Public-health experts are sounding the alarm about a new Omicron variant dubbed XBB that is rapidly spreading across the Northeast U.S. Some studies suggest it is as different from the original Covid strain from Wuhan as the 2003 SARS virus.
Should Americans be worried? It isn't clear that XBB is any more lethal than other variants, but its mutations enable it to evade antibodies from prior infection and vaccines as well as existing monoclonal antibody treatments.
Vaccines do a good job of training the immune system to remember and knock out the original Wuhan variant.
The Nature study suggests, "Current herd immunity and BA.5 vaccine boosters may not efficiently prevent the infection of Omicron convergent variants." A New England Journal of Medicine study published last month provides more evidence of the vulnerability caused by immune imprinting.
Neutralizing antibodies of people who had received the bivalent were 26 times as high against the original Wuhan variant as they were against XBB and four times as high as they were against Omicron and the BA.5 variant.
A Cleveland Clinic study that tracked its healthcare workers found that bivalent vaccines reduced the risk of getting infected by 30% while the BA.5 variant was spreading.
The Biden administration's monomaniacal focus on vaccines over new treatments has left the highest-risk Americans more vulnerable to new variants.
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