Variations on a theme: COVID-19 mutations turn problematic
We pandemic-weary humans are ready to be done with COVID-19. But apparently, it is not done with us. Our conversation with a coronavirus, as I dubbed it last year, continues as a growing number of variants of COVID-19 appear across the world.
Preliminary data suggest that some of the variants may evade the protections of existing vaccines and lessen the effectiveness of various treatments. So concerning are these variants that one of the world’s leading epidemiologists is recommending a reversal of the recent re-opening steps being taken in the United States and elsewhere across the world.
Whether that advice will turn out to be warranted is likely to be tested in the next several weeks as U.S. states and foreign countries move forward with re-opening despite the rapid rise of new variants. This is all happening against the backdrop of Italy returning to a lockdown for much of the country due to the rapid spread of these COVID-19 variants.
Of even greater concern is the possibility that COVID-19 is here to stay and may continue churning out variants that defy our attempts to vanquish the virus. No one knows for certain what that might look like. It could be that COVID-19 becomes a seasonal disease returning each year like the flu. It could become milder in its effects. That would be an adaptive evolutionary strategy for the virus since killing one’s host is not a good way to spread. COVID-19 could be banished in some places, only to pop up periodically.
Rather than recognizing that we are part of nature, we continue to do the equivalent of mobilizing for war against nature. We want to stamp out COVID-19 and finish it for good. But it never occurs to us that COVID-19 might not yield to our warlike brigades now dressed in lab coats and nurse’s uniforms.
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kurt cobb, resource insights, pandemic, covid-19, virus mutations
