My local weather hasn't been to my liking recently. I don't mind a little rain, but I want my May weather to be warm and sunny most of the time. I'd love it if SARS-CoV-2 would act a little sunnier too, but not sure this is the case.
The COVID-19 Winds
Hospitalizations in the US are clearly increasing, though not to the point yet that we could call this a true surge or wave. This is happening as we continue to see the BA.2.12.1 occupying a bigger piece of the pie across our country.
Looking ahead, however, we still need to keep our eyes on BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants, with South Africa being the main source of advance data along with wastewater monitoring worldwide. It's still a little early to see what's going on in South Africa, but some recent data suggests that these 2 subvariants have a great advantage in growth compared to prior variants and subvariants. A report from the UK has a nice assessment summary showing that the 2 new subvariants have a significant advantage in immune evasion that will be evidenced by increasing infection rates among both immunized and previously infected individuals as well as possibly changing effectiveness of monoclonal antibodies for therapy and prevention.
You can get a sense of how the research is moving from a preprint (non-peer reviewed) manuscript posted recently. It is laboratory modelling from structural analysis and pseudovirus neutralization assays, both helpful and relatively reliable in the past but could vary from what eventually happens in the real world. Again, time will tell.
Why Not Say It Clearly?
I stole this title from a book, apparently now out of print, that I read long ago to help improve my scientific manuscript writing. Not sure if it helped me, but maybe some of our friends at FDA and CDC should try to find a copy. A new article from Mayo Clinic reviewed COVID-19 vaccine explanations contained in FDA information fact sheets and from the CDC website. Short answer: it was too confusing for most of the US population to understand.
A target for such information is a 7th grade readability level that would apply to 83% of adults in the US. Utilizing validated tools they found that all documents pretty much failed; only the v-safe script achieved this grade level, and all failed on other measures. Given that we have extremely low acceptance of COVID-19 vaccines in the US, I hope that increasing attempts at effectively communicating risks and benefits will lead to better control of the virus.
I also recommend that healthcare providers at least skim this article to learn some tricks and tools for more effective communication with your patients and families.
The answer[s], my friend, [are] blowin' in the wind.