90% of new infections being this new variant should be quite alarming
* SA has a <50% vaccination rate, so its not quite clear whether its spread could be circumvent vaccine-induced antibodies * SA is past its delta-wave, so this variant has made relatively huge gain over delta, but absolute numbers are still fairly moderate.
I'm all in for taking necessary precautions for slowing down the arrival of the new variant in other countries, but it seems it isn't clear yet that the effect we see in South Africa will replicate elsewhere.
it's closer to 25% countrywide, according to https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations?country=ZAF
But this source says 35%: https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/exclusive-south-africa-...
It will be higher in urban areas, and lower outside of them.
A similar thing happened in some South American countries with a cholera outbreak. Strains that made people more sick forced them to stay inside whereas the more harmless strains allowed people to socialize more and the harmless ones ended up spreading faster
What are the ethics in engineering a new virus and deliberately infecting people? What happens if some of those people die? What happens if your variant that has been engineered to spread extremely effectively mutates into something more lethal? How do you test your engineered virus? Large-scale tests on people? How would that be faster or more effective than producing a new vaccine and testing that instead? What happens if your tests show that the engineered virus is not as benevolent as you hoped, and is actually rather horrific? Can you put the genie back in the bottle?
This alone should make it a non-option, there will be no way to contain it or stop it from mutating, I fail to see how it wouldn't just be a question of time the same way COVID variants are. The consequences could be disastrous and simply worsen the situation.