The ongoing spring surge in COVID-19 infections isn’t quite as bad as it looks. Yes, cases are spiking in big eastern states including Florida, New Jersey, New York, and especially Michigan.
But there’s a silver lining. Because so many of America’s seniors have been vaccinated, more younger workers are getting infected this time around— and those younger people are far less likely to get really sick or die.
However, the surge—driven by the spread of dangerous new variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and a reckless rush by governors and mayors to end a year of mask mandates and social distancing rules—isn’t just an immediate threat to unvaccinated people.
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It also represents a long-term danger to the whole country. More cases mean more opportunities for the novel coronavirus to mutate. And the more the pathogen mutates, the greater the chance it will evolve into an even deadlier variant—“lineage” is the scientific term—than even the ones we’re dealing with now.
It’s even possible that, given time and a certain critical mass of cases, SARS-CoV-2 could mutate into a lineage that can overpower our vaccines.
That’s the worst-case scenario—and potentially the biggest cause for concern as the spring surge spreads across the United States. “The greater the spread of the virus populations to new individuals, because of relaxation of social measures, the more the chances of new mutations,” Edwin Michael, an epidemiologist at the Center for Global Health Infectious Disease Research at the University of South Florida, told The Daily Beast.
If all this sounds like conjecture—it’s not. The steady mutation of the novel coronavirus over the 16 months since it first took root in China is a big reason America’s experiencing another surge.
Any given patient’s load of the virus mutates every two weeks, on average. Niema Moshiri, a geneticist at the University of California-San Diego, compared each case to a slot machine that an infection pulls twice a month. Jackpot is a new and deadlier lineage.
Now imagine tens of millions of Americans with active COVID infections, with each case pulling that handle every 14 days. The more gamblers, and the more time they have to gamble, the better chances of a big win for SARS-CoV-2. Our goal, Moshiri said, should be “to lessen the number of parallel slot machines we give to the virus.”
Just a few weeks ago, it looked like we were close to beating the virus. Cases, hospitalizations and deaths were dropping as the U.S. vaccination campaign ramped up. But then B.1.1.7, a more transmissible lineage that first appeared in the United Kingdom last fall, became dominant in the Northeast, Michigan, and Florida at the same time those states were relaxing—or totally ending—their mask and distancing rules. Cases began rising again, especially among people under the age of 65.
So far, hospitalizations and deaths haven’t ticked up at the same rate—and some epidemiologists predict they won’t. After all, seniors over 65 are an order of magnitude more likely to get seriously ill or die of COVID. And three-quarters of seniors are fully vaccinated, thanks to states prioritizing them for the first few months of inoculations.
But states’ success in vaccinating older Americans belies the sheer number of people who still aren’t vaccinated—among them, the roughly quarter of the population that has signaled some resistance to getting a shot, even when it’s available to them.
Just over 64 million Americans have been fully vaccinated as of Wednesday, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s 19 percent of the population.
We might need to inoculate 80 percent of Americans before we reach population-level “herd immunity,” according to Irwin Redlener, the founding director of Columbia University’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness. That includes children, who regulators haven’t even approved for the vaccines yet.
Getting there could take months. “We’re not talking herd immunity yet because we are nowhere near that,” Cindy Prins, a University of Florida epidemiologist, told The Daily Beast.
While urging people to wear their masks, keep their distance and stay home if they can, experts warn against panic. Even non-fatal COVID can have long-term health effects for patients of all ages, but the current lineages aren’t all that deadly for the people who account for a greater and greater share of cases.
The next lineage might be, though. And rest assured—there will be a next lineage. “Based on analyses of other antigenically evolving respiratory viruses such as influenza virus and CoV-229E, I expect SARS-CoV-2 will continue to evolve over the coming years,” Jesse Bloom, an investigator at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Washington State, told The Daily Beast.
We won’t know until it shows up just how transmissible and deadly any new lineage is, and whether it might pull off a trick that the current major lineages haven’t been capable of so far. It might “evade” the vaccines. “This would spell trouble,” Michael said.
If that happens, all bets are off. We’re back to square one, with no immunity to a nasty, fast-spreading virus. And worse, as a country we’ll still be tired of masks and social-distancing.
The best way to head off some super-destructive future lineage is to give the current lineages fewer chances to evolve. “Continued masking and social distancing are critically important, especially now,” Elias Sayour, an associate professor of neurosurgery and pediatrics at the University of Florida, told The Daily Beast.
And get vaccinated as soon as possible, too. There are fewer and fewer excuses for not doing so. The feds expect supply of vaccine to exceed demand for vaccine as early as two weeks from now.
Just because many of the people getting sick in the current surge probably aren’t going to die of COVID doesn’t mean we’re not flirting with disaster. If you’re young and unvaccinated, worry less about the virus you might catch—and probably survive—in coming weeks. Worry more about the much worse form of the virus you might help to create if you let today’s COVID play the slots inside your cells.
