Well it's all interesting. Some reports, in some channels post some interesting news.
And then we get mainstream reports like this, 'It said the increase in the number of people testing positive was likely being driven by the Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 variants. They are not thought to be more lethal than any other form of Covid but they do appear to be spreading more quickly.'
So..shrug!?!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-62020908
Yeah, my concern is that there doesn't seem to be a vaccine that actually works very well on this variant And because it'd take months to get one into widespread distribution - at about the time when it mutates again?
The spiffy original vaccines were, what, like 95% effective against the original covid (and Delta?), but had to be tweaked for Omicron... and then were at generally 80%, but with with efficacy starting to fall off more quickly over time (hence the boosters). From what I can find in the literature, and there isn't a lot of published info on the new variant (BA.5) for obvious reasons - it's so new - but the little bit I've seen says it appears that it punches right through the existing vaccines. I would avoid the popular press on this one for a while and just go with the medical and research journals, or, with blogs posted by reputable research scholars. (And not governments, who have their strings being pulled by more actors than they should have. "Remain Calm, All is Well. Keep buying and keep going to work! We will tell you what you need to know!"
)
So, from what I have read, it is NO LESS severe (not less severe) than Omicron, but since the vaccines don't work as well on it (See
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2206576 ), that makes it more dangerous in the long run. Omicron is far from a benign disease - the unvaccinated have been taking a walloping from it. Apparently BA.5 is more efficient at targeting the lungs again, too. And having already recovered from an earlier version of Covid doesn't provide much protection. I ~think~ I also read that some of the anti-viral treatments now working so well for the older variants do not work anywhere near as well on BA.5. (I'd need to double-check on that, but I think I did read that somewhere legitimate.)The few researchers I follow consistently are saying that the vaccines should have been authorized for development for BA.5 as soon as it emerged, but that the various bureaucratic entities are still dicking around with addressing earlier variants that will probably have gone extinct as BA.5 takes over by the time the 'new and improved' earlier variant vaccine is available for distribution.
