Heard of SARS-CoV2 variant from Japan?

No?

How about one from South Korea?

No?

Surely variants from New Zealand & Vietnam?

Of course not

Because these places haven't given rise to scary variants

But what places have.....has big implications for ending the pandemic

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So let’s talk about where variants ARE coming from and under what circumstances

Variants arise when infections run wild

And selection pressures lead to dangerous mutations that can then thrive

Remember, every infection creates opportunities for “errors” – or mutations

2/6

Most mutations are meaningless

They will have no real clinical implications

But every once in a while, a set of mutations will lead the virus to become more contagious, more lethal, or improve its ability to escape our vaccines

So where are the variants coming from?

3/6

UK, South Africa, Brazil –and possibly US (LA variant still being sorted out)

Each of these countries had large outbreaks even before their variants took off

So what are implications if we ever want to end this pandemic?

We have to bring pandemic under control everywhere

4/7

Letting virus run wild, like US, Brazil did, endangers everyone

Imagine this

Some nations are largely vaccinated

But outbreaks are surging elsewhere

What might happen? We might see rise of variants that eventually escape the vaccines

And make everyone vulnerable again

5/7

In a future where US is vaccinated but others are not

We could see rise of variants that can infect, cause outbreaks here and other vaccinated places

Requiring us to update our vaccines and vaccinate everyone again

It’s the nightmare scenario of a never-ending pandemic

6/7

There is only one solution to put this nightmare pandemic behind us

Get outbreaks under control everywhere

How?

Put in place virus control policies, get people to wear high quality masks, have more testing

AND

Vaccinate the world

Now

As quickly as possible

7/9

This is what makes herd immunity advocates (remember Great Barrington Declaration?) so naive

They literally advocated for virus to have more chances to mutate

And what makes U.S. isolationist policies so naive

Because we live on one planet

And variants travel

8/9

Want to end the pandemic?

Lets marshal global manufacturing effort to make lots of vaccine quickly

And vaccinate everyone

Because large outbreaks anywhere can give rise to variants that can escape vaccines everywhere

At the end of the day, we really are in this together

Fin