The New York Times recently described COVID as having “a Darwinian quality. As variants emerge, they compete with one another to become dominant. The most contagious variants tend to win the competition because they can spread more quickly. It’s survival of the fittest.”
Hello, I’m Dr. Brooke Hildebrand Clubbs at Southeast Missouri State University. I recently joined the millions of people around the world who have had COVID-19. I don’t know if I was infected with the BA.5 Omicron subvariant, which is the one currently linked to the surge in cases, but I do know that despite being vaccinated and boosted, I was pretty miserable for almost a week.
The Omicron subvariants appear to be more contagious but not more severe, especially in people who have been vaccinated and boosted according to the CDC. This means the number of people in the hospital may go up because there are more people infected, but the percentage of people getting really sick remains the same.
After living with the virus for almost two and half years, the onset of BA.5 reminds us that there is a middle ground between allowing COVID to dominate daily life and pretending that the pandemic is over. That said, get vaccinated and boosted, get a second booster if you are over 50, and consider masking up in crowds. When there is a high level of community transmission, the virus will mutate. We don’t know which variant could emerge next as the fittest or how contagious and severe it will be. We have the tools now so we don’t need to all stay home again, but trying to reduce the number of cases still matters in the long term.
Resources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/21/briefing/ba5-covid-surge-paxlovid.html
https://www.krcu.org/health-science/2021-07-14/to-your-health-covid-variants
