The novel coronavirus, like all viruses, mutates and evolves. Fast. Variant after variant. Subvariants between the variants.
The virus is active. But our efforts to contain it are reactive. Thirty-four months into the COVID-19 pandemic, we still haven’t figured out a way to get ahead of the virus—and offer people immunity that endures even as the virus evolves.
That has to change, experts told The Daily Beast. And there are a lot of ways it could change, if we can focus our resources.
Broadly effective nasal vaccines that offer long-term immunity. Universal vaccines that should work against present and future variants. Or, at least, faster ways of rolling out new boosters.
But even the best new medicine is useless if people won’t take it. The public’s willingness to get vaccinated, rather than the availability of some new and better vaccine, could be the main reason we continue lagging behind the virus.
“How do we break out of the Groundhog Day loop?” University of Nebraska Medical Center infectious-disease expert James Lawler asked, referencing the 1993 Bill Murray comedy about a man trapped in one endlessly-repeating day. “I am not sure we will do that quickly.”
The novel coronavirus has steadily mutated since first leaping from animals to people in China back in late 2019. A year later, the early forms of the virus gave way to a more severe variant, Delta, which in turn was replaced by the more-contagious Omicron variant and its succession of subvariants—BA.1, BA.2, BA.4 and BA.5—starting last fall.
All of the major variants and subvariants feature changes on the spike protein, the part of the virus that helps it grab onto and infect our cells. Lately, more and more mutations are showing up on other parts of the virus, as well.
Yes, more than two-thirds of the world’s 7.8 billion people have been at least partially vaccinated. Billions have fresh natural antibodies from recent infection. This wall of immunity has prevented the worst outcomes. Hospitalizations and deaths are down from their most recent peak in February.
But there’s no sign the SARS-CoV-2 virus is slowing down. New variants are coming as mutations pile up. Anticipating a future where COVID is more or less a permanent problem, health officials all over the world are trying to come up with strategies not for defeating the virus, but managing it.
U.S. President Joe Biden is beginning to frame COVID as an annual problem, like the flu. On Tuesday, Biden encouraged Americans to get the new messenger-RNAs boosters that vaccine-makers Pfizer and Moderna tailored for Omicron and its subvariants.
More variant-specific boosters could follow, Biden announced. “As the virus continues to change, we will now be able to update our vaccines annually to target the dominant variant,” he said. “Just like your annual flu shot, you should get it sometime between Labor Day and Halloween.”
But there’s a problem with an annual approach to COVID mutations. Antibodies from even the best mRNA vaccines tend to fade after around four months. If you’re getting boosted just once a year, you could be under-protected for up to eight months at a time.
Maybe. The fact is, we don’t know for sure how well—and for how long—the new boosters will work. “We still need this information to know if that’s a viable strategy,” Peter Hotez, an expert in vaccine development at Baylor College, told The Daily Beast.
Equally problematic, health officials and the pharmaceutical industry are currently chasing variants—formulating new boosters based on whichever form of the virus is dominant at the time. But it takes months to reformulate the vaccines, get authorization from health officials in each of nearly 200 countries, then manufacture and distribute doses.
“I am truly puzzled at the widely-held assumption that the pandemic future is bright.”
We’re moving slower than the virus. A new variant might evolve in the span of just a few months. But it took…
Read More: This Could Be the Only Way to End the COVID-19 Pandemic for Good