How do we know a pandemic's over?

[dann]

Mainly of interest to Danes:

Nye COVID-19-tal: Det undgik vi ved at lukke ned (Videnskab.dk, Mar 10, 2025)
Østeuropæiske data viser, hvor galt det også kunne være gået i Danmark. Og at svenskerne ikke bevægede sig rundt så frit, som vi tror.

New COVID-19 numbers: What we avoided by locking down
Data from Eastern Europe shows how bad things might have been in Denmark. And that the Swedes didn't move around as freely as we tend to think.

Notice that one of the authors of the article, Lone Simonsen, was one of the advocates of 'hybrid immunity' (or even 'super immunity), i.e. of abandoning all other precautions and restrictions after vaccinations and 'living with the virus'.

Lone Simonsen: »Det er snart tid til at stoppe med restriktioner og massetest« (Videnskab.dk, Jan 23, 2022)
KOMMENTAR: Fremover skal vi leve med virussen på samme måde, som vi lever med sæsoninfluenza, lyder det fra pandemi-forskeren

Lone Simonsen: Soon it's time to stop restrictions and mass testing
Commentary: From now on we have to live with the virus the same way we live with the seasonal flu, the pandemic researcher says

Den spanske syge er et pragteksempel på, hvordan pandemier ender (Videnskab.dk, Mar 14, 2022)
Vaccineret + smittet = superimmunitet

The Spanish flu is a wonderful example of how pandemics end
Vaccinated + infected = super immunity


In early 2022, a professional virologist should have known better! Denmark saw the steepest rise in C19 deaths at that point of the pandemic. Cumulative confirmed COVID-19 deaths per million people (Our World in Data)
'Super immunity' was a lie, and the C19 death toll in Denmark doubled from Nov 2021 to April 2022.

 

[dann]

I look at the variant trends in combination with wastewater data to get a sense of the actual variant growth/decline rate. Mike's comment is dead on. Current variant mix are weak contenders. Unfortunately, the overall surveillance is declining so increasing uncertainty.

More from Mike Honey today, taking its starting point in a Ryan Hisner thread yesterday:

Ryan Hisner on X (Threadreader), Mar 12, 2025:
Do you remember BA.3—the weakling cousin of BA.1 & BA.2 that seemed to take the worst from each & had weaker ACE2 binding than even the ancestral Wuhan Virus?
After 3 years, BA.3 is back.
And it is transmitting.
Who saw this coming?
1/13

Mike Honey on X, Mar 13, 2025:
The latest example of a potential new variant evolving in a long-term chronic infection has been detected.
As Ryan H describes on this thread, it is descended from the BA.3 lineage

BA.3 was last in circulation about 3 years ago. So presumably it has been evolving in a chronic case since then, and recently managed to transmit to other people. The latest sample is from a different province and with one added Spike mutation (K356T).

(...)

Here’s the lifecycle of BA.3.*, from it’s emergence in Nov 2022 to it’s apparent extinction around 6 months later (from my “Archive” dataviz). It only ever briefly reached 2% frequency in South Africa and then Poland, and was insignificant elsewhere.

If this new BA.3 saltation is successful, it would quite likely be another “reset” of the immunity landscape (like BA.2.86/JN.1), with most people suddenly being susceptible. With the current healthcare settings, this would likely drive another big wave.

But that "if" is obviously hypothetical.

 

[dann]

AOC, Sanders tell supporters to mask up for West Coast town halls (Fox News, Mar 14, 2025)
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., are taking the "Fighting Oligarchy" rallies out West next week – and advising supporters to mask up to participate.
Five years after the COVID-19 pandemic, Fox News Digital can confirm that the RSVP for the events in Denver and Las Vegas includes guidance that "masks are advised for all attendees of this event."
A post shared by conservative podcaster Stephen L. Miller on Friday about the Denver event had many wondering why masks would be advised for an outdoor event in 2025.
(...)
In addition to the mask guidance, the flier for next Friday's event with Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez includes typical safety precautions for large public events, including a request for anyone not feeling well to stay home.

Considering what happened during the DNC in August' 24 (see previous posts in this thread), masking up for a mass event, even if it's outdoors, sounds like a good idea.

Fox News also quotes reactions from minimizers and/or MAGAs, who see it as a conspiracy:

"Still trying the Covid panic politics," the top comment said.
"Was this from the year 2020?" a content creator asked.
But another reply countered: "They don’t want the paid attendees found out."

"Paid attendees" seems to be MAGA's current version of 'crisis actors'.
On X, Mike Hoerger, PhD MSCR MBA, uses a reference to the Sanders/ACO call for masking as an introduction to his new thread about the current state of the pandemic. It includes a video (50:05 min.):

1) 5-yr Anniversary of the WHO Pandemic Declaration
10 waves
Covid mortality rivals lung cancer
8 infections/person by 2030
Long Covid as catastrophic
Death trajectories becoming complex
"During Covid" as anti-science rhetoric
Serious ppl take Covid seriously

And apropos of "During Covid as anti-science rhetoric," notice Fox News' "five years after the pandemic ..."

 

[dann]

Wrong thread

 

[dann]

Great collection of articles from MSNBC "commemorating the fifth anniversary of the World Health Organization declaring the novel coronavirus a pandemic":
The Covid Test (MSNBC, Mar 11, 2025)
Covid broke America — we still haven't healed (Dr. Kavita Patel)
How Trump allowed Covid to ravage his strongest supporters (Paul Waldman)
I’m a funeral director. The Covid pandemic was the most harrowing stretch of my career. (Malcolm Gibson)
How the American people have memory-holed Covid (Jarvis DeBerry)
When Covid hit Black Americans hard, too many white Americans shrugged (Dr. Uché Blackstock)
The Covid pandemic forced ER doctors like me to battle a different kind of virus (Dr. Esther Choo)

Look, Fox News, this is how it's done!
From one of the articles:
"Five years after the start of the pandemic, America stands fractured yet paradoxically transformed."
Getting it right really isn't that complicated.

 

[Chanakya]

Met with a school friend yesterday, after many years. I was amazed to find him, of all people, hold forth on how vaccines were a hoax, and Covid completely overhyped. And then he passionately starts lecturing, apropos of nothing at all, about how Zelensky was Biden's puppet. After that I kept quiet, not wanting to part with an old friend on less than cordial terms. But it's a weird world we live in. A downright crazy world.

 

[dann]

Fractured, weird and crazy, indeed, but why leave him with delusions that harm him as well as you yourself and the rest of us?
Friendship requires honesty. The latter sometimes terminates friendships, but without it, what remains is the illusion of friendship. I have put an end to 'friendships' a couple of times that way. It's unpleasant every time, but it's not something I ever regretted.
You chose polite dishonesty as an easy way out. I don't think you can call that parting with someone on 'cordial terms'.

Letting delusional people continue to be delusional is a sure way to let the world continue to be crazy and, in the case of antivaxxers, exposed to diseases that would otherwise be harmless.
Resist!

This is not the thread for discussing Ukraine, but I don't think it's wrong to describe Zelensky as the puppet of Biden and his Western allies.
(I think Denmark has given more aid to Ukraine per capita than any other country. To some extent, we're puppets, too. To some extent we're also perpetrators, too willing to support U.S. wars, for instance.)
The West has been waging a proxy war in Ukraine with no intention of letting it escalate into an actual war, i.e. WW3, with Russia and its allies.
So far, WW3 has remained on the level of hybrid warfare, for the most part. Russia's war against Ukraine and the US attack on Yemen and other countries, mainly in the Middle East, go beyond that level.

 

[dann]

Another article that doesn't pretend that the pandemic is over:

Too many catching Covid-19 in hospital, experts say - but precautions being rolled back (RNZ.co.nz, Mar 18, 2025)
Five years since the pandemic began, Covid remains New Zealand's most harmful infectious disease. But experts are concerned lessons learnt in infection prevention and control are being ignored, and too many people are getting sick and dying after catching the virus in healthcare settings.
Based on Australian data, it is likely between 10 and 15 percent of Covid deaths are from hospital-acquired infections, representing hundreds of people. Avoidable infection and death are also costly to the health system.
Meanwhile, Covid policies continue to be rolled back.

I had almost managed to forget the word nosocomial ...

ETA:
New book, Carl Zimmer's Airborne: The Hidden History of the Life We Breathe (Penguin)

ETA:

Morning Star on X, Mar 15, 2025
The NHS continues to say Covid spreads primarily through ‘droplet and touch’ while the WHO emphasises airborne transmission, meaning vulnerable patients and healthcare workers face unnecessary risks, reports RUTH HUNT
The dangerous confusion over Covid transmission (MorningStar, Mar 15, 2025)

 

[Chanakya]

Fractured, weird and crazy, indeed, but why leave him with delusions that harm him as well as you yourself and the rest of us?
Friendship requires honesty. The latter sometimes terminates friendships, but without it, what remains is the illusion of friendship. I have put an end to 'friendships' a couple of times that way. It's unpleasant every time, but it's not something I ever regretted.
You chose polite dishonesty as an easy way out. I don't think you can call that parting with someone on 'cordial terms'.

Letting delusional people continue to be delusional is a sure way to let the world continue to be crazy and, in the case of antivaxxers, exposed to diseases that would otherwise be harmless.
Resist!

This is not the thread for discussing Ukraine, but I don't think it's wrong to describe Zelensky as the puppet of Biden and his Western allies.
(I think Denmark has given more aid to Ukraine per capita than any other country. To some extent, we're puppets, too. To some extent we're also perpetrators, too willing to support U.S. wars, for instance.)
The West has been waging a proxy war in Ukraine with no intention of letting it escalate into an actual war, i.e. WW3, with Russia and its allies.
So far, WW3 has remained on the level of hybrid warfare, for the most part. Russia's war against Ukraine and the US attack on Yemen and other countries, mainly in the Middle East, go beyond that level.

Agreed. That isn't friendship, merely an illusion. Didn't quite think that through at the time. (That is, I met him after years, and probably won't meet him for years now, if ever. So it made sense not to talk about contentious matters. But I suppose that thrashing those issues out, while that may have made for unpleasantness, but maybe, just maybe, that might have cleared the air, and cleared the way for us to keep in touch now. ...Oh well. Like I said, didn't think this through at the time.)

As far as Zelensky being Biden's puppet, I disagree completely. And I say this as someone who sees Biden's Israel policy as an unmitigated disaster. But Ukraine isn't Israel, and I support Ukraine completely, for what that is worth. ...But you're right, this isn't the place for that discussion.

 

[dann]

Not a word about COVID-19!
UK:

tern on X, Mar 21, 2025:
Absolutely staggering that anyone claim the covid pandemic is over in schools in England.
Look at these graphs of absence in UK schools and then consider the key quote from the DfE summary of the pupil absence report:
"THE MAJORITY OF ABSENCE (in 2023/2024) WAS DUE TO ILLNESS"

Tern on X, Mar 21, 2025:
THE MAJORITY OF THE ABSENCE WAS DUE TO ILLNESS.

 

[dann]

David Joffe on X, Mar 23, 2025:
"If immune damage were was real, we would be seeing more TB"- Balloux
Things you wished you never said.
@fitterhappierAJ
Tuberculosis Is Making a Comeback

Tuberculosis Is Making a Comeback - Bacterial disease reaches highest level in US in past 14 years (Newser, Mar 22, 2025)
Tuberculosis continued to rise again in the US last year, reaching its highest levels in more than a dozen years. More than 10,300 cases were reported last year, an 8% increase from 2023 and the highest since 2011, according to preliminary data posted this month by the CDC. Both the number of cases and the rate of infections rose. The new CDC stats aren't a count of how many people were newly infected, but rather of how many people developed a cough or other symptoms and were diagnosed, per the AP. Rates were up among all age groups, and 34 states reported an increase.

• Cause: CDC officials say the rise is mainly due to international travel and migration. The vast majority of US TB cases are diagnosed in people born in other countries. Other illnesses that weaken the immune system and allow latent TB infections to emerge may also be at play.

For people who are not familiar with Balloux, there's this on X.

 

[dann]

Continued from post 1,290, the beginning of a new thread:

tern on X, Mar 23, 2025:
I'm indebted to @GrayD001 and @karamballes for pointing out something astonishingly profound in this image.
I think this is *phenomenally important*...I think this may be one of the most important threads I've ever written.

Can people who are not on X read threads on Thread Reader?
I'm not sure, but here is a link: Thread by @1goodtern on Thread Reader App

 

[Clutch Cargo]

"How do we know a pandemic's over?"​

A better question is how do we know that illnesses that have been attributed to "the pandemic" really are caused by "the pandemic"?

 

[Hercules56]

"How do we know a pandemic's over?"​

A better question is how do we know that illnesses that have been attributed to "the pandemic" really are caused by "the pandemic"?

Please take you Conspiracy Theory stuff elsewhere.

 

[Clutch Cargo]

Please take you Conspiracy Theory stuff elsewhere.

What Conspiracy Theory? I only asked a question.

 

[Hercules56]

"How do we know a pandemic's over?"​

A better question is how do we know that illnesses that have been attributed to "the pandemic" really are caused by "the pandemic"?

Ok, please give us an example of what you're trying to get at.

 

[Clutch Cargo]

Ok, please give us an example of what you're trying to get at.

I asked a question. It is your job to provide examples, not mine.

 

[Pixel42]

I asked a question. It is your job to provide examples, not mine.

What makes you think it is the job of anyone here to educate you?

If you really want to know the answer to your question, why not just look it up? That information is freely available. This is a discussion forum, not wikipedia.

 

[Clutch Cargo]

What makes you think it is the job of anyone here to educate you?

It's not up to me.

If you really want to know the answer to your question, why not just look it up? That information is freely available. This is a discussion forum, not wikipedia.

I don't trust wikipedia.

 

[Hercules56]

I asked a question. It is your job to provide examples, not mine.

Ok, fine. Your question has zero examples of such a thing occurring.

 

[Pixel42]

It's not up to me.

It's not up to you to obtain freely available information you wish to know? Then who is it up to, pray?

I don't trust wikipedia.

Then obtain the information from a source you do trust.

 

[dann]

Australia: COVID-19 deaths five times higher than for flu in 2024 (Asia Insurance Review, April 4, 2025)
Five times as many Australians are dying from COVID-19 than influenza five years after the outbreak of the global pandemic, research published by the Actuaries Institute shows.

New analysis by the Institute’s Mortality Working Group of mortality between January and November 2024 found 3,676 people died from COVID-19 – 69% more than predicted. The COVID-19 deaths were five times more than the 728 recorded for influenza.​

COVID-19 deaths five times higher than for flu in 2024 (Actuaries Institute, Mar 20, 2025)

But what do actuaries know about COVID-19, right?! It's not their job to know about viruses, it's not their field of study, is it?!

 

[dann]

It's not up to you to obtain freely available information you wish to know? Then who is it up to, pray?

Then obtain the information from a source you do trust.

His question reminds me of tweets like these from antivaxxers:

Gary Orlando on X, Mar 29, 2025
You presume it's true.
It's not.
Pick one disease.
Show the cause.
Explain how the vaccine addresses the cause.

Gary Orlando on X, Mar 31, 2025
Did you ever think about what happened? do you know they planned it all out and it was a psychological operation? What was so different about it compared to the flu that everybody gets? When did they ever lock down mask and inject everybody before for the same thing?

Gary Orlando on X, Mar 31, 2025
You're just repeating what somebody said.
Nothing is contagious.
How do you prove contagion?
It's amazing you believe all the nonsense after all the moving goalposts.
"Virus stops with vax!" Then..Doesn't stop infection! Then. Doesn't stop transmission! Derp. You're dumb

Debating them is as pointless as explaining geography to flat-earthers.

 

[dann]

This is the thread where the focus on San Diego started, so I'm moving it back here (from Science, Mathematics Medicine and Technology) where I think it belongs:

So to recapitulate:
San Diego County Respiratory Virus Surveillance Report, June 30, 2024, to March 1, 2025 (SanDiegoCounty.gov, Mar 6, 2025)
COVID-19: Cases 24,320; Deaths 234
Influenza: Cases 35,086; Deaths 174
RSV: Cases 4,690; Deaths 6

1) So far, C19 has killed more people than the flu during the current flu season, i.e. since June 2024.
2) C19 and influenza both kill more old people than young.
And when we look at the number of cases and deaths caused by the two infectious diseases, it becomes clear that the case-fatality rate of C19 is much higher than the CFR of influenza.

San Diego County Respiratory Virus Surveillance Report, June 30, 2024, to Mar 29, 2025 (SanDiegoCounty.gov, April 3, 2025)
COVID-19: Cases 25,354; Deaths 248
Influenza: Cases 37,400; Deaths 197
RSV: Cases 5,403; Deaths 10

23 flu deaths and 14 C19 deaths in the past four weeks.
A conspicuous difference from the Australian numbers mentioned in post 1,302, but it's been summer there (moving into autumn now), so not exactly flu season yet.

 

[dann]

USA - currently pretty low. Beginning of a short thread:

JWeiland on X, April 5, 2025
April 4th update:Transmission is declining in most areas, and all regions are in the "Low" category except the South, which remains at moderate.
LP.8.1 is already mature at about 70%, and barely made an impact.
260,000 new infections/day
~1 in 127 currently infected

1 in 127 currently infected' is higher that I would have thought.

 

[dann]

UK, however:
tern on X, April 3, 2025
Are you ready.

 

[marting]

1 in 127 currently infected' is higher that I would have thought.

That's about right for a 10 day window after infection assuming their Y axis estimates are good.

 

[dann]

UK - and everywhere else:
A Comprehensive Beginners Guide to the Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic (UK Edition) … or Why and How to Minimise Reinfection (WHN Science Communications, Mar 12, 2025)

Outline​

• Is the ongoing debate on COVID-19 a conspiracy theory?
• But hasn’t COVID gone away?
• Don’t previous infections and the vaccine make me immune to COVID?
• But isn’t COVID mild now anyway?
• Surely if all this was happening, I would see it around me?
• What about immunity debt?
• I always wash my hands, won’t that protect me?
• Do masks work?
• But if masks really work, why aren’t they still in hospitals?
• Can’t I just stay away from people who are obviously ill?
• Hasn’t the government and public health always worked to protect our health?
• If all this is true, aren’t there people trying to raise the alarm?
• What can I do to protect myself and others?

 

[dann]

In post 1,302, there was a link to a report on the death toll of C19 in Australia in 2024 made by actuaries.
Another one, based on estimates made by actuaries but about the expected death toll in the USA:

Mike Hoerger on X, April 8, 2025
Do you remember #DuringThePandemic when an American was dying of Covid every 3 minutes and the economy was in freefall?
I do. Because it is today. See next Tweet.
1/3

Mike Hoerger on X, April 8, 2025
The wisest actuaries at a company worth >$16 billion that has been in business 161 years and *insures the insurance companies* against catastrophic losses like wildfires and terrorist attacks suggest 175,000 Americans will die of Covid in 2025.
2/3

Mike Hoerger on X, Mar 31, 2025
PMC Update on #ExcessDeaths
09,000-175,000 people in the U.S. are expected to die as a result of COVID in 2025, based on estimates derived from Swiss Re
COVID deaths expected to be on par with lung cancer in the U.S. in 2025
Death data added to the dashboard

(With a 15-minute-long video)

Mike Hoerger on X, April 8, 2025
175,000 U.S. Covid deaths in 2025. Do the math.
That's 479.5 deaths/day
20.0 deaths/hour
1 death every 3.0 minutes
3/3

 

[marting]

Hmm. So the burden on the Social Security system could drop a bit. It depends on the excess death age distribution but seems likely . Can't find a study that goes into that.

Hey, just trying to look at "the glass is half full"

Seriously though, C19 Sequelae is nearly as severe as the acute phase.

One can also see excess deaths in the CDC data from 2020 on by comparing excess deaths v Covid-19 deaths each month/year.

Provisional COVID-19 Mortality Surveillance

National Center for Health Statistics

www.cdc.gov

 

[dann]

UK:

NHS warning as Covid cases jump to 'highest level of 2025' (MyLondon, April 3, 2025)
Flu and norovirus levels are also higher than usual for the time of year
The number of people in hospital in England with winter viruses remains higher than usual for the time of year, despite the recent warm and sunny weather, new data shows. Norovirus and flu levels have yet to drop as low as is typical for this point in spring and the amount of Covid-19 patients being treated on wards are at its highest so far in 2025.
(...)
An average of 839 hospital beds were filled each day last week by patients with norovirus symptoms. This is down from 903 the previous week, but well above the equivalent total at this stage in 2024 (533) and 2023 (374).
A further 979 beds were filled each day last week on average by patients with flu - again, down on the previous week's total of 1,044, but higher than at this point last year (837) and in 2023 (274).
(...)
An average of 1,174 hospital beds were filled last week with patients who had tested positive for Covid-19, up from 1,050 the previous week and the highest number since the end of December.

 

[Clutch Cargo]

How do we know a pandemic's over?​

What's the correct answer? Sweden generally knows.

 

[dann]

What's the correct answer? Sweden generally knows.

Clutch Cargo has been lying, repeatedly, about Sweden's pandemic response since 2020.
And so has Anders Tegnell, who was Sweden's state epidemiologist at the time.
Anders Tegnell: The rise and fall of an emperor with no clothes in Sweden (Foreign Policy News, Jan 3, 2021)

 

[dann]

Apparently good news, at least for the time being.
Interesting thread:

JWeiland on X, April 15, 2025
Variant Evolution Rate Since 2020
We witnessed a huge weekly growth advantage in new variants for the first year after Omicron arrived, and then to a lesser extent after Pirola. Now we have 9 months of the lowest growth advantages since 2020.

JWeiland on X, April 15, 2025
So what do the trends suggest is ahead of us? In my opinion, the diversity of antibodies today in the population are high enough that we probably won't see another Omicron event. But we could see more Pirola like events. It's hard to predict how often that may occur.

JWeiland on X, April 15, 2025
But for now, the virus seems somewhat boxed in to a local optimum for the Pirola derivatives. It'll need to jump again to restart the growth advantage chart back up.

There is more in the thread. I have skipped some of the posts and graphics.

 

[marting]

Apparently good news, at least for the time being.

Yeah, quite curious. Something I've noticed is that there are always new variants. I've been expecting that one or more of the variants from 2+ years ago would come back assuming that immunity is supposed to be less than a year. Could it be that immunity is highly specific but longer lasting than is generally assumed?

 

[dann]

I don't think so. For the most part, I think the early variants have gone extinct.
However, in recent months it was mentioned that one fairly old variant had returned. I think it had combined with a newer variant, and IIRC it was assumed to have survived as a persistent infection in somebody with Long Covid.
I don't remember where I saw it mentioned, so I'm not sure that I can find a reference.

 

[dann]

UK (Wales):

Cat in the Hat on X, April 17, 2025
On 13 April 2025, at least 81% of all inpatients with Covid in Welsh hospitals had caught Covid SINCE BEING ADMITTED!
Frustratingly, hospital-acquired Covid infections are no longer tracked in England but I suspect it’s a similar story here, if not worse…

 

[dann]

Canada:
T. Ryan Gregory on X, April 17, 2025
Quick update status of SARS-CoV-2 in Canada. Wastewater for the past 12 months and in context of entire pandemic. Also, currently circulating variants (note low sampling for this though). LP.8*, MC.1*, and XEC* are all descendants of BA.2.86 (Pirola).

T. Ryan Gregory on X, April 17, 2025
When I pointed out the brief relative low back in summer 2023 and said that would be a good time to do things you may have been putting off because rates would be going back up, people got very mad at me. Anyway, currently the lowest relative low since then.

T. Ryan Gregory on X, April 17, 2025
I don't have a prediction for rates going back up at this point. We're still in the variant soup phase with descendants of Pirola and the next major new lineage hasn't arrived yet. There are some highly divergent variants out there evolving within individual hosts, so we'll see.

 

[dann]

COVID-19 doesn't exist, and China did it!!!

Trump administration replaces COVID websites, takes down COVID signage (CBS News, April 18, 2025)
The Trump administration has moved to take down COVID-19 signage from federal agencies and replace websites that had previously offered health information and access to tests and treatment for the virus, swapping them out with a page titled "Lab Leak: The True Origins of COVID-19" published by the White House.

 

[dann]

I don't think so. For the most part, I think the early variants have gone extinct.
However, in recent months it was mentioned that one fairly old variant had returned. I think it had combined with a newer variant, and IIRC it was assumed to have survived as a persistent infection in somebody with Long Covid.
I don't remember where I saw it mentioned, so I'm not sure that I can find a reference.

I found it, i.e. stumbled on it:

Ryan Hisner on X, Mar 12, 2025
Do you remember BA.3—the weakling cousin of BA.1 & BA.2 that seemed to take the worst from each & had weaker ACE2 binding than even the ancestral Wuhan Virus?
After 3 years, BA.3 is back.
And it is transmitting.
Who saw this coming?
1/13

Ryan Hisner on X, Mar 12, 2025
While the full extent of the new BA.3’s spread is not known, it’s been detected in 2 different South African regions through regular (not targeted) surveillance by @Dikeled61970012, @Tuliodna, & the invaluable South African virology community.
2/13
BA.3 saltation with 57 spike AA mutations, South Africa #2909 (Mar 10, 2025)

Ryan Hisner on X, Mar 12, 2025
After nearly 3 years of intrahost evolution in a chronically infected person, the new BA.3 is almost unrecognizable. It has ~41 spike AA substitutions (4 of which are 2-nuc muts) to go with 14 AA deletions (∆136-147+∆243-244). We’ve seen nothing like this since 2023.
3/13

(...)

Ryan Hisner on X, Mar 12, 2025
It’s been a year and a half since we’ve seen a truly novel variant spread & just saw the weakest winter Covid wave ever. I suspect JN.1 variants have become weaker over time, forced into acquiring infectivity-reducing spike mutations to evade broadening antibodies.
12/13

Ryan Hisner on X, Mar 12, 2025
If the new BA.3 circulates long enough to pick up some transmission-enhancing mutations (think BA.2.86 getting L455S to become JN.1), it could be the next big thing. Or not. Time will tell.We should see it in other countries pretty soon if it’s the real deal.
13/end