This year they've updated to the same spike as the mRNA vaccines (XFG), and the match is pretty good. It's possible that PJ.2.1, the fastest-growing variant in the world (which originated in Ontario), will evolve to escape XFG antibodies to some extent, but for now, it's still a good match.

Not sure if Trevor Bedford has submitted anything, but this is his wheelhouse, and I know he has great ideas on the topic.

I mean, arch-war criminal Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize, as did the notoriously racist warmonger Teddy Roosevelt. So in some ways, a Trump Peace Prize would be very much in keeping with Nobel tradition.

My thoughts exactly. I don't think the realization of the global significance of PJ.2.1—or the nature of its evolution—is widely known, so I'm hoping once it gets more attention, someone in Ontario will realize the importance and urgency of investigating it.

Maybe if the African children were code they'd still be alive

Elon the Terrible—renowned for his powerful empathy—thinks it's a great idea. Hard to imagine strong proof that this is a harebrained/ sinister move.

...and that's just to get an application to see the sequences through. I may not receive approval for these forms. And even if I do, the application to see the sequences may well be rejected, making hours and hours of mind-numbing work and potentially weeks/months of waiting a total waste of time.

...the raw sequences are not publicly available, and getting access to them is extremely difficult. I've already completed two 3-hour online medical privacy courses, filled out several long forms, & now have to wait for the wheels of a university bureaucracy to turn—which may take weeks or months...

These sequences aren't all from the same patient though. In fact, it's clear that they are nearly all from different patients. One or two or zero could be from the index patient. It would be easy to tell looking at raw sequences if any of the sequences was from a chronically infected host, but...

N:137-150 is a conserved region of N, so its entirely conceivable that some rapid tests detect this region—and that N:T148A could interfere with detection. But as I said, as long as the N epitopes rapid tests look for are kept secret, there's no way to know.

Rapid tests detect the nucleocapsid (N) protein. There is one N mutation in PJ.2.1 that's not been in any previous variant (except the evanescent BA.2.87.1)—N:T148A. It's impossible to know if this affects rapid tests because the part of N that they test for is kept secret—absurdly, in my view.

I once asked it for help downloading publicly available NSPs from sarbecoviruses & got shut down. Recently tried ChatGPT to try to turn my variant-unwinding tool (which shows all the descendants of a given variant, along w/the AA muts in each lineage) into a web tool anyone can use & was shot down.

Just to add some detail to the PJ.2.1 picture outlined in the thread below, here's a Venn diagram (modeled on Cov-Spectrum's) of the four major PJ branches' amino acid mutations (excluding all shared, inherited MC.10.1.7 mutations).

Yes, actual evolution is happening stepwise—along with repeated intrahost recombination, no doubt—within one host, but the term "punctuated-equilibria-via-peripatric-divergence variant" doesn't quite have the same snap as "saltation variant", in my humble opinion.

@skyreader.io unroll

And suppose we find out that PJ.2.1 was circulating among immunosenescent individuals in some relatively isolated nursing home in Ontario—and that its circulation could've been prevented with efficient ventilation and air filtration? I think this would be an important revelation for public health.

And as long as that's the case—and I think it will be the case as long as the evidence, however convincing, remains indirect—there's basically no chance there will be concerted public health efforts to identify and treat chronic infections.

Third, figuring out how saltation variants like these evolve and spread is the first step toward figuring out how to prevent them. I think people who study Covid are pretty well in agreement that these variants arise in chronic infections, but the wider public & most doctors know nothing about it.