The United States might be taking a massive risk with allowing COVID-19 variants to spread so quickly right now.
Will there be new COVID variants?
Dr. Gregory Poland, a professor of medicine and director of the Vaccine Research Group at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, told CNN over the weekend that variants are rising every day, and they should always be worried about.
- He said the U.S. is playing a game of “Russian roulette” — a game where you put one bullet in a revolver and continue to take shots until the bullet fires — with the coronavirus because we’re letting it spread quickly among people, per CNN.
- “We will continue to develop more and more variants, and eventually, one or more of these variants will learn how to evade vaccine-induced immunity,” Poland said. “And if that’s true, we will start all over again.”
Could the lambda variant be the newest variant?
Poland suggested the lambda variant of the coronavirus might be an early indicator of how dangerous mutations can be. Indeed, experts have been watching the lambda variant as a potential variant of interest, as I wrote for the Deseret News.
- “There are variants arising every day — if a variant can be defined as new mutations,” Poland said. “The question is, do those mutations give the virus some sort of advantage, which of course is to human disadvantage? The answer in lambda is yes.”
Will there be more COVID mutations?
Indeed, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House medical adviser on the coronavirus, warned that the coronavirus could continue to spread rapidly and lead to more mutations.
Fauci said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the COVID-19 vaccines might not work against the next massive mutation.
- “So, if you allow the virus to freely circulate and not try and stop it, sooner or later there is a likelihood that you will get another variant that could, I’m not saying it will, that could be more problematic than the delta,” Fauci said.