of our country e.g. Western Australia had zero community transmissions.

Without some sort of travel bans there is no way you could manage that level of inflow.

tfehring
The prediction market Kalshi [0] is showing a ~50% chance that the CDC will designate a variant of high consequence [1] by March, up from a ~20% chance 36 hours ago.

A biostatistician friend of mine pointed me to this relatively optimistic Twitter thread [2], though this response [3] is much more pessimistic.

[0] https://kalshi.com/markets/VOHC-001

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/variants/variant-i...

[2] https://twitter.com/jbloom_lab/status/1464005676842184705

[3] https://twitter.com/theodora_nyc/status/1464257411582148608

hanklazard
Most concerning part to me is the threat of it evading the mRNA vaccines which use spike protein sequences.

One continued ray of hope: Paxlovid, the upcoming Pfizer drug, is designed against a viral protease and so we would not expect this variant to decrease this drug’s efficacy.

armchairhacker
The issue is that worse-case scenario is really bad. If this a) has an R0 > 9, b) can evade vaccines, and c) breaks containment, I really can't imagine what will happen. Like I can't comprehend what will happen because it's so bad.

First of all, how would we lockdown? Completely ignoring any mental health effects, I don't see how lockdowns are sustainable, because of the economic implications and how they affect education. How the fuck are we going to produce goods and raise children without (minimal, masked) in-person interaction?

But the virus seems so transmissible, that anything below a full lockdown will almost useless. The virus could be so transmissible that even if people only go shopping and to work, and wear masks, it will still spread to everyone. Even if it's not that transmissible, I don't see how governments can institute anything near full lockdowns without something like martial law, because people are not going to want to lock down. So with an R0 > 9 it's going to spread fast.

Then if the virus is remotely dangerous, hospitals will be significantly more overwhelmed. Considering that hospitals had to triage from the last two outbreaks - I can't imagine how many people would die.

Fortunately, the worst-case scenario is still very unlikely. The virus does seem to be very transmissible. But it also seems like vaccines still prevent hospitalization and death, and the virus itself might be less deadly. The probability for any mutation to completely break resistance from a vaccine / prior infections is very, very low.

Lastly, there's still a chance we can contain and eradicate this variant. That's why scientists are holding emergency meetings, countries are rapidly instituting travel bans and infected people / regions will probably be quarantined. We have hindsight that we didn't in 2020, and we even have technology to do fast testing and contact tracing. So there's a chance that your life may not be infected by this variant at all.

pajko
What concerning is that some of the articles tell about many reinfections. Natural immunity is said to be stronger as the immune system is trained on the whole virus, not just the spike protein. So guess what.
ivraatiems
I'm reading everything you're reading, and my takeaway is: it's simply too early to be sure. The best thing to do is roughly what's happening - take some sensible precautions while we figure out what's going on.

My back-of-the-hand barely-estimated odds are something like:

50% chance it's similar to, a little more prevalent than Delta, with similar immune escape. A slightly worse version of the current problem. 25% chance it turns out to be way more dangerous than Delta for some reason (requires a new vaccine, more deadly, way way more infectious etc). 25% chance it ends up being no big deal/not worse than delta/less deadly/little to no immune escape

But this is based on how these things have seemed to shake out over the last two years, not any sure science. Don't rely on me.

x86_64Ubuntu
But we already know what's going on. The medical field cited Delta as a problem, and it was. With your numbers of 75% being equivalent or worse than Delta, that alone enough to spur action. And where are your odds coming from?
ivraatiems
I'm making them up. It's speculation.

But I also said I agreed with the precautions being taken, so what's the issue?

yen223
You aren't going to find a well-informed answer on a forum for software engineers.
kortilla
Good thing this isn’t a forum for software engineers.
CodeGlitch
I was hoping to hear from bio hackers
DoreenMichele
I'm a biohacker.

I have no idea how concerned you should be.

I've been staying out of such conversations. I have enough trouble getting taken seriously.

Biohackers aren't omniscient. This really sounds like you are hoping to hear from con artists and charlatans just to get some kind of reassurance.

I don't think that's a good thing to hope for, much less ask for.

News-Dog
As I posted here > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29366087

It's a crap-shoot, We and other infection able animals are mere in vevo 'petri dishes' for the RNA which is highly mutable.

'An infinite number of Monkeys, with an infinite number of typewriters', So it is a Chance and Probability game.

Infinite Monkey theorem - Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem

Ribonucleic acid (RNA) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA

The hypothesis that 'as viruses mutate they become more infectious but less deadly',

and wildfires will burn themselves out, only work when there is limited fuel, i.e. small communities with limited travel,

hence the lock-down/lock-out option is prudent at this time.

pedalpete
That was my initial reaction when I saw the post, but then I realized how often very knowledgeable and level-headed people share and discuss very deep topics on HN. It's possible there has been less of this as HN has grown in the last few years, (I'm more than a decade old on here), but there are definitely people who understand this topic very deeply. Even software engineers. People who don't get all they know from 30 second news snippets.
TimedToasts
The news has a financial incentive to keep you anxious - just look at how many websites you've visited on this bit of anxiety alone.
mrkramer
As a layman I see it as FUD. Scientists will draw conclusions not journalists.
[dead] m0zg
In the US the narrative will depend primarily on whether it helps or hurts the chances of current ruling party to do well in midterm elections. You can downvote all you like, you know it's true.

In the rest of the world, word is the new variant is very mild, although it does evade vaccines and so on: https://ca.news.yahoo.com/travel-ban-storm-tea-cup-173442533.... Could be that this is the "vaccine" for those refusing to vaccinate.

tasogare
> The news coverage I'm reading

That's the real problem here. Turning off the TV and stopping reading the news, crafted precisely to generate anxiety, is the solution. It will probably be a nothingburger, but the media need something to divert from the "mysterious" heart attacks. Remember, two years ago covid was presented as a very deadly virus and it turned out to be only dangerous for a very specific and small segment of the population (70+ yo and obese people).

threeseed
a) 5+ million people are dead. This isn't "nothing".

b) Delta strain of COVID is affecting younger people at increasing rates [1] and at least here in Australia we are seeing hospitalisations with far more young people than in the past.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-07/delta-variant-of-covi...

tasogare
The overwhelming majority of people who died of it reached a very advanced age and had other medical conditions. They would probably have died of a normal flu too.

Your link is pure fake news. It's an article trying to pass a known side effect of the mRNA medication (myocarditis) as stemming from the virus. Also it's from the press of an authoritarian country that is deporting people into camps...

threeseed
a) So you’re saying hundreds of millions of people are going to die suddenly over the next 2 years from flu and “medical conditions”. Be curious to see the studies on this looming catastrophe.

b) Australia is not an authoritarian country by any definition and ABC News is highly respected as an independent news source.

Blackstrat
And let’s not forget that the CDC themselves previously estimated that only 6% of the COVID deaths were due to COVID. The rest died with COVID.
marchingtomars
Given that the CDC lied to the US & World about the proper approach to self-protection (wearing masks), they certainly do not have my trust.

I'll take my chances. I will not trust the Federal government's dishonest "experts".

GDC7
Worst case scenario (immune elusion):

BioNTech/Pfizer already said that they need 90-100 days to put together an entirely new vaccine.

The infrastructure for distribution is already in place given that the 1st vaccination round is not over yet and people who had the first round are now getting boosters.

The Merck/Pfizer pill should not be affected by mutations given that it's oriented at the effects. They are both approved in the US and are about to be approved in Europe, the US purchased 10M doses in advance.

Masks , temp check, vaccination status check are already commonplace.

THIS IS NOT US GOING BACK TO MARCH 2020. EVEN IN THE WORST CASE SCENARIO.

dham
It's sad to say but we should have just let this thing rip in March 2020. We would have a lot of death I know, but we would have been back to normal by June. Variants would have never been a thing and it just becomes a cold.

I'll come back to this message in 10 years to see how history looks at this situation.

moneywoes
So the hospitals would just refuse people?
dham
A few things in hindsight that probably wouldn't work

* Government declares war on this thing and pays people to work as nurses

* Don't ventilate people

* Focus more on treatments early, spray and pray with drugs that already exist

* US centric. US is huge. All hospitals won't get over run. Only in certain parts of country. Move people out of big cities and into mid west

* Focus only on older people quarantine. Everyone still keeps their jobs and everyone can help their older neighbor or older family members financially.

* Start fitness surveillance on people. Only people eat well and work out can get "passports" to go places.

* Government calls it like it is, declares war on obesity, gives everyone a peloton and you have to ride it every night. If you have BMI over a certain amount you have to quarantine. Fast food is banned, smoking is banned, soft drinks are banned. McDonalds and other fast food restaurants pay for treatment and everyone killed by Covid. Deaths would be similar to a bad flu season since only generally healthy people would get it.

Some of those are more tongue and cheek.

jihadjihad
This is an attitude I hear a lot from within my own family, but it ignores one of the primary reasons we took such measures in the first place: the healthcare system not being able to service that amount of load. It's not even about people dying from COVID as much as other, unrelated patients being denied access to necessary care because the healthcare system is flooded.
dham
I agree but we have to think about the future. Modern humans have a horrible ability to plan for the future. It's all about instant gratification. Once I had kids I never really cared much about my on mortality anymore. Sometimes sacrifices have to be made. Maybe not this virus but humans will have to deal with a virus eventually where we're going to have to make a trade off.

Again though this would have been similar to Hong Kong flu if it hit 40 years ago. Humans basically killed themselves, especially in the US. We were on a collision course with something like this for the last 30 years.

People said we didn't do enough sooner or we didn't see this coming. Na, it had been coming for decades.

taxicabjesus
> the healthcare system not being able to service that amount of load.

At first the healthcare system was overwhelmed. Then Dr. Cameron Kyle-Sidell posted his rebellion video to YouTube, which said, essentially, “why are we following terrible advice to ventilate early? This is very bad medicine.” (I think Dr. Kyle-Sidell had previously only intubated patients who were actually in respiratory distress, and thought the non-distressed patients whose lungs he was damaging actually had something sort of like HAPE.)

After the rebellion video ventilations fell off a cliff. The media stopped telling us how many ventilators we were short, because they weren’t needed anymore.

I came across the doctor’s letter in a medical journal. Don’t think the observation about hypocapnia was ever followed up on: https://twitter.com/taxicabjesus/status/1455405908826091520