Welcome to the Virus Briefing, your comprehensive guide to the latest news and expert analysis on the coronavirus pandemic and other outbreaks. |
 | | Yoshi Sodeoka |
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These days, it seems as if outbreaks are everywhere. |
And that was just in the past few weeks. Are outbreaks gaining steam, or are we just paying closer attention? To find out, I turned to my colleague Carl Zimmer, a veteran science writer and the author of "A Planet of Viruses." |
What's the story? More outbreaks, or more public attention? |
It's a combination. It does seem as if in recent decades there have been more emerging diseases. One idea why is that humanity is growing and making more demands on the environment. We're pushing into lots of ecosystems and coming into contact with lots of viruses that we didn't have any contact with before, and there are more opportunities for spillovers. We also have international airplane travel and lots of trade, so we have lots of different ways to spread these pathogens around really quickly. |
Another reason we're finding more emerging diseases is that scientists are actively looking for them and have better tools to find them. We still could be doing a lot more, but it's a big difference from 20 or 30 years ago. |
Take this recent Ebola outbreak in Uganda. Africa has built up a very strong system for monitoring Ebola and quickly jumping into action when there is an outbreak. So we have a lot of information now about how many people have gotten it, and how many people have died, and what kind of Ebola it is. Unfortunately, it's not the strain of Ebola that we have a good vaccine for. But now we can see these things in hours or days as opposed to not seeing them at all. |
The response to Covid offered a glimpse at what could be done if the world was focused on a new disease. Vaccines typically take 10 years or more to go from their design to getting into people's arms — it took under a year to show that Covid vaccines were effective. |
But you can't do it for free. These efforts require a lot of scientists, doing a lot of research. They require big clinical trials. I should also add that it turns out that, with the coronavirus, it wasn't all that hard to make a vaccine that could provide protection. |
Compared with viruses like H.I.V., coronaviruses are a pretty simple target. Of course, the coronavirus is evolving, and so now we have to be thinking harder about long term protection. But if the next pathogen that emerges is more like H.I.V. than Covid, when it comes to vaccines, it could be a real problem. That would require a much more sophisticated approach. For example, we could have the first trials come through and show no efficacy at all. That would be terrible in the middle of a pandemic. We were lucky this time around that didn't happen. |
Is there any conventional wisdom about where the next pandemic might come from? |
It's not possible to say. There will be another pandemic, but we just don't know enough about pathogens to say which one it will be and how bad it will be. We're still in the early days of getting to know these bugs. |
Is it possible that another once-in-a-lifetime pandemic will occur soon? |
I guess I would take issue with Covid being a once-in-a-lifetime event. I was alive when H.I.V. started to emerge as a problem. Since then, it's killed tens of millions of people. We actually deal with a lot of viruses and other pathogens all the time. Richer countries may have less trouble with them, but they're still a big problem for the world. So nobody should just sit back and say, "Well, we got Covid, so the next generation can worry about the next big one." There's no justification for that. |
Turning to Covid, why haven't we seen a new variant since Omicron? |
As far as scientists can tell, it seems like Omicron has hit on a really winning formula for being a coronavirus. And other versions of the virus just can't compete. They haven't found an evolutionary path to go up against Omicron. |
What does that mean for the future of the pandemic? |
It's really hard to make predictions about the future of evolution. But what we're seeing is that Omicron has a huge amount of space left to explore in terms of gaining new mutations and becoming even better at spreading among people. |
And it's still possible that there's another SARS-CoV-2 out there that's not descended from Omicron that could suddenly jump out and take over. A new variant could be hiding right now inside of someone with a chronic infection. Or it might be in some animal. White tailed deer can hold on to these viruses for months and it's possible that it could come out of a deer in a new infectious form that our immunity can't fight against. |
What does the future of the pandemic look like? |
Cases are going down in some parts of the United States, but we still have over 400 people dying per day right now. And if you look back over the history of this pandemic, every time that the curve went down, there would be some people saying, "That's it, it's over." And every time in the past two and a half years, it would bottom out and then start to climb again. |
I think we need to be prepared for a winter surge caused by a new version of Omicron. The updated boosters will definitely be able to help. But they are targeted at BA.5, and by December, I wouldn't be surprised if BA.5 is gone. Hopefully what takes its place will be similar enough that the updated vaccines will still provide good protection. But ultimately, we're going to have to figure out a way to get out of this evolutionary merry-go-round where we're constantly trying to catch up with the latest variant. There needs to be a better strategy. |
When you look over the world of viruses, what are you keeping your eye on? |
I'm not watching this individual virus or that individual virus, so much as I'm keeping an eye on the systems that we're building, or that we should be building. We need strong systems in place to recognize when new viruses are emerging. We need strong systems to be constantly developing vaccines and treatments for them. And we need public health systems that actually get vaccines to everyone, not just the rich people who can buy them. |
At this point in the pandemic, how are these systems looking? |
It's a mixed bag. There's a whole system of virus sampling and gene sequencing that's happening across Africa, which is fantastic. But some of the systems, particularly on the public health side, are not in great shape. Some experts have said that we're actually in worse shape now than we were before Covid. And keep in mind, about two and a half billion people aren't vaccinated for Covid at all. So if you can't even get billions of people vaccinated for the current pandemic, how do we expect to be able to be really ready for a new one in years to come? |
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 | | "We have more people leaving than coming," said Tommy Cheung, a member of the Legislative Council in Hong Kong.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times |
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Will Hong Kong bounce back? |
But uncertainty lingers over the new approach. Hong Kong still prohibits visitors from going to places considered high risk like restaurants, bars and gyms during their first three days in the city, and many industry leaders say the changes won't be enough to pull it out of an economic recession and restore its once-clamorous social life. |
There are deeper worries, too. The fact that Hong Kong began to diverge from China's "zero Covid" policy only after Beijing gave its blessing has touched off worries over the city's broader loss of autonomy. And as the city scrambled to get a grip on a Covid outbreak earlier this year, its leaders lurched back and forth between more and less restrictive policies, causing an exodus, especially of foreigners. |
What else we're following |
- New federal government data suggests that vaccinated people are 14 times less likely to contract the virus, CNN reports.
- Sexual health clinics are straining under the weight of the monkeypox response, Stat News reports.
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- New York health authorities said vaccination efforts were stalling in the face of opposition from anti-vaccine groups, CBS reports.
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- The C.D.C. saw a rise in three respiratory viruses in children this summer; a rhinovirus and two strains of enterovirus, Politico reports.
- A modified herpes virus has shown promise as a cancer therapy, the BBC reports.
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Coping with the pandemic is how I discovered I have undiagnosed autism. Although the pandemic was in itself anxiety-inducing, the forced isolation turned out to be the beginning of my healing. Who knew a pandemic-induced shutdown was just what I needed? Reintegrating socially has been difficult. It's as if the shutdown allowed me to put down a weight I have been holding above my head my whole life — and I'm not very willing to pick it up again. I have become comfortable inside my small bubble of working from home and socializing mostly with just my husband and children. I am coping by setting boundaries and allowing myself to say no without feeling guilty. I am coping by still wearing my KF94 masks without caring about being judged in a room full of completely maskless people. I am growing more confident. And I am healing. — Jennifer Larsen, West Jordan, Utah |
Let us know how you're dealing with the pandemic. Send us a response here, and we may feature it in an upcoming newsletter. |
| Thanks for reading. I'll be back Friday — Jonathan |
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