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Abruptly woke up, but decided to watch the briefing from Dr. Fauci on the state of the pandemic from global and national perspective. As someone who can understand the scientific jargon, I am unsure if the conversation was accessible and as easy to follow for those who can't.
Big key points here were with regard to the efficiency or the effectiveness of the current vaccines against mutations/variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. There were plenty of questions and concerns about it, where I appreciated then candidness the information given.
The UK variant has shown a higher degree of transmissibility, not necessarily a higher degree of virulence (or the ability to increase seriousness of disease in a singular positive case i.e. more havoc on your body).
Higher transmissibility means more potential for infection to spread at a higher rate > overloading bed capacity, insufficient resources for quality care result in increased cases and ultimately death around the world. Thankfully, the current vaccines seem to be effective here.
More concerning are the S. African and Brazilian strains where the vaccines' effectiveness diminishes greatly. The targets on the virus that the vaccines are engineered to recognize are different enough that it cannot be recognized to mount a vaccine induced immunity response.
Is it still important to get vaccinated despite these strains? Yes, a thousand times, yes. Mutations occur by sheer chance and those chances increase every time the virus replicates millions of times in cells.
By disallowing the original virus from having more reservoirs, or human hosts, the rate at which we will see new and potentially more deadly strains will decrease dramatically. So do not think getting a vaccine is pointless. It's not. It is an absolute farce to think that way.
It will be much easier to modify a vaccine for a few variants when the original virus type is controlled. If left unchecked and the vast majority unvaccinated, this a unequivocally a very nightmare scenario.
Sorry for any typos and grammatical errors. I should proofread more often.
