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Many infectious disease experts have slammed a report of an imminent new variant of the coronavirus far worse than delta or lambda, calling the report “sowing fear,” or stoking undue fear among the public by amplifying worst-case scenarios improbable.
“Is there a variant of Doomsday that skips vaccines, spreads like wildfire, and leaves more of its victims much sicker than anything we’ve seen yet?” reads a recent article published in Newsweek Magazine. “The chances are not high that we will see such a triple threat, but the experts cannot rule it out.”
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Dr Michael Osterholm, epidemiologist and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, told Newsweek that “the next variant” “could be Delta on steroids,” the reporter writing the delta variant “optimism shattered “in defusing the pandemic with the deployment of the vaccine.
“We have every reason to be optimistic,” Dr. Tracy Beth Høeg, epidemiologist and associate researcher at the University of California, Davis, told Fox News, adding in part: “That line” Delta has now broken that optimism. “is not appropriate. I would indeed consider this fear to be alarmism.”
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As viruses evolve, they create variants, says Dr. Marc Siegel, Fox News medical contributor and professor of medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center. Increasing the number of shots in the arms helps prevent emerging variants by reducing the possibility of spreading and mutating.
“Epidemiologists and infectious disease physicians should continue to study the variants, but it is not necessary (or healthy in my opinion) for the public to be concerned about the worsening of the variants,” Høeg wrote, suggesting that Americans demand higher standards of journalists.
Many doctors reiterated to Fox News that COVID-19 vaccines remain very effective in preventing serious illness, hospitalizations and deaths despite the spread of worrying variants, including delta, as also noted in the report.
According to Dr. Monica Gandhi, infectious disease and HIV physician at UCSF, we cannot eliminate COVID-19 due to its high transmissibility and our lack of native immunity, but we can control the virus, which can ultimately cause mild symptoms in a small fraction of those vaccinated and severe disease outbreaks among those who have not yet received the vaccines. She also highlighted the complexity of the immune system and noted that “T cells form a global response through the spike protein and variants cannot escape T cell immunity. T cells protect us from serious disease. “
Several experts told Fox News that when needed, the drug makers behind mRNA vaccines, like Pfizer and Moderna, can adjust the shot to better protect against variants with a fast turnaround time. .
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“The reason the delta variant wins is because of the transmissibility [it is]”Siegel said.” It’s not like a lethal version of this is going to compete and beat the Delta variant; the only thing that could take over from the delta variant is the one that is more contagious … I don’t see that changing enough, so it suddenly re-infects everyone who has had it before and escapes the vaccine. “
Aaron Glatt, chief of infectious diseases and chair of the Mount Sinai South Nassau Department of Medicine, noted that he had some of the same concerns outlined in the Newsweek report, but the question is the likelihood of those concerns becoming reality.
“Everything in this article is correct but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily going to happen, these are possibilities,” he said, later adding: “We don’t know what the next variant will be. have any idea of some of the strains that are spreading around the world but which will come to the United States or which will become predominant in different parts of the world, Lambda or some of the others, is really unknown. “
According to Newsweek, “All in all, the chances of a virus in the population producing a much more dangerous variant within a year would normally be extremely low. But when billions of people are infected with billions of copies of a virus, all the bets are open .”
However, Høeg refutes this claim, writing: “Based on what we’ve seen with previous variants, I don’t think there is any reason to believe that future variants will be more likely to cause more severe disease. “
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California-based lung disease specialist Dr Imran Sharief told Fox News that “new variants will continue to emerge until we achieve herd immunity and the virus loses its strength.”
In the future, Americans must change their lifestyles and take preventative measures until we achieve collective immunity, Sharief said, predicting that the virus could lose its “potency” from here at least. 2024 “.
Høeg, a researcher at UC Davis, concluded in writing: “It is a dangerous and destructive game for journalists to constantly speculate on the worst possible scenarios (especially without strong evidence that they are probable).
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