Free Republic

A highly mutated new variant of the virus that causes Covid-19 has countries on alert as scientists scramble to understand how far it has spread and how well our immunity will defend against it. The new variant, called BA.2.86 and nicknamed Pirola by variant hunters on social media, has more than 30 amino acid changes to its spike protein compared with its next closest ancestor, the BA.2 subvariant of Omicron, according to Dr. Jesse Bloom, who studies viral evolution at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle. “This makes it an evolutionary jump comparable in size to that which originally...

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the nation should move away from restrictive measures such as quarantines and social distancing and focus on reducing severe disease from Covid-19. In new guidelines released Thursday, the agency no longer recommends staying at least 6 feet away from other people to reduce the risk of exposure -- a shift from guidance that had been in place since the early days of the pandemic. The shift is a sign of how much has changed since the beginning of the pandemic more than two years ago. Nearly the entire US population has...

As waves of new coronavirus variants circulate the globe, one thing has become clear: human immunity against the virus fades over time....But some of the nuances around why and how immunity against Covid-19 fades remain a mystery. The steepest drops in immunity – which come about four to five months after vaccination and up to eight months after infection, but can vary – are against Covid-19 symptoms, getting infected and getting sick. Protection against severe outcomes, hospitalization and death remains much higher for a longer period of time, but even this decays to some degree, especially for the elderly and...