Should You Worry About the Latest COVID-19 Variant?

I know that you are sick and tired, literally and figuratively, of hearing about COVID-19. Wherever we go, people are acting as if COVID is a thing of the past. And yet we keep hearing that friends and family members are still coming down with COVID, some for the very first time. The latest COVID-19 variant is surging in China, but it has already arrived in the US.

What Is the Latest COVID-19 Variant?

Experts call the new variant NB.1.8.1. The CDC’s airport screening program detected cases entering the US starting in late March and early April. By now, it is spreading among people here. It is more transmissible than previous variants, including Omicron, although it has not yet displaced them in CDC test results.

Keep in mind, however, that the CDC is no longer tracking tests closely and states have mostly shut down their COVID-19 surveillance. As we just noted, most people no longer want to hear about this virus. Public health officials in Hong Kong say they don’t think it results in more severe infections, just a lot more infections overall. That has boosted the number of hospitalizations in China and might do so here as well.

Is COVID-19 Gone?

Even though we are no longer in a pandemic, COVID-19 is still killing more than 300 Americans each week. That’s a lot less than the tens of thousands of deaths that occurred weekly at the height of the pandemic. Immunity after vaccination or even infection does wear off, and many people are avoiding COVID-19 boosters. This fall, even people who want a booster may not be able to get it, as the government is placing restrictions on eligibility.

Antiviral treatments such as Paxlovid or molnupiravir can reduce the risk of complications and death, but they must be taken early in the infection to be helpful. Two things everyone could do to help reduce the spread of the virus is likely to be unpopular: stay home or wear a mask when you are sick. Whether the infection is COVID-19 or a summer cold, wearing a mask in public can keep people from spreading germs to others.

Back in 2023, scientists expected the updated COVID booster to work against JN.1. For the most part, it did. As a result, that was the variant vaccine makers aimed at for their 2024 boosters as well.

What Do You Call the Latest COVID-19 Variant?

If you have lost count of variant names, it is hardly surprising. The challenges of following technical nomenclature has led researchers to develop creative names such as Centaurus, Kraken and Eris. Those are a bit more memorable than JN.1, B.1.1.7 or XBB.1.5. But even those nicknames have proliferated so fast it has been hard to keep up. For the most part, people are now sticking with the technical terms made up of letters and numbers.

What Should We Do About JN.1?

We offered these recommendations back in 2023. They still hold up as reasonable when COVID-19 cases start to climb. Keep that in mind for the coming weeks or months.

• Stay home if you are sick;
• Wear an effective mask if you are inside with other people;
• Improve ventilation as much as possible;
• Wash your hands.
• Consider vaccination

For people who believe the mRNA vaccines are a problem, there is now Novavax COVID-19 vaccine. It utilizes a very old technology that has been around for decades.

The company calls it an adjuvanted vaccine. It does not use aluminum or mercury (ingredients that we worry about a lot). Instead, the Matrix-M adjuvant comes from the bark of the Soapbox (Quillaja saponaria) tree.

An adjuvant boosts the body’s immune reaction to the vaccine. You can read more about Matrix-M adjuvanted vaccines in the journal Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics (April 27, 2023).

Why Should You Care About the Latest COVID-19 Variant?

A lot of visitors to this website still maintain that COVID is just not a big deal. They keep repeating that it is no worse than a bout of the flu.

I won’t beat around the bush. That is just BS. COVID has left a trail of tears in its wake, and I am not just referring to all the deaths. Millions of people are now  struggling with long COVID symptoms.

A study published in the Lancet (Dec. 14, 2023) concludes:

“In this comparative analysis of long-term health outcomes of people admitted to hospital for COVID-19 versus those admitted to hospital for seasonal influenza, we show that the absolute rates of death, adverse health outcomes, and health-care utilisation are high for both viruses, but significantly higher for COVID-19 compared to seasonal influenza.

“Our results show that, compared to seasonal influenza and despite changes in SARS-CoV-2 during the course of the pandemic (from pre-delta to delta to omicron), COVID-19 yielded a significantly higher burden of death, health loss across the spectrum of nine of ten organ systems (with the notable exception of pulmonary outcomes), and health-care utilisation.”

That’s a lot of medicalese. The bottom line is that COVID-19 is much worse than influenza! And long COVID can cause long-lasting brain fog, cardiovascular complications (including stroke), fatigue, shortness of breath, inability to exercise and so much more. I worry a lot about long-term neurological complications. Will people who caught COVID be at higher risk for dementia down the road? We won’t have an answer to that question for decades.