Just when the Narrative is Collapsing, will the New Variant BA.2 ruin the party?

A look at Omicron's cousin

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There’s a new variant in town and it’s doubling every 4 days in the UK.

More fear porn to reverse the recent narrative collapse or something to genuinely keep an eye on? Let’s take a look.

BA.2 is part of the Omicron clade, with BA.1 being the dominant variant at the moment. It was first spotted on 1 November 2021 and designated on 6 December. The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has been monitoring the variant and designated it as a variant under investigation yesterday. They made this decision due to the increasing numbers of BA.2 both domestically and internationally.

Numbers are still small. Since 6 December, only 426 cases have been identified, predominantly in London and the South East. Worldwide, there have been 8,040 cases in 40 countries since 17 November 2021, predominantly from Denmark (6,411).

A key characteristic of BA.2 is that it lacks the genetic deletion on its spike protein that produces S-gene target failure (SGTF)in PCR tests. To date, this S-gene failure has been one of the ways they have differentiated between Omicron and Delta during testing. “By 1 January, BA.2 accounted for 5% of SGTP (positive) and this proportion is increasing”. The UKHSA say they can no longer use SGTF to assess Omicron cases in the UK because of this.

Changes of interest in the BA.2’s spike protein, include 28 mutations and a deletion at 25-27.

So far, the UKHSA say that “early analyses suggest an increased growth rate compared to BA.1, however, growth rates have a low level of certainty early in the emergence of a variant and further analysis is needed.” They say that “so far, there is insufficient evidence to determine whether BA.2 causes more severe illness than Omicron BA.1”.

Interestingly, Ethical Skeptic does not think Omicron BA.1 is a descendant of Wuhan Covid-19. To him, the data showing that BA.2 is not a descendant of the original Wuhan stain is even stronger. When he looks at nucleotide entropy (green curve) of Alpha to Delta the mutations flow naturally.

However, with BA.2, the predicted mutations do not match the entropy at all.

He infers that neither BA.1 nor BA.2 came from Wuhan stains and that they are older than the Wuhan strains by approximately two years.

I am still torn between this theory and the deattenuating live vaccine theory. Either way, are we watching the virus trying to escape (limited) vaccine protection in real time?

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There is very limited data on transmissibility, virulence or antibody/vaccine evasion. From the data that is available it seems, BA.2 is more transmissible (possibly following the predictions made by the Institute of Science in Israel) and more likely to evade antibodies. A quick look at what the experts are saying:

Tom Peacock says that early observations suggest there is no dramatic difference in severity compared to BA.1. He also thinks there is likely to be minimal differences in vaccine effectiveness and infection to BA.1 and will give decent cross-reactivity against BA.2 reinfection. He doubts whether BA.2 will cause a second Omicron wave.

Joesette Schoenmakers, on the other hand, says that, BA.2 seems to “carpet-bomb antibody site IIA where many broadly-specific neutralizing antibodies used to bind…With so many added changes, BA.2 should thoroughly evade any broadly specific Class IIA antibodies even after they become fine-tuned to neutralize regular Omicron…so an ability to evade them gives BA.2 a strong edge in the societies with pervasive BA.1 reinfections or breakthrough infections.”

Andrew Tait, says that a mutation in the PPxY domain is not getting much attention. It is important for viral entry with adenoviruses and budding for MERS, Ebola and others. It was not in the Wuhan stain or BA.1 but is in BA.2.

Francois Balloux suggests that for anyone not obsessed with SARS-CoV-2 variant minutiae to consider both as ‘Omicron’, unless evidence emerged there might be a meaningful epidemiological difference between the two.

Another independent study shows that “pan strain antibodies effective against Omicron and older strains rely on [certain spike residues], all of which are changed in BA.2. It further confirms the hypothesis that BA.2-specific mutations have been selected to evade those of pre-Omicron-origin antibodies which undergo clonal expansion specifically in response to subsequent Omicron infection.”

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Looking at the country with the most cases, Denmark gives us an early indication of what BA.2 might be like. It is obviously highly transmissible, as BA.1 is, as can be see by the number of cases.

Hospital admissions have also sky-rocketed.

However, ICU admission seem to have peaked.

Whilst deaths seemed to peak early in December, they started to rise again when BA.2 started to take hold, and are actually higher than in their first wave.

BA.2 seems to have found the attention of the MSM. The early analyses and charts from Denmark don’t look great but who knows how it will effect other countries. However, is this the impetus that the MSM needs to reignite fear after the recent narrative collapse and ‘learning to live with the virus’?

What is clear, however, is that we need further analysis as to whether mass vaccinating healthy people during a pandemic is causing these variants. Furthermore, these variants are looking more and more unnatural and their origins needs to be discovered.