Friday's Elk April 2, 2022

Greetings! I'm writing to you at yet another odd stage of the pandemic.

Here in the United States, at least, cases have dropped from their Omicron peak to lows we have not enjoyed since last summer. That's great, but we're also still waiting to see what the Omicron subvariant BA.2 has in store for us, now that it's become the dominant version of SARS-CoV-2 in the country. It's been doing all sorts of things in other countries: driving record spikes, creating middling plateaus, or barely registering as little bumps. Our relatively low rate of boosters among older folks does not bode well for us, but the epidemiologists I've been talking to still aren't ready to place their bets on what the rest of the spring looks like. Here's an updated explainer I put together about BA.2.

This spring has not seen an end to the coronavirus evolution-fest, with new forms of the virus popping up around the world. The viruses are recombining more and more--sometimes BA.1 and BA.2 are getting into the same cell; sometimes Omicron and Delta are mingling their genes. Here's a piece I wrote about why these hybrid viruses probably won't change the course of the pandemic, regardless of nicknames like "Deltacron" that sound titles for a science-fiction disaster movie.

Last month, Ben Mueller and I wrote about the question of Covid's origin. The occasion was a pair of preprints, whose authors argue that wild mammals sold in the Huanan market were the source of the pandemic. I followed up this month with a profile of one of the scientists, Edward Holmes, who has been studying the huge diversity of wildlife viruses for years and is continuing to document the threat that the wildlife trade poses to our health.

I've also been keeping the New York Times Covid treatment tracker up to date, as new drugs like Paxlovid go into use and old treatments like monoclonal antibodies become less effective against new variants. Two years into the pandemic, we are also finally getting some clarity from randomized clinical trials about treatments that have been the subject of fierce debate. Here's a story on a trial of Ivermectin, which failed to find any benefit for people sick with Covid.

Last year, I wrote about how the United Kingdom was leading the world in sequencing virus genomes and tracking new variants. Now, even as Britain is suffering from record high cases thanks to BA2 and Boris Johnson's "living with Covid" policies, the British government is cutting back on its surveys and tests. Here's a story I just wrote about how scientists fear that those moves may leave Britain depending on other countries for insights into the future evolution of the pandemic.

On the talk front:

I'll be at the University of Idaho on April 13 to talk about pandemic journalism. Details are here.

I also had a long chat with Lloyd Minor, the dean of Stanford Medical School, for his new podcast, the Minor Consult. We talked about all things Covid. You can watch it here.

That’s all for now. Stay safe!

(P.S. I created my new newsletter logo from an engraving of an Irish elk from Cassell's Natural History)

You can information and ordering links for all my books here. You can also follow me on Twitter, Goodreads, LinkedIn, and Facebook. If someone shared this email with you, you can subscribe to it here.