I was a massive scare monger 18 months ago. Proper sky is gonna fall in and get your shit together type stuff. And I was right.
I am much less concerned about this new variant. We seem to be basing a lot of our fears on the large numver of mutations and whether this will lead to:
PCR escape (we won’t be able to detect it) which it turns out is unfounded. In fact it is easy to detect without sequencing as it has somethng called s-gene dropout and only pings 2 of the 3 DNA primers used in PCR. Alpha variant has the same dropout but is basically history, so you can identify the new variant wigh s-gene dropout without sequencing. It is easier to detect as a variant. So that is in our favour - YAY
Vaccine escape where the changes to the spike protein cause such a change in the appearance of the virus that the antibodies you have developed from the vaccine do not work. This is entirely theoretical and could be a risk in those only vaccinated. Those with natural immunity probably have antibodies to loads of other sites on the virus so may be ok and this completely ignores T-cell immunity which I feel I should know more about but do not. But overall this is a theoretical risk
Plus it seems to be absolutely rampant. 13 out of 600 people had it on a couple of planes. If it was that bad surely we would be seeing a worsening of cases by now.
This remains a serious disease mainly for the unvaccinated. And we cannot eliminate it,. We do not ban alcohol because hospitals have to deal with patients with pancreatitis, or god forbid smoking. We really have got to learn to live with this and people need to play their part and get jabbed.
I really cannot help but feel that we shut down too late last time which costs lives ancd we have made the wrong decision again now. Having said all that, the impositions are not hugely onerous.
What I would like to see is access to timely PCR testing for travellers and for the public to be able to pay to use the NHS test and trace sites for holiday testing and to drive the absolute chancers that are swamping the market out of business.
