It has been two years since Covid-19 started spreading out of the industrial city of Wuhan in China, but the pandemic has not yet run out of steam. Just as some dared to hope that – thanks to speedy vaccines and medicines such as dexamethasone – the world was settling into an uneasy truce with its contagious foe, another variant of the Sars-CoV-2 virus arrived to shatter our complacency.
The Omicron variant, now present in 57 countries including the UK, has prompted the British government to extend mask mandates; introduce vaccine passports for some venues; and advise working from home. “Plan B” is an attempt to limit a looming wave of infections that, according to projections, could lead to 1,000 to 2,000 hospitalisations a day at its peak. Omicron infections are thought to be roughly doubling in the UK every three days. Ministers, who are urging people to get their boosters, have not ruled out making vaccinations compulsory.
That would allow Omicron to slip past the body’s immune system to a greater degree than existing variants, including Delta. Scientists are still trying to work out whether the new variant spreads faster than others; whether it is breaching the immune systems of the vaccinated or previously infected; and whether this translates to a higher risk of severe illness and death. A milder illness that is highly transmissible can still be deadly if healthcare systems are overwhelmed.
The Omicron variant, originally known as B.1.1.529 and now officially designated a “variant of concern” by the World Health Organisation (WHO), is an unhappy reminder that the world remains mired in a pandemic. As of 30 November 2021, the WHO recorded more than 260 million cases and 5.2 million deaths due to “coronavirus disease 2019”, or Covid-19, the disease caused by the Sars-CoV-2 virus. Both numbers are likely to be gross undercounts, kept artificially low through a lack of testing and diagnostic capacity, as well as varied reporting criteria between countries.
The mythical future that so many confidently predicted, in which Covid-19 becomes a mild, endemic (constantly circulating) illness akin to a common cold, seems as remote in December 2021 as it did in December 2020. “In my view, we remain closer to the start of this pandemic than the end,” says Jeremy Farrar, until recently an adviser to the UK government on the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), and director of the Wellcome Trust, a wealthy charitable foundation focused on global health. Uncertainty remains his watchword, given different strains of the virus are ricocheting around the globe infecting billions of people who show enormous differences in ethnicity, age, material wealth, nutritional status, and natural and vaccine-induced immunity to Covid-19.
That diversity, Farrar tells me, offers a rich playground for a novel pathogen: “In modern history, we have not seen a pathogen evolve and be in so many people all around the world. Continued transmission means continued evolution, and there is enormous evolutionary pressure on the virus to continue to evolve and exploit niches. The idea that pathogens become less virulent over time is, I think, overstated – we just don’t know if that will happen, or even if that were to happen how long it would take. We forget that, with obvious exceptions like HIV, Sars-1 and Nipah virus, most pathogens have been circulating in humans for centuries or millennia.” Hippocrates wrote of a flu-like illness in 412BC; seasonal influenza, so named because the illness was once thought to be influenced by the stars, still kills about 400,000 annually.
In many ways, the arrival of Omicron vindicates those, including Farrar and the former prime minister Gordon Brown, who have long argued that the pandemic will only end once the world is vaccinated. In a time of contagion, nobody is safe until everyone is safe. For WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who has repeatedly begged rich countries to share their vaccine spoils, the new variant symbolises “prolonged vaccine injustice”, in which rich countries triple-jab their citizens and hoard the surplus until doses expire, while health workers in poor countries perish for want of a first dose.
Of the 3.3 billion people around the world now fully immunised, only 6 per cent are in Africa, where Omicron was first identified. “The longer we take to deliver vaccine equity,” Dr Tedros tweeted recently, “the more we allow the virus to circulate, mutate and potentially become more dangerous.”
This was also the deeply felt message of every person interviewed for this report. It was no surprise to find vaccine equity the top concern of Richard Hatchett, head of the non-profit Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness and Innovations (CEPI). Hatchett’s organisation seed-funded the Moderna and Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccines in January 2020, something of which he is “very proud”.
When I ask Hatchett to describe his lowest point in the pandemic, he responds: “I’m inclined to interpret that emotionally – and I would say that has been watching the equity gap emerge and widen to such a profound extent.” Though the Covax scheme, a centralised source of vaccines supplied at minimal prices, has helped low- and middle-income countries, Hatchett says, “we haven’t prevented that gap from emerging – and that is tragic and unnecessary. The world could have done better.”
It was less expected to hear Professor Chee Yew Wong, professor of supply chain management at Leeds University Business School, alight on global immunisation as the key fix for a disrupted world economy. Wong explained how the pandemic had thrown global supply chains into expensive disarray, thanks to a mix of border closures; export bans and restrictions on medical supplies; labour shortages caused by factory workers fleeing cities and deciding not to return; containers being in the wrong place (and costing ten times more than usual); and lorry drivers shunning ports due to backlogs.
While wealthy countries such as the United States are now frantically nurturing homegrown critical supply chains (Wong points out that the US, anxious to become less dependent on China, is showing new interest in the Democratic Republic of Congo, home to the rare minerals mined for electric car batteries), he believes “there’s no way out until everyone is vaccinated”.
In the dystopian fiction movies the scientists are seen as a source of trust and wisdom in their expertise however in the real world the scientits are seen as the villains and enemy.
The treatment and contempt of scientits by The UK media along with the British public and politicians it is like we are all living in the movie Idiotcracy except none of this entertaining.
The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous
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It has been two years since Covid-19 started spreading out of the industrial city of Wuhan in China, but the pandemic has not yet run out of steam. Just as some dared to hope that – thanks to speedy vaccines and medicines such as dexamethasone – the world was settling into an uneasy truce with its contagious foe, another variant of the Sars-CoV-2 virus arrived to shatter our complacency.
The Omicron variant, now present in 57 countries including the UK, has prompted the British government to extend mask mandates; introduce vaccine passports for some venues; and advise working from home. “Plan B” is an attempt to limit a looming wave of infections that, according to projections, could lead to 1,000 to 2,000 hospitalisations a day at its peak. Omicron infections are thought to be roughly doubling in the UK every three days. Ministers, who are urging people to get their boosters, have not ruled out making vaccinations compulsory.
That would allow Omicron to slip past the body’s immune system to a greater degree than existing variants, including Delta. Scientists are still trying to work out whether the new variant spreads faster than others; whether it is breaching the immune systems of the vaccinated or previously infected; and whether this translates to a higher risk of severe illness and death. A milder illness that is highly transmissible can still be deadly if healthcare systems are overwhelmed.
The Omicron variant, originally known as B.1.1.529 and now officially designated a “variant of concern” by the World Health Organisation (WHO), is an unhappy reminder that the world remains mired in a pandemic. As of 30 November 2021, the WHO recorded more than 260 million cases and 5.2 million deaths due to “coronavirus disease 2019”, or Covid-19, the disease caused by the Sars-CoV-2 virus. Both numbers are likely to be gross undercounts, kept artificially low through a lack of testing and diagnostic capacity, as well as varied reporting criteria between countries.
The mythical future that so many confidently predicted, in which Covid-19 becomes a mild, endemic (constantly circulating) illness akin to a common cold, seems as remote in December 2021 as it did in December 2020. “In my view, we remain closer to the start of this pandemic than the end,” says Jeremy Farrar, until recently an adviser to the UK government on the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), and director of the Wellcome Trust, a wealthy charitable foundation focused on global health. Uncertainty remains his watchword, given different strains of the virus are ricocheting around the globe infecting billions of people who show enormous differences in ethnicity, age, material wealth, nutritional status, and natural and vaccine-induced immunity to Covid-19.
That diversity, Farrar tells me, offers a rich playground for a novel pathogen: “In modern history, we have not seen a pathogen evolve and be in so many people all around the world. Continued transmission means continued evolution, and there is enormous evolutionary pressure on the virus to continue to evolve and exploit niches. The idea that pathogens become less virulent over time is, I think, overstated – we just don’t know if that will happen, or even if that were to happen how long it would take. We forget that, with obvious exceptions like HIV, Sars-1 and Nipah virus, most pathogens have been circulating in humans for centuries or millennia.” Hippocrates wrote of a flu-like illness in 412BC; seasonal influenza, so named because the illness was once thought to be influenced by the stars, still kills about 400,000 annually.
In many ways, the arrival of Omicron vindicates those, including Farrar and the former prime minister Gordon Brown, who have long argued that the pandemic will only end once the world is vaccinated. In a time of contagion, nobody is safe until everyone is safe. For WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who has repeatedly begged rich countries to share their vaccine spoils, the new variant symbolises “prolonged vaccine injustice”, in which rich countries triple-jab their citizens and hoard the surplus until doses expire, while health workers in poor countries perish for want of a first dose.
Of the 3.3 billion people around the world now fully immunised, only 6 per cent are in Africa, where Omicron was first identified. “The longer we take to deliver vaccine equity,” Dr Tedros tweeted recently, “the more we allow the virus to circulate, mutate and potentially become more dangerous.”
This was also the deeply felt message of every person interviewed for this report. It was no surprise to find vaccine equity the top concern of Richard Hatchett, head of the non-profit Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness and Innovations (CEPI). Hatchett’s organisation seed-funded the Moderna and Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccines in January 2020, something of which he is “very proud”.
When I ask Hatchett to describe his lowest point in the pandemic, he responds: “I’m inclined to interpret that emotionally – and I would say that has been watching the equity gap emerge and widen to such a profound extent.” Though the Covax scheme, a centralised source of vaccines supplied at minimal prices, has helped low- and middle-income countries, Hatchett says, “we haven’t prevented that gap from emerging – and that is tragic and unnecessary. The world could have done better.”
It was less expected to hear Professor Chee Yew Wong, professor of supply chain management at Leeds University Business School, alight on global immunisation as the key fix for a disrupted world economy. Wong explained how the pandemic had thrown global supply chains into expensive disarray, thanks to a mix of border closures; export bans and restrictions on medical supplies; labour shortages caused by factory workers fleeing cities and deciding not to return; containers being in the wrong place (and costing ten times more than usual); and lorry drivers shunning ports due to backlogs.
While wealthy countries such as the United States are now frantically nurturing homegrown critical supply chains (Wong points out that the US, anxious to become less dependent on China, is showing new interest in the Democratic Republic of Congo, home to the rare minerals mined for electric car batteries), he believes “there’s no way out until everyone is vaccinated”.
In the dystopian fiction movies the scientists are seen as a source of trust and wisdom in their expertise however in the real world the scientits are seen as the villains and enemy.
The treatment and contempt of scientits by The UK media along with the British public and politicians it is like we are all living in the movie Idiotcracy except none of this entertaining.
The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous