It’s Monday morning. All is not well. But I remain an optimist – just.
Viruses are not living, say scientists. Of course, there are other “experts” who say that viruses are alive – sort of. We are both old enough and with other health conditions to put us among the higher risk groups. The probability of not surviving if either of us is infected is now in percentages and no longer in parts per 100,000. We cannot afford to get infected. So we are quite careful. We isolate ourselves and exercise large social distancing. We have become asocial. We have been waiting for the vaccine in the belief that 2021 is going to be annus mirabilis after the annus horribilis that has been 2020. But I am beginning to realize that this is more delusion than belief. After 9 months of self-imposed isolation and asocial behaviour I am beginning to see the coronavirus as a living, evolving form of life which has the purpose of culling humans.
There is a new, mutated strain of the Covid-19 virus, said to be 70% more infectious than its predecessor, running rampant in the UK. It came, it is said, from Spain to the UK in September. It honed its skills in London and is not thought to be more deadly or more severe in its effects. It has already been found in Denmark, the Netherlands and Australia. It is not more deadly but is thought to be 70% more effective in transmitting itself from one host to another. More of the transmission is thought to be air-borne and from the asymptomatic. Air borne means that a safe social distance increases by a factor of about 5. Air-borne means that simple face masks can be penetrated. It is almost as if the mutation is specifically about countering lock-downs, social distancing and face masks. Its next survival step will be to mutate to counteract the vaccines.
The vaccines, they say, will still be effective against this mutation. Our best guess is that we could reach the top of the priority list sometime in March, perhaps as late as April. It takes a month for immunity to develop. That takes us into May before we can begin exercising lost social skills again. That assumes that there is not another wave in Spring and that another more deadly mutation has not appeared. But we are living in a dream world if we think the virus will not continue to mutate. A best case scenario suggests that vaccines will give immunity for about 6 months. The Spring wave is more likely to be of a mutated virus – perhaps this current London virus. But it will change again for the Autumn and the next time around it could be more deadly. And then there will have to be an Autumn wave again as vaccines catch up. Even flu vaccines have their compositions adjusted every year.
Flu viruses are constantly changing, so the vaccine composition is reviewed each year and updated as needed based on which influenza viruses are making people sick, the extent to which those viruses are spreading, and how well the previous season’s vaccine protects against those viruses. More than 100 national influenza centers in over 100 countries conduct year-round surveillance for influenza. This involves receiving and testing thousands of influenza virus samples from patients.
I am getting despondent this Monday morning. 2021 will be another bad year.
The k2p blog 