Omicron immune escape: Why should you care?

Viruses have no political affiliation and don’t care what we think. All they care about, like teenage boys, is how to perfect their reproductive skills.
Darwin continues to be hard at work on the SARS-CoV-2 virus, producing new, more contagious variants, like Omicron (SARS-COV-2, B.1.1.529) around the world. Future viral mutations and the emergence of additional variants of concern is a certainly, as long as there are significant unvaccinated populations capable of harboring the virus, giving it time to mutate successfully.
Early data suggest that Omicron, first detected in Botswana and South Africa in November, is more easily spread than the original SARS-CoV-2 virus, although its ability to cause more severe illness or death is still unknown. And it may be that Omicron is the beginning of a “flattening of the curve” of this respiratory virus similar to the prehistoric viral origins of the coronavirus that underlie the common cold.
Conceivably, the initial emergence of a coronavirus was also quite a lethal event to early humankind and over time, the virus mutated to a more contagious, but generally less lethal form, as herd immunity took hold and our immune system was able to mount some protective long-term cellular immunity mediated by memory T or B cells.
A prevailing concern is whether the Omicron variant will have immune-escape properties due to its abundance of mutations in the spike protein, thereby making our current vaccines less effective. Recent laboratory data from Israel suggests that a third booster dose of the now fully FDA approved Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine provides good protection from the Omircron variant.

Having received a booster shot showed a level of antibody neutralization against the Omicron variant about 100 times higher than those who received only two shots, likely protecting these boosted individuals from developing severe illness, although more clinically insignificant breakthrough infections may still occur and become more common.
Another possible scenario is the Delta variant will continue to accelerate in the unvaccinated, while Omicron will infect those who are only partially immune due to natural infection or only having had one or two doses of an mRNA vaccines. The idea of two coexisting viral variants disproportionately affecting two types of populations – the unvaccinated and the partially immune, while hypothetical, follows cold viral logic.
Again, viruses are opportunistic symbiotic organisms and will pick the path of least resistance to ensure their reproductive success. It’s our collective failure to act that keeps these pathological options open.

David Segarnick Ph.D., is senior vice president, Medical & Scientific Services, Evolution Health Group, Pearl River, N.Y. He is assistant professor, pharmacology, physiology & neuroscience, Rutgers Medical School, Newark, N.J. He lives in Upper Black Eddy.

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