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Originally Posted by sahajesh
Great post CajunBMW - let's hope we learn from this globally.
As I recall, SARS and MERS were localised and handled as such, but this one is different.
One Q - does the fact that large swathes of the world don't have vaccines yet mean that new variants are more likely to pop up in those places? Like the very new variant from Cameroon, for example?
If so, then Govts need to help get vaccines everywhere.
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"As I recall, SARS and MERS were localised and handled as such, but this one is different."
Yes. They are related. SARSCOV1 was more deadly with ~10% of infections being fatal, but it really only became infectious when symptoms appeared. Thus authorities could do a lockdown effectively and targeted. The spread was bigger than people realize and the outbreak although localized really was around 2 years. MERS remains a threat but is hard to get, but very bad with around a 30% case fatality rate.
"One Q - does the fact that large swathes of the world don't have vaccines yet mean that new variants are more likely to pop up in those places? Like the very new variant from Cameroon, for example?"
The vaccine issue could be of serious concern. But if omicron is really infecting everyone then the vaccine issue may be lessened. But you have a good point. That anywhere that we see unchecked replication means that a variant could arise. More importantly as these variant arise and it change species we keep allowing the virus to change. As I pointed out above, one hopes it stays very infectious and very mild, but that can change. This point about vaccination is why we (collectively) need to support vaccinations around the world.