UPDATE: Omicron 'in retreat' and England in 'next chapter' of COVID fight, says Sajid Javid

unless it can evade the prior immunity.

It would seem Omicron did a moderately good job of that, no?

I don't really see that as an indictment of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccs (Moderna seeming to do slightly better) -- much the same happens regularly on a slightly longer time scale with flu. Sometimes quicker if a flu variant or strain that the vaccine makers didn't expect to make a strong showing pops up early on in a particular year.

BUT, with probably billions of people infected and most developing ridiculously high virion levels, and given "past performance" of COVID developing variants, the odds the next wily variant is already "out there" or being generated now are IMO over 50%. Given COVID's spread characteristics and low CFR, and immunities* that will wane, I don't think any assumptions can be made about hospitalizations and CFR being any lower than, say, Delta.

*Natural immunity should be best, but then again I look to colds and particularly flu, over which COVID has noticeable advantages. My questions would be, where is Pfizer on coming up with vaccine mods tailored to new variants, and, have we learned enough about COVID to make those mods in a predictive manner, with any degree of success? Can a predictive vaccine even get approval? How would efficacy against a variant that doesn't exist yet even be determined?

The same questions apply to Moderna, but, raise another, which is how close are they to full FDA approval?

Additionally, can Moderna even get full FDA approval of what is presently a somewhat outdated vaccine? My understanding is that without full approval, modifications would have to go though the still several month process necessary to get a new EUA -- heck the variants might be two new generations along by the time the new vacc was distributed...

None of this is an argument for continued mandates and gross infringements of our liberties. Put simply, we are not China, or even South Korea.

My only certainty is that the incompetence of the Biden Administration will apply. :-(

“ have we learned enough about COVID to make those mods in a predictive manner, with any degree of success? Can a predictive vaccine even get approval? How would efficacy against a variant that doesn’t exist yet even be determined?”

There has been great progress. Computational analysis has identified the key features of coronaviruses (epitopes) that give broad immunity to the most variants, and which ones to exclude, to prevent unwanted side effects. It is now theoretically possible to craft vaccines that are broadly effective against coronaviruses generally, using such an optimal set of epitopes - not just variants of COVID-19, but also SARS, MERS, etc..

The Army (Walter Reed) has developed a candidate vaccine like this, that has been successful in lab and animal testing, and has already begun the first phase of human testing. A contracting competition will occur, to select a commercial partner for the larger human trials, and future production.

I doubt that we will see it approved in 2022, but it would likely be ready to scale up quickly, if there was another emergency.

Flu itself kills very few people. Yet it is IMO very legitimately considered a quite dangerous disease for some fairly large groups of people.

Then as the figures were gamed...

Do you similarly contest CDC's flu fatalities numbers each year (once they've gone through the death certificates)?

Will CDC drastically drop their COVID fatality count for 2021 (and, in early 2023, for 2022) once all the death certificates have been reviewed?

Or, do you hold that when it comes to COVID and death certificates, most doctors and medical examiners are felons? Or that the "data" people at CDC cannot produce the death certificates to back up their 2021 report when it comes out?

If your contention is correct, every state is reporting falsified numbers too, and not one Republican Governor or legislature (or even a County Board, SFAIK) has taken legal action on that?

As of this moment, CDC reports (estimates, IMO) 858,909 COVID fatalities in the US, to date. I don't think there's much argument those persons are not dead. How many of those people do you think would have lived a day or more longer if they had not been infected with COVID?

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