Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
From an epidemiology standpoint, this is fascinating.
Some European countries saw a significant spike weeks ago from this variant (France is still deep in the red), and we were expecting a similar surge, which took a long time to come and is now rather unimpressive. Vaccinations rates are similar, and were at about the same time.
One explanation is that so many Americans caught Omicron over Christmas break and January, that they have a slight natural immunity edge over Europeans who are equally vaccinated but might not have caught Omicron in such large numbers.
But even with that explanation, it's still surprising this subvariant took so long to cross the Atlantic, considering it's even more contagious than Omicron, and the peak in Europe was weeks ago.
I think that so much resistance has built up (vaccine, natural, and/or both) that it's spreading but it's largely just a minimal episode at this point.