Covid continues to evolve and it continues to do so in response to whatever is holding it back most.

In the case of Omicron BA.4 and BA.5, this is immunity: either from vaccines or previous infection.

Nature:

Increasingly, scientists think that variants including Omicron and Alpha probably originated from months-long chronic SARS-CoV-2 infections, in which sets of immune-evading and transmissibility-boosting mutations can build up

Whatever holds back a species most is what it will gain the greatest advantage from mutating to defeat. Since most of the world outside of China is no longer bothering with even the most basic non-vaccine measures to stop the spread of Covid, this means vaccines and natural immunity.

By now readers should be familiar with how exponential growth works, and these charts should make you twitchy.

Now, since nearly the beginning of the pandemic this blog has warned about how waves of reinfections would cause spiraling Long Covid numbers. It was obvious this would be the case, both because it appears possible to get it each time you’re infected and because even when there are not obvious symptoms, Covid often does some permanent organ damage, including brain damage, which shows up when people are tested.

Here’s the current known damage in the US, just for cases with actual symptoms.

And here’s the math of reinfection:

You don’t want to get infected and you don’t want to get reinfected, especially now that BA.4 and BA.5 are immune escape variants.

Where I live, in Ontario Canada, all mask mandates have been removed. For a while people kept wearing them anyway, but what I’m seeing now is that even in something like the subway or in streetcars, which are tailor made for infection, more than half of people aren’t wearing masks.

And unless you’re wearing a properly fitted N95 mask or a respirator, masks don’t protect you that well: masks primarily protect other people if you’re infected, and remember that it’s very easy to be infected and infectious and not even now it, plus in places with inadequate sick leave, of which Ontario is one, most people who know they’re infected still have to go to work if they can: they can’t take two weeks off, they need the money, and their bosses don’t have to let them have the time off.

So continue to take this seriously. I wear n95 masks when I’m inside buildings or in a large crowd outside. The pandemic isn’t over, and our response to it is essentially to rely on luck that eventually a variant will be produced which is even more infectious but much milder.

That may happen, but we don’t if it will or when. Till then, I advise taking reasonable precautions, and don’t believe it when a new variant happens and people say “oh, it’s milder.” It might be slightly milder in the sense of not very likely to kill you, without being milder in the sense of less likely to cause Long Covid.

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