By: Gleb Tsipursky
12/30/2020
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/12/30/should-you-be-worried-about-new-covid-strains
Should
you be worried about the new COVID strains originating in the UK, South Africa,
and elsewhere, and recently identified in the US?
The
authorities claim there's no cause for alarm. They’re focusing on concerns
about vaccine effectiveness, saying the vaccine will be highly successfully
against the new strain.
They’re
mostly right. While some legitimate concerns have been raised about the
vaccines potentially being 10-20% less effective against the new strains, this
small difference shouldn’t make you too worried.
However,
another aspect of these new strains should make you very worried indeed:
they’re much more infectious. Unfortunately, the implications of their
infectiousness has received little news coverage, which is cause for serious
alarm.
Such
complacency reflects our sleepwalking in the pandemic’s early stages, despite
many warnings from myself and other risk management experts, leading us to fail
to prepare successfully for this situation. We’re about to make the same
mistake with seriously tragic consequences.
