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Comment by rich_sasha | Hacker News Reader

So, basically, another Covid variant, but much badder than Delta?

I’m a bit fed up with coronaviruses tbh.

The coronaviruses don't appear to be fed up with us, unfortunately.

Hopefully not worse. The current assumption seems to be that it could be different enough to avoid existing immunity gained against previous strains.

Remember the spike needs to bind to the ACE receptor which is what vaccines target, so if it escapes vaccines, it probably isn’t going to be as easily infectious. Maybe.

If that was true in this scenario why would it have gained so much victim market share in South Africa so much quicker than Delta did?

SA is very undervaccinated (less than 25% per the link) so it's probably too early to say either way.

SA has low levels of vaccination, but they've had high infection rates. There should be substantial levels of immunity to earlier variants in the population. It's not directly comparable, but it should be possible to get some idea of how well the new variant escapes existing immunity.

Your answer seems to assume that the distribution of spike proteins which binds to the ACE is very close to the one for which we obtain immunity by getting vaccinated.

Yet we can already see that Delta binds better than the early strains and the efficacy of existing vaccines against it is like 60%, which contradict that. Does it make sense?

Vaccine efficacy decays with time. If you've had a 3rd vaccine recently, it will be much more than 60% effective.

The infection rate in South Africa when this variant arose was extremely low.

This variant has not had to compete with Delta at all.

It established itself in a vacuum of infections, and it may all be due to founder effects, with a new wave of infections due to behavior or other changes.

I'm also very skeptical that P681H is suddenly going to flip the script and start displacing P681R.

SA also has low vaccination rates and its not obvious that this variant arose because of selection for immune evasion (even if it did, immune evasion from NAbs is probably inevitable and will happen forever).

We don't even know what it does - bit early to say things like this.

FWIW, coronaviruses have been around for a very long time. 30% of common colds are coronaviruses.

Aha! So in particular, this could be the prophecised variant that is super infectious, benign, and ends Covid as we know it?

I feel myself slowly peeling off from reality.

> FWIW, coronaviruses have been around for a very long time. 30% of common colds are coronaviruses.

I can’t say I have a particularly soft spot for colds. They just don’t do it for me, I could easily live without them.

We all are.

Stop feeding then.

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