JC ON THE VARIANT OF THE DAY

I’m old enough to remember yesterday, when the newspapers breathlessly reported about the terrifying new XBB.1.5 variant, which has been traced — not to China — but to New York City. (I’ll give you $5 if you can remember the label of the previous dominant variant.)

Here are the low-lights from the Cell study linked above:

The researchers only tested antibodies from VACCINATED people. And guess what? Boosted people are doing worst, for some reason, and it didn’t matter whether they’d had covid or not:

Our data demonstrate that these new subvariants were barely susceptible to neutralization by sera from vaccinated individuals with or without prior infection, including persons recently boosted with the new bivalent (WA1/BA.5) mRNA vaccines… Alarmingly, in the “3 shots [Wild Type]” cohort, neutralization titers were far lower against BQ.1, BQ.1.1, XBB, and XBB.1, with reductions of 37-fold to 71-fold compared to [the original strain] D614G… Therefore, it is alarming that these newly emerged subvariants could further compromise the efficacy of current COVID-19 vaccines and result in a surge of breakthrough infections as well as re-infections… both BQ and XBB sublineages are now completely resistant to bebtelovimab, leaving us with no authorized antibody for treatment use.
My goodness. It sounds like a complete failure of the mRNA shots. If I were jabbed, and I’m not, I would want my money back at this point. Who could’ve predicted this? Probably only a few ‘fringe epidemiologists.’

Here’s the money line from the study:

We have collectively chased after SARS-CoV-2 variants for over two years, and yet, the virus continues to evolve and evade.

Indeed. Coronaviruses evolve and evade. What a novel concept. If only we’d known this could happen.

“You’re not going to get covid if you have these vaccinations.”

— Joseph Robinette Biden, CNN Town Hall, July 2021.

Finally, can anyone remember any FLU variant names? All I can recall is “type A” and “type B.” Of course, can anyone remember all these covid variant labels?