As attention turns to the first cases of monkeypox detected in Brazil, we are experiencing a wave of Covid that fills ICUs again. The contrast between the two diseases shows where we should place our concern and how much this is dictated by evolution.
Evolution seems something far removed from everyday life, but its effects are constant on health. Evolution is what happens when varied organisms compete for a limited resource and some reproduce more than others. When the limited resource is our body and whoever reproduces the most is the one who takes the most out of it, thousands of lives are lost. Treatment-resistant bacteria or tumors are the evolutionary result of the selection that antibiotics and antitumors impose on microorganisms and cancer cells. Even the mosquitoes that transmit malaria and dengue are evolving within the urban environment.
Monkeypox shows the difference evolution can make. The smallpox virus has genetic material more like ours, a double-stranded DNA, which is more stable and accumulates mutations up to a thousand times slower than the coronavirus.
The newly diagnosed monkeypox cases in Europe and the US are related to an outbreak that has been happening in Nigeria since 2017. And after years of circulation, the virus does not appear to have improved its transmission between humans. And our immune response produced against the vaccine virus, which differentiated from it thousands of years ago, is still very effective against the monkeypox virus. In your case, your evolution works in our favor.
Covid hits us with a turbocharged evolution. Someone with Sars-CoV-2 in their body can make a hundred billion new Covid virus particles a day. And its genetic material is an RNA molecule so much more error-prone that it accumulates changes a million times faster than we do.
Until recently, the variants that reproduced the most were those that increased their ability to infect humans. Therefore, its evolution has made Covid progressively more transmissible in just two years. And now, most people the coronavirus encounters have prior immunity, either from the vaccine or from Covid, and evolution favors more strains of the virus that are able to circumvent that immunity.
The omicron symbolizes this change. Until its emergence, each alpha, beta, gamma and delta variant came from a different strain of the virus that replaced the previous one. Now, all new variants are omicron.
In recent months, the omicron has already spawned the BA.4 and BA.5 variants, which are causing waves in several countries that have barely passed the January omicron. Like here in Brazil. An immune escape greater than that of smallpox in thousands of years. This shows that the coronavirus is already completely at ease among us, and will continue to circulate, as our weakening immunity and its evolution combine to create windows of opportunity. For the virus and its relentless evolution, this is the new normal.
And our new normal, how will you avoid the deaths of these waves? Our response to Covid has not evolved. We still don’t have treatment protocols or broad access to effective antivirals against Covid. No broad campaign for the booster dose or child vaccination against the coronavirus. And masks remain optional even indoors, despite the increase in cases and full ICUs. If a simple and cheap measure such as masks is not adopted, how can we expect people to behave according to the epidemiological situation?
Chad-98Weaver, a distinguished author at NewsBulletin247, excels in the craft of article writing. With a keen eye for detail and a penchant for storytelling, Chad delivers informative and engaging content that resonates with readers across various subjects. His contributions are a testament to his dedication and expertise in the field of journalism.
