Thread by @drgregkelly

This should be a proper “oops” moment in our #COVID19 response, and quite possibly an “oh shit” one

Here is real world data confirming earlier predictions that the time between covid waves would progressively decrease

Why is this so concerning? 🧵

https://twitter.com/dgbassani/status/1542991378073935877

Briefly, waves grow when each infected person infects average > 1 person & end when each infects < 1 bc people got infected & either develop some immunity to that variant, die,or behaviour changes

Vax contribute to baseline immunity (that’s good) but prob too slow to affect wave

A new wave occurs when a new variant that is different enough from previous appears - which means that the average immunity is low enough (plus behaviour permits) each infected person to infect on average > 1 person, that wave ends as above

“Oh shit” moment is this:

#COVID19 rampant for 2.5 years & shot off countless evolutionary branches in myriad directions

More & more variants that less & less relate to ones we have protection against due to prev infections, vax or antivirals

Each wave worsens as more mutation

https://twitter.com/drgregkelly/status/1542505574260445185

Additional to this is increasing evidence showing immunity waning and also suggesting damage to immune system from previous #COVID19 infections - previous infections not nearly as protective as was thought and may be harmful

Relatively variant specific measures (i.e vax & antivirals) are amazing tools but INADEQUATE alone to counter this threat & can’t be altered quickly enough to cope w incoming

Sadly, over reliance on them makes these tools less useful over time as encourages resistant mutations

Way to counter this accelerating global problem is to limit viral replication (& hence also new variants) w VARIANT AGNOSTIC MEASURES

Rethinking work & play, gathering outdoors, #SafeIndoorAir & masks work against ALL variants & also against flu & RSV which strain health system

Shout out to other smart people who have been discussing and modelling versions of this scenario for a while

https://twitter.com/eric_carroll/status/1533643625409699840