You could have, and should have, set your clock by this very obvious non-revelation. The UK is one of the most highly vaccinated countries in the world. The COVID immunity is wearing off, as predicted.
Even a country which famously “doesn’t want experts” should be able to get it through its thick head – This simply isn’t how viruses operate. They mutate. Different strains are literally that different.
Herd immunity, that idiot mirage, hasn’t happened, also as predicted. It’s a virus. Herd immunity was never going to apply. For example – Influenza immunization was given every year for exactly that reason. No-brainer? Yes.
The news, however grim, is also Stage 2 of the stunningly lengthy education process. A new viral strain has emerged in the UK, the catchily-named AY.4.2. This may well be the viral counter to vaccines, or not. Worth exploring on that basis, though.
What to do? It’s easy enough and already available, in theory.
Vaccines, therefore, can only be so effective for so long. There’s no doubt the vaccines have saved people from some hideous consequences, but they cannot do the full job of immunization.
Nor can anything else, at the moment. The pandemic has effectively made COVID part of the environment. So a global approach is required.
Therefore:
- A logistically simple, cheap, easily deliverable approach like the new Merck medication is required.
- The Merck approach reduces viral replication, slowing the spread.
- It does NOT “cure” COVID. Nor do the vaccines.
- What it does do is progressively attack the possible infection rate. The fewer viruses able to replicate, the lower the infection rate should be.
Pretty rosy, eh? The problem is that this option will take time to work. Trillions upon trillions of viruses have already replicated. There is no possible parameter for how long it would take to reduce infections to a “normal” level. The major deal here is that it WILL work, over time.
Nor is there any indication, yet, to what extent the vaccines have upgraded the immune system response. It’s not so much an imponderable factor as extremely hard to gauge. It may well be that an “evolutionary” response is in process; natural adaption to COVID.
That’s definitively NOT “herd immunity”, by the way; it’s the natural adaptive process in relation to diseases, and it takes generations. Influenza is a case in point. It was lethal to an unexposed population and became much less so, but it took nearly a century to do that.
…So let’s see how this works. A good anti-viral-replication medication should do the trick, at least statistically, and probably eventually in the real world.
