{"id":303725,"date":"2021-09-08T16:19:26","date_gmt":"2021-09-08T16:19:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/radiofree.asia\/?guid=6f9ffa96bc862c79da4ef0ab239fae12"},"modified":"2021-09-08T16:19:26","modified_gmt":"2021-09-08T16:19:26","slug":"as-delta-surges-other-variants-wait-in-the-wings-biden-must-take-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/09\/08\/as-delta-surges-other-variants-wait-in-the-wings-biden-must-take-action\/","title":{"rendered":"As Delta Surges, Other Variants Wait in the Wings. Biden Must Take Action."},"content":{"rendered":"\"A<\/a>

President Biden will address the nation tomorrow on the ongoing COVID pandemic. Early reports suggest it will be a somber affair, bereft of the optimism that suffused the country at the outset of the summer. The president will lay out a \u201csix-pronged strategy\u201d for dealing with COVID through the fall, a strategy that will not include a national vaccine mandate, according<\/a> to White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki.<\/p>\n

What happened? The Delta variant, in combination with an intractable segment of the population that rejects science because they think it voted against Donald Trump, happened. There were more than 152,000 new infections<\/a> yesterday, and the economy — which was widely expected to be in high gear by Labor Day — is once again throwing smoke<\/a> from the vents.<\/p>\n

Worse, kids are taking this latest surge straight in the teeth. Pediatric cases of COVID have erupted since children started returning to school. Weekly cases of COVID among children topped<\/a> 250,000 for the first time since the pandemic began, and a full quarter<\/a> of all COVID cases for the week of September 2 were among kids. This will likely continue to be a crisis until children under 12 are able to get vaccinated, and the crisis is landing right in the middle of classrooms.<\/p>\n

Biden has quite a daunting task before him, made all the more perilous by the fact that Delta is not the only dangerous COVID variant in play, although it is overwhelmingly the most prevalent in the United States, still accounting for 99 percent of cases here. Variant Mu, B.1.621, is one example of the new breed. Mu was first identified in Ecuador and Colombia in January. The World Health Organization (WHO) has officially designated<\/a> Mu as a \u201cvariant of interest,\u201d a rating one step below \u201cvariant of concern,\u201d the highest rating for danger to the populace. (Delta is a variant of concern.)<\/p>\n

According<\/a> to the WHO, \u201cA SARS-CoV-2 variant with genetic changes that are predicted or known to affect virus characteristics such as transmissibility, disease severity, immune escape, diagnostic or therapeutic escape; AND identified to cause significant community transmission or multiple COVID-19 clusters, in multiple countries with increasing relative prevalence alongside increasing number of cases over time, or other apparent epidemiological impacts to suggest an emerging risk to global public health.\u201d <\/p>\n

Put simply, there is some fear within viral research circles that the mutations found in Mu may allow the variant to interfere with our vaccine-enhanced immunity. This has been the nightmare scenario<\/a> since variants first began appearing, and they began appearing because the virus was allowed to run rampant without serious checks for so long.<\/p>\n

At this juncture, the Mu variant has spread to more than four dozen countries. It has been found in 49 of the 50<\/a> U.S. states, including Alaska and Hawaii, but excepting Nebraska (Hawaii disputes the existence of Mu in that state). One health care facility, Houston Methodist Hospital, currently reports some 50 patients who have been infected with the Mu variant. <\/p>\n