Covid variants don’t warrant restrictions on our freedom

For good reason, we do not respond with border closures and constraints on school children every time a new influenza mutation is detected

The detection of a new Covid variant that has the ability to evade pre-existing immunity, whether naturally acquired or vaccine induced, is understandably a cause for concern. But it is important that these concerns are assessed in a framework that balances the potential health risks of such a variant against the damage associated with the measures taken to curb its spread.

Variants gain an advantage in two ways: first, by increasing transmissibility and, second, by evading pre-existing immunity. Both the delta and omicron variants clearly evade neutralising antibody responses which can temporarily prevent infection. This gives them an advantage even if they are not significantly more transmissible than the variants they replace. Indeed, they could succeed even if they were less transmissible.

It is a shame that these wellestablished principles of evolutionary epidemiology appear to have been disregarded by the majority of the scientific community.

It is also unfortunate that many thinkers have adopted the argument that pathogens always evolve to be more transmissible but less severe. The truth is that it could swing either way. The outcome of infection is not just determined by the severity of the variant but very much more by the type and amount of pre-existing immunity within the infected individual. Most vulnerable people will now have protection against severe disease either through natural infection or vaccination, so it is of no consequence that this variant may be intrinsically slightly less or slightly more severe.

We can do more to minimise the risk to vulnerable people. Amplifying efforts to vaccinate them, offering them boosters and investing in social care that could limit their exposure, would reduce the likelihood that they would die of Covid.

However, it is unlikely that the rapid rollout of boosters to the general population will prevent these deaths. It could be argued that boosters may even increase the selective advantage of a variant that has a strong capability of evading the immune responses elicited by the vaccine.

Moreover, we should not be reaching back now to the suite of restrictions that we know to have done very little to alter the dynamics of infection and yet, predictably, caused extreme harm to the poor and the young.

It is time that we acknowledge that the way in which we aggressively implemented non-pharmaceutical interventions – underpinned by multiple lockdowns – caused extensive collateral damage when there were better ways to protect the vulnerable. Yet we remain wedded to the same means of responding to any new potential threat.

We must regain a position of compassion – one that is in line with the social contract.

It may therefore be useful to consider how we have managed the threat of influenza. We do not, when we detect new mutations in influenza, lock down borders and force school children to wear masks and eat lunch in the freezing cold. We do not take away jobs and ostracise those who have elected not to take the influenza vaccine. We remember that we do not want anyone to tell their children that there is only baked beans on toast for supper just to protect ourselves from the risk of dying from influenza.

It is time to move away from the crass individualism that underlies the imposition of these restrictions and try to regain the international communitarian principles which we have so easily abandoned in the fruitless pursuit of living without contagion.