I was hoping the vaccinations would head off the variants. You can’t have the variants if there is no COVID-19 And the few variants could be knocked down by aggressive contact tracing.
I have learned that the variants evolve to be less deadly. The virus benefits by not killing off its host so it can continue to infect others via their host. It is the virus’s nature of infecting when in the asymptomatic stage that makes it so hard to control. I’ll be glad when someone invents a breathalyzer that you can blow into to check your COVID status.
“I was hoping the vaccinations would head off the variants.”
The various vaccines have varied effectiveness against the different strains (variants).
The Pfizer and Moderna seem to be about the most effective, across the board.
The Chinese Sinovac and SinoPharm are generally the weakest. J&J and AstraZeneca are the mid-range in effectiveness.
Even if you get one of the variants after being vaccinated, statistically, the severity will be much less, and the risk of death dramatically less.
It seems to me that a virus that kills off only a small % of it’s hosts does not have very much “drive”, so to speak, to mutate toward less fatalities. That especially if most spread is done when symptoms are minor. Given the random elements present, I’d guess there is at least a 10 % chance a new, more contagious variant would not lose any per-individual lethality, and maybe a 5% chance that lethality could actually increase.
One factor is definite in my area: Mitigation outside of vaccinations has gone to near zero.