For the publisher: The appearance of virus variants is not an inevitable misfortune. It was quite predictable. As Dr. Anthony Fauci said, the virus can only mutate if it replicates. (“The California coronavirus strain looks increasingly dangerous: ‘The devil is already here.'”)
Our country’s approach to the pandemic has been what I call a “thermostat policy”. If hospitalization and death rates are increasing, we will close. If rates are going up then we open up. This is how a thermostat works and its function is to keep things warm.
We don’t want to keep the virus warm. We do not want the death rate to maintain a happy middle ground. What we did was provide the coronavirus with ample opportunities to replicate, so there are now several new variants, some of which are more infectious and more deadly than the previous ones.
To get rid of a virus, which we have successfully done with smallpox, it is necessary to lock relentlessly and completely for as long as a typical infection, and then be prepared to vaccinate and isolate around any outbreak anywhere in the world. . This will have to be done for each new variant that may be resistant to vaccines.
Fortunately, decades of advances in molecular biology now give us the ability to design new vaccines in weeks, but the time it takes to test, produce and distribute doses is still many months away, so it will not be easy to anticipate this virus. But relaxing the blockages every time things get cold only makes the situation worse.
Brent Meeker, Camarillo
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For the publisher: To date, SARS-CoV-2 variants have become more transmissible, more lethal, and possibly less vulnerable to the immune response stimulated by vaccination. At this rate of evolution, it is only a matter of time before virus variants develop that have these characteristics and are more deadly for people under 50.
The daily average of 70,000 new cases in the United States, a number that until July of last year precipitated blockages, provides ample room for the virus to mutate and recombine in increasingly dangerous variants.
We find ourselves in a lull as the next wave of increasingly dangerous viruses approaches.
Mark Tracy, MD, Carlsbad
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For the publisher: The California variety article is unbalanced and therefore misleading. His alarmist tone draws attention to the detriment of reporting responsibly.
As stated, the new strain accounted for “more than 50% of all coronavirus samples that have been subjected to genetic analysis in the state” since September. It may well have contributed to the fall and winter wave.
But now that increase has ended, with the virus replication rate in Los Angeles County and Orange County at about 0.6 new cases for each infected person, indicating that the spread is rapidly decreasing. The same is true in other parts of the state.
In other words, the pandemic is disappearing in California, despite the presence of the new strain since September.
Citing levels of neutralizing antibodies that fail against the virus in a test tube, without explaining the role of T cells in immunity and disregarding the excessively low number of reinfections with the new strain in the millions of infected, are other examples of this incompleteness of the article.
The empirical evidence speaks for itself. Despite new variants circulating for months, cases and transmission rates are plummeting, as immunity from previous vaccines and infections takes hold.
Michael Brant-Zawadzki, MD, Newport Beach
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For the publisher: Apparently, the glass is half empty at The Times. Your article is not doing Los Angeles any favors by arousing fear with a report of the worst case scenario, including a quote from a researcher who said, “The devil is already here.”
Going a little deeper indicates that vaccines are only moderately less effective against the California variant, and their effectiveness has not yet been quantified. This does not sound like a total condemnation to me.
Esquire magazine specifically cited The Times report in its article, “We need to prepare for the possibility that something good can happen.”
William Goldman, Palos Verdes Estates
This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.