Scientists say there is still much to learn about the new version. As of right now, there is “insufficient” evidence that it causes more severe illness or is more contagious than the original omicron variant.
And here’s the thing, it is purely luck that this one is less severe because, contrary to popular belief, viruses don’t evolve to be milder. We gain immunity to them, for sure, as we get exposed, but they just want to transmit, they don’t care if you eventually die as long as they transmit through you.
So the fact that we got a very contagious variant that happens to be milder — and I’m not saying it’s great. I’m just saying it could have been much worse — is pure luck, evolution luck. So that’s what I think we know right now after six weeks, eight weeks, which is pretty amazing.
The national strategies typically reflect elements of a country’s culture, wealth, government structure, demographics and underlying health conditions. Also geography: New Zealand has managed to record only a few dozen deaths from covid-19, one of the lowest per capita death tolls on the planet, by leveraging its isolation in the South Pacific.
Japan, Singapore and South Korea, nations with a long history of mask-wearing and aggressive measures to suppress epidemics, have managed to keep the virus largely in check without draconian lockdowns or major sacrifices to their economies.
Peru, hammered by the variants dubbed lambda and gamma before the delta and omicron waves arrived, has had the deadliest pandemic per capita, according to the Johns Hopkins University coronavirus tracking site. The nations of Eastern Europe, with older populations and high vaccine skepticism, are not far behind.
