{"id":57097,"date":"2021-03-14T12:52:50","date_gmt":"2021-03-14T17:52:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=57097"},"modified":"2021-03-14T12:52:50","modified_gmt":"2021-03-14T17:52:50","slug":"variations-on-a-theme-covid-19-mutations-turn-problematic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=57097","title":{"rendered":"Variations on a theme: COVID-19 mutations turn problematic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Variations on a theme: COVID-19 mutations turn problematic<\/a><\/h3>\n
\n

We pandemic-weary humans are ready to be done with COVID-19. But apparently, it is not done with us.\u00a0Our conversation with a coronavirus<\/a>, as I dubbed it last year, continues as a growing number of variants of COVID-19 appear across the world.<\/p>\n

Preliminary data suggest that some of the variants may evade the protections of existing vaccines and lessen the effectiveness of various treatments<\/a>. So concerning are these variants that\u00a0one of the world’s leading epidemiologists is recommending a reversal of the recent re-opening steps<\/a>\u00a0being taken in the United States and elsewhere across the world.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0This is all happening against the backdrop of Italy returning to a lockdown<\/a>\u00a0for much of the country due to the rapid spread of these COVID-19 variants.<\/p>\n

Of even greater concern is\u00a0the possibility that COVID-19 is here to stay<\/a>\u00a0and 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n

<\/a>kurt cobb, resource insights, pandemic, covid-19, virus mutations<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0Our 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[29011,4752,607,4967,31034],"class_list":["post-57097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-covid-19","tag-kurt-cobb","tag-pandemic","tag-resource-insights","tag-virus-mutations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57097"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57097\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57098,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57097\/revisions\/57098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}