We have provided fertile ground for viral mutations with repeated reopenings

For the publisher: The appearance of viral variants is not an inevitable misfortune. It was quite predictable. As Dr Anthony Fauci said, the virus can only mutate if it replicates. (“California coronavirus strain looks increasingly dangerous: ‘The devil is already here.'”)

Our nation’s approach to the pandemic has been what I call the “thermostat policy”. If hospitalization and death rates increase, we block. If the rates go then, we open. 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 remain a happy medium. What we’ve done is provide the coronavirus with plenty of replication opportunities, so now there are several new variants, some of which are more infectious and deadly than the previous ones.

To get rid of a virus, which we have achieved with smallpox, it is necessary to ruthlessly and completely lock down for a period as long as a typical infection, and then to be ready to vaccinate and isolate around it. any epidemic anywhere in the world. This will need to be done for each new variant that may be resistant to the vaccine.

Fortunately, decades of advancements in molecular biology now give us the ability to design new vaccines in weeks, but the time needed to test, produce and distribute doses is still several months, so it won’t be easy to get ahead of that. virus. . But, loosening the lockdowns whenever things calm down only make the situation worse.

Brent Meeker, Camarillo

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For the publisher: To date, variants of SARS-CoV-2 have become more transmissible, more deadly and, perhaps, less vulnerable to the immune response stimulated by vaccination. At this rate of change, it is only a matter of time before virus variants develop that exhibit these characteristics and are more deadly for people under the age of 50.

The daily average of 70,000 new cases in the United States, a number that as recently as last July precipitated lockdowns, offers ample room for the virus to mutate and recombine into ever more dangerous variants.

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We find ourselves in a lull as the next wave of ever more dangerous viruses approaches.

Mark Tracy, MD, Carlsbad

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For the publisher: The article on the Californian strain is unbalanced, and therefore misleading. Its alarmist tone attracts attention to the detriment of responsible information.

As reported, the new strain represented “more than 50% of all coronavirus samples that have been submitted for genetic analysis in the state” since September. This may well have contributed to the fall and winter push.

But now that surge is over, with the virus’s replication rate in Los Angeles County and Orange County at around 0.6 new cases for every person infected, indicating that the spread is slowing rapidly. The same is true in other parts of the state.

In other words, the pandemic is fading in California despite the presence of the new strain since September.

Citing the levels of neutralizing antibodies failing against the virus in a test tube, without explaining the role of T cells in immunity, and ignoring the extremely low number of re-infections with the new strain in the millions who have been infected , are other examples of this incompleteness of the article.

The empirical evidence speaks for itself. Despite new variants that have been circulating for months, cases and transmission rates are dropping, as immunity to vaccines and previous infections sets in.

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 doing Los Angeles a disservice by instilling fear with a worst-case report, including a quote from a researcher who said, “The devil is already here.”

Digging a little deeper indicates that the vaccines are only moderately less effective against the California variant, and their effectiveness has yet to be quantified. It does not seem to me to be totally doomed.

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.