Scientists say a 'doomsday' variant after delta isn't likely. But here's what's possible

[TexasTowelie]

At the very end of a Stanford panel about coronavirus variants last week, someone finally posed the question that seems to haunt everyone now: Just how much worse than the highly infectious delta variant can this virus get?

The answers were both cautiously reassuring and disconcertingly unsatisfying. The “doomsday scenario,” in which a variant is completely resistant to antibodies and remains highly transmissible, is unlikely, said Arjun Rustagi, an infectious disease fellow at Stanford. But beyond that, many experts were wary about guessing.

“This virus has a massive genome. There’s still room for it to play, and it’s really hard to make predictions on where it’s going to go,” Dr. Catherine Blish, an infectious disease expert and Rustagi’s mentor, said Wednesday during Stanford grand rounds, an educational panel for medical students and physicians.

In an interview earlier, she was more bluntly averse to making a prediction. “We have no idea what’s going to happen next. It’s hard to imagine it can get much more transmissible than it is with delta,” she said. “But the only consistency of these past almost two years of pandemic is how often I’ve been wrong.”

Read more: https://www.sfchronicle.com/health/article/Scientists-say-a-doomsday-variant-after-16386430.php

[sheshe2]

1. Nice note to go to bed on.

*sigh*

[TexasTowelie]

2. Sorry about that.

Sleep well.

[sheshe2]

3. Not you fault, TT.

It is our new fact of life.

[MustLoveBeagles]

4. I couldn't read it because it's behind a paywall but thanks for posting anyway

[TexasTowelie]

5. Try clearing your browser history (also cookies and trackers).

If that doesn't work, then paste the link into a different browser.

I did not encounter a paywall and I'm not a subscriber.

[MustLoveBeagles]

6. Thanks

I'll try again tomorrow. Heading for bed.

[RainCaster]

7. Try opening in your browser's super privacy window

That usually works for me.

[nilram]

8. (jaw drop)(f-word)

[BumRushDaShow]

9. "the only consistency of these past almost two years of pandemic is how often I've been wrong."

THIS is what needs to be acknowledged from ALL of them.

First they dismissed all sorts of symptoms that people were reporting that WERE caused by COVID-19, thus much of the early infection rate is far under-counted because people were being refused tests.

Then they insisted there was no such thing as "asymptomatic" spread.

Then in an effort to preserve hard-to-find PPE, they went to the extreme of assuming that COVID-19 virus particles and droplets would almost ALL be less than 0.3 microns and thus "masking" was useless, so don't bother.

Then they went to the opposite view to insist that the expelled droplets could not aerosolize at all.

Then they all but said that children were immune.

And at the moment, they are sticking with the idiocy about "mild cases" and dismissing them as if they were nothing more than a simple cold or flu, generally pooh-poohing "long haul".