New variant of Omicron not seen as dangerous?

 Washington Examiner:

The former head of the Food and Drug Administration said Sunday that he predicts there will be a "backstop" to prevent a new strain of the omicron variant of COVID-19 from becoming a problem.

"A fully boosted person may be more protected against this new variant than they were against the original strain of omicron," said Scott Gottlieb on CBS's Face the Nation with host Margaret Brennan. "So far, based on what we've seen out of Denmark and the U.K., which are collecting very good data on this, it doesn't appear to be a more virulent strain."

Gottlieb said that if you've previously been infected by the omicron variant of the coronavirus, then "you should be protected" from this strain.

"So the mutations in this new version are not in the receptor-binding domain on the spike protein. That's the portion of the spike protein that we develop our best antibodies against that neutralize the virus," Gottlieb said. "Most of the mutations are in a separate part of the spike protein called the N-terminal domain. So, if you had omicron infection, you should have subsequent infection from this new variant."

...

We can hope he is right about this variant.  The original Omicron variant was also less lethal than the Delta variant.  We will have to see if politicians will respond in a more intelligent manner.

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