Here’s a link to a take on the emerging BA.2.86 variant (unable to cross post)

From here:

A Quick Update on the BA.2.86 Variant - by Eric Topol (substack.com)

Opening paragraphs:

“This hyper-mutated variant has shown up in many places now, at a time when wastewater and genomic surveillance is greatly diminished around the world.

To date, the BA.2.86 variant has been detected in Israel, Denmark (3 individuals), the UK, the US (2 individuals, one coming back from Japan), and South Africa (2 individuals). It has also been detected in wastewater in 1 region is Switzerland (2% level), along with wastewater detection in Ohio and in Thailand. It’s safe say BA.2.86’s presence is widespread across the world at this point.”

And a large extract:

“Chasing Variants Doesn’t Work Well

The strategy of picking a spike variant for the mRNA booster at one point in time and making that at scale, going through regulatory approval, and then for it to be given 3 or more months later is far from optimal, as the BA.2.86 story reinforces.

By the time the XBB.1.5 monovalent booster shot is ready in mid-September we may already be facing BA.2.86’s rise. We desperately need to pursue a variant-proof vaccine and there are over 50 candidate templates from broad neutralizing antibodies that academic labs have published over the last couple of years.

Only a couple of candidates (one from CalTech and the other Walter Reed) have gone onto early (Phase 1) trials. Project NextGen, a $5 billion initiative by the US Department of Health and Human Service (HHS), is supposed to be funding development and clinical trials of better vaccines, which includes nasal and variant-proof. Initial allocations for over $1 billion were just announced, but it isn’t clear when we will see any real progress and whether a pan-sarbecovirus vaccine is a priority. The “dream vaccine” has been written about for nearly 3 years. It isn’t a dream.

We can do this; BA.2.86’s appearance tells us once again why it’s so important. You’d think we’ve forgotten how quickly the very potent Covid vaccines were made and validated in the first 10 months of 2020.”

Well, thee you go. My layman’s sense is that the more C19 injections of different types. the more variants will be forced. So the entire premise of injections is flawed. But what do I know!

Here are the sleuths that form a group getting “down and dirty” with the variants.

The author of the article is Eric Topol

“Thanks again to the great scientists who so diligently track the SARS-CoV-2 variants, who include Ryan Hisner, Cornelius Roemer, Daniele Focosi, T. Ryan Gregory, Marc Johnson, JP Weiland, Raj Rajnarayanan, Federico Gueli, Tom Peacock, and many others.”

Onwards!

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