Please read my December 21, 2020 post, Mutant SARS-CoV-2 Viruses, Perceived Risk, Actual Risk, which has aged reasonably well since its publication. The only factor I continue to under-estimate at all instances is the notion of “back to normal”, which from the onset of the Diamond Princess I have been consistently wrong with.
I have very consciously been trying to avoid any political discussions of COVID-19 on this site, except when things interfere with the financial markets.
For the most part, the “known unknowns” have been well priced into equities.
However, we might have a game-changer that will require some re-thinking.
Insert today’s scare headline, the B.1.1.529 variant:
The issue here is regarding the psychology of the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccinations.
Most people believe they work. Indeed, because of this popular support, governments have been able to coerce those that do not into taking them.
The issue is that just like influenza and HIV, you might be able to take something to address the clinical symptoms (which the existing vaccinations have done) versus dealing with the transmission of SARS-CoV-2.
Without preventing the transmission of SARS-CoV-2, vaccinations to mask clinical symptoms of COVID-19 are a delaying tactic at best.
The best analogy I can make here is the advent of computer viruses and anti-virus software. Initially there were programs (McAfee and Norton Anti-virus) that you ran in MS-DOS to search executables for specific code snippets (containing viruses). They worked initially (sometimes producing false positives), and you had to get updates to tell the program the new code snippets of new viruses that were coded and spread around. However, technology advanced (such as auto-modifying code) and conventional anti-virus software is practically useless as a form of computer security (it is beyond the scope of this post to discuss this fascinating matter). Anti-virus software continues to be sold today and all it serves is to slow down the computer system and provide a false sense of protection.
Likewise in the biological world, mutations are rapidly rendering COVID-19 “anti-virus software” (vaccinations) obsolete. You might be able to protect against the “old school” strains, but for the new software versions (variants), you have much less protection.
This is the result of having a population monolithically vaccinated with the same anti-virus software. It doesn’t take much of a code modification to work around it.
What isn’t discussed about the B.1.1.529 variant is whether the severity profile is more or less severe than Delta. This remains to be seen.
Unlike computer viruses, which are engineered to have a specific impact, biological viruses are positively selected for transmissibility, and not for clinical severity. Indeed, too severe clinical symptoms would work against transmissibility, just as it did for SARS-CoV-1.
The changing psychology will be increasing public awareness that the existing COVID-19 vaccinations do a minimal job of protecting against transmission. They were fighting yesterday’s battle. It will be sold to the public as a necessary “first step” to fighting COVID-19, with much more to go, even though it is pretty evident the “vaccinate everybody” strategy that was taken has proven to be incorrect. The correct strategy was to vaccinate those that are at high risk, but now that mostly everybody is vaccinated, there is going to be a new strain that will dominate and this might be B.1.1.529. The question at this point is whether this new variant exhibits increased severity of clinical symptoms.
In the past my ability to predict public reaction to SARS-CoV-2 has been terrible. If B.1.1.529 picks up, from historical reaction over the previous 18 months, the cultural of zero risk will force more sanctions, “to prevent the spread”.
Governments always want to be seen doing something, even if their actions have no effect on the outcome (e.g. outdoor mask mandates).
They will also never admit that their past strategies have been terrible to preserve whatever credibility they have remaining to implement new measures.
My guess at present is that the Covid-sensitive sectors which got hit from March to June of 2020 will probably face another dial-back. Until I see how B.1.1.529 evolves, I’ll reserve judgement on timing.
