🙄 Count on some "researchers" to claim the obvious answer isn't the answer.
Did we want a vax to the original strain? We did?
Is SARSCoV2 now mostly Omicron? It is?
Okay then...
Chances are nonzero that the next variant will come from the currently most widespread and most contagious variant, i.e. Omicron. Good to be prepared.
Basically in this epidemic, if the question is "should we .... just in case?" the answer is yes. Just do it.
The two scariest words from that Nature news article?
WHO committee
Aha to give the WHO committee credit they arrived at the right answer. I guess the logic of updating your vaccines with actually extant viral sequences was too straightforward to refute.
who.int/news/item/08-0…
BTW news coverage of various crises within the epidemic makes a lot more sense if you just imagine "what would big pharma say at this point"? e.g. media voices hesitation on variant-specific boosters (top tweet) when big pharma had original-strain vax to sell but no variant vax
When variant vax are ready you can expect news stories about their advantages. Not saying media purposely advertise for pharma, but reporters know companies have more data than the CDC, treat pharma predictions/ideas as newsworthy, and many aren't able to find indep. sources.
That's why the news articles about Pfizer or Merck vax and pills were ~100% favorable. What big pharmas say is news because they are big, whereas what anybody else says is not important by definition. Okay for political and financial news, but not accurate as science journalism.
Example below. No second opinions presented, just a straight repeat of what the Pfizer CEO says. Because what a CEO says about what CDC and FDA should do is news in itself, it seems.
thehill.com/policy/healthc…
Of course this has the effect of biasing the jury. By making it seem a foregone conclusion it will make it harder for FDA or CDC to resist approving whatever Pfizer wants to sell. Fine if it's an updated booster. Not so fine if it's the obsolete formula.
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