To the editor: The occurrence of virus variants is not an inevitable accident. It was pretty predictable. As Dr. Anthony Fauci said, the virus can only mutate if it recurs. (“California’s coronavirus strain looks increasingly dangerous: ‘The devil is already here.'”)
Our nation’s approach to the pandemic was what I call the ‘thermostat policy’. As the hospitalization and mortality rates increase, we get stuck. If the rates go up then we open. This is the way a thermostat works, and its function is to keep things warm.
We do not want to keep the virus warm. We do not want the mortality rate to be a happy medium. What we have done is that the coronavirus offers ample opportunities for recurrence, so there are now several new variants, some of which are more contagious and deadly than the previous ones.
To get rid of a virus, which we have done successfully with smallpox, it is necessary to ruthlessly and completely shut down for a long period of time a typical infection, and then be prepared to take any outbreak anywhere in the world inoculate and isolate. This will have to be done for each new variant that is vaccine resistant.
Fortunately, we now have decades of advances in molecular biology the ability to design a new vaccine within weeks, but the time it takes to test, produce and distribute doses is still many months, so it will not be easy be to get this virus in advance. But the relaxation of each time things cool down makes the situation worse.
Brent Meeker, Camarillo
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To the editor: To date, SARS-CoV-2 variants have become more transmissible, 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 lethal to people under 50 years of age.
The daily average of 70,000 new cases in the United States, a number that caused the closure recently, provides ample room for the virus to change and recombine into increasingly dangerous variants.
We find ourselves in silence as the next wave of more dangerous viruses approaches.
Mark Tracy, Managing Director, Carlsbad
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To the editor: The article on California’s tension is unbalanced and therefore misleading. His alarmist tone draws attention at the expense of its responsibility.
As stated, the new strain has been ‘more than 50% of all coronavirus samples in the state since September’. This quite possibly contributed to the fall and winter.
But now the boom is done, with the rate of virus replication in Los Angeles County and Orange County at about 0.6 new cases for every person infected, indicating that the spread is slowing down rapidly. The same is true in other parts of the state.
In other words, the pandemic has been fading in California despite the presence of the new tribe since September.
Further examples of this are to quote the levels of neutralizing antibodies that are against the virus in a test tube without explaining the role of T cells in immunity, without explaining the role of T cells in immunity. incompleteness of the article.
The empirical evidence speaks for itself. Despite the new variants that have been in circulation for months, the cases and the transmission rate are declining, as immunity to vaccines and previous infections is gaining ground.
Michael Brant-Zawadzki, Managing Director, Newport Beach
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To the editor: Apparently the glass is half empty at The Times. Your article does Los Angeles no favors by arousing fear with an absolutely worst-case scenario report, including a quote from a researcher who said, “The devil is already here.”
Just digging deeper suggests that the vaccines are only moderately less effective against the California variant, and that their effectiveness has not yet been quantified. It does not sound to me like a total ruin.
Esquire magazine specifically quoted The Times in its piece, “We Need to Prepare for the Possibility That Something Good Might Happening.”
William Goldman, Palos Verdes Estates
This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.