One Man's Opinion: Covid-19 - the next round

An Atlanta resident, recently returning from travels to South Africa, has become the first Georgian officially diagnosed with the Omicron variant of COVID-19, following recent similar diagnoses in several other states across the country, most with recent travel to South Africa. And while watching my Georgia Bulldogs fall to a clearly superior Crimson Tide team on SEC Championship game day, I felt more pain watching the tumble in the variable returns on my IRAs and stock portfolio last week. Wall Street is shifting into near panic mode about the possibilities of more global and U.S. shutdowns and the return of travel restrictions accompanying the arrival of this most recent and more contagious COVID-19 variant, with already 50 identified additional mutations.

The mutations of this variant appear key to making it more transmissible, particularly among already immune-compromised or those dealing with other chronic medical conditions. On the plus side, fear of this variant is creating a late fall surge toward vaccinations and booster inoculations. Each time we think we are on the far side of this pandemic, a new wave of exposure follows a bit of carelessness and returns to pre-pandemic hygiene or socializing protocols or the variant itself much more easily spreads among available hosts. Delta was the last major spike, and we don’t know quite yet how far Omicron will go, but this time global spread is happening quickly, just in time for the holidays. Global health experts are assessing the efficacy of our existing vaccines and anti-viral treatment arsenal against this new variation, again extending the pandemic. Breakthrough cases, despite vaccination, also occurred with the Delta variant, hopefully, these too will be less severe and result in both fewer hospitalizations and fewer fatalities if you have already been vaccinated. As the annual flu vaccine is adjusted in anticipation of which flu strains are more likely to be globally prevalent, BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna and those mRNA vaccines can be reformulated and sequenced to even more strongly combat the differing structures of each variant. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would also still be required to greenlight those adjusted vaccines.