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Omicron's not the last variant we'll see. Will the next one be bad?
https://www.livescience.com › coronavirus-variants-afte...
3 days ago — Experts told Live Science that they wouldn't be surprised if a troublesome new
coronavirus variant crops up this year — but that it's ...
That's always possible but reading the article in it's entirety does give me some hope.
"In general, there are physical and
genetic constraints that limit how much SARS-CoV-2 can evolve, Chandran noted. Some of these constraints prevent the virus from becoming infinitely more infectious, and for this reason, scientists expect that the transmissibility of the virus will eventually level off and stop increasing,
Nature reported.
On a physical level, "viruses have to walk this fine line between stability and instability," and this balancing act limits their transmissibility, Chandran said. A virus is basically a microscopic box full of genetic material, and that box must be sturdy enough to keep the genetic material safe in the body and in the outside world. But to infect cells, the box must open to let the virus's genetic material out. Too stable, and the virus can't open up and infect cells as efficiently; too unstable, and the virus won't survive for long after being spewed out in someone's sneeze, Chandran said.
And on a genetic level, the virus can only accumulate so many mutations before it begins to malfunction, he said.
For example, the virus needs its spike protein to fit snugly into a receptor on human cells in order to trigger infection. Spike mutations can help the microbe hide from antibodies to past variants; omicron carries about 30 mutations in its spike, some of which help the variant evade the immune system. But there's likely a limit to how many mutations the spike can accommodate before its ability to plug into human cells starts to falter, Chandran said.
Broadly speaking, "As more and more people become infected and/or vaccinated, particularly multiple times, they will build up higher levels of immunity, potentially against different variants," Mossman told Live Science. "As this general level of immunity increases within populations, and around the world, the overall evolution of SARS-CoV-2 will likely decline, and the pandemic will become endemic.
This is how the pandemic could end — but we'll likely have to face new variants of concern until then."
