Moody Monday: the incoming wave of infections
2022-Oct-10, Monday 09:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mellowtiggergood news: Today's rapid test nasal swab still shows negative for COVID-19 on day 3. I called the Minnesota Judicial Branch help center promptly at 8:30am to find out if I have a court date. They couldn't find one, so that's good. I'll just wait here until they call or email me with a hearing date about my arrest.
I was intending to write up "the era of sudden death" for today, but I'm not in the mood. Maybe next week.
There are bad variants of SARS-CoV-2 coming. There's such a high baseline for virus transmission already, that it's hard to call it the next "wave" accurately. Some of these incoming variants are less about the respiratory system and more about the gastrointestinal system. (As such, I expect nasal swabs like I'm using today to become even less accurate at identifying infection.) Also, if you know anyone taking Evusheld because they are immunocompromised already, let them know that these variants don't care. They are highly evasive. Be extra careful to avoid infection for the next few months.
The single most interesting thing about this next wave is that it includes variant XBB. (Or maybe the convergent evolution.) I've mentioned before these cross-variants, indicated by "X". This one has its strongest hold in Singapore, with only a few cases in other countries (including the USA). It may be the first time that a crossbreed becomes dominant. We'll see. I sure wish we could stop infecting people, so we avoid more cross-variants. Why risk combining the most dangerous qualities of all the new mutations?
Edit 2022 Oct 11 Tue:
For the curious, this tweet includes a graph that shows how many of the recent variants are related. It also includes human-friendly names instead of just the PANGO designations.
I was intending to write up "the era of sudden death" for today, but I'm not in the mood. Maybe next week.
There are bad variants of SARS-CoV-2 coming. There's such a high baseline for virus transmission already, that it's hard to call it the next "wave" accurately. Some of these incoming variants are less about the respiratory system and more about the gastrointestinal system. (As such, I expect nasal swabs like I'm using today to become even less accurate at identifying infection.) Also, if you know anyone taking Evusheld because they are immunocompromised already, let them know that these variants don't care. They are highly evasive. Be extra careful to avoid infection for the next few months.
The single most interesting thing about this next wave is that it includes variant XBB. (Or maybe the convergent evolution.) I've mentioned before these cross-variants, indicated by "X". This one has its strongest hold in Singapore, with only a few cases in other countries (including the USA). It may be the first time that a crossbreed becomes dominant. We'll see. I sure wish we could stop infecting people, so we avoid more cross-variants. Why risk combining the most dangerous qualities of all the new mutations?
Edit 2022 Oct 11 Tue:
For the curious, this tweet includes a graph that shows how many of the recent variants are related. It also includes human-friendly names instead of just the PANGO designations.