You can never escape!

One way or another, I’m gonna find ya
I’m gonna get ya, get ya, get ya, get ya
One way, or another, I’m gonna win ya
I’m gonna get ya, get ya, get ya, get ya
One way, or another, I’m gonna see ya
I’m gonna meet ya, meet ya, meet ya, meet ya
One day, maybe next week
I’m gonna meet ya, I’m gonna meet ya, I’ll meet ya

. — Blondie and coronavirus

It seems that the plebeians have become too complacent about COVID-19, and need to be frightened again! From CNN:

New coronavirus subvariants escape antibodies from vaccination and prior Omicron infection, studies suggest

By Jacqueline Howard, CNN | Updated 5:20 AM EDT, Thursday June 23, 2022

Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 appear to escape antibody responses among both people who had previous Covid-19 infection and those who have been fully vaccinated and boosted, according to new data from researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, of Harvard Medical School.

However, Covid-19 vaccination is still expected to provide substantial protection against severe disease, and vaccine makers are working on updated shots that might elicit a stronger immune response against the variants.

The levels of neutralizing antibodies that a previous infection or vaccinations elicit are several times lower against the BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants compared with the original coronavirus, according to the new research published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday.

“We observed 3-fold reductions of neutralizing antibody titers induced by vaccination and infection against BA4 and BA5 compared with BA1 and BA2, which are already substantially lower than the original COVID-19 variants,” Dr. Dan Barouch, an author of the paper and director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, wrote in an email to CNN.

“Our data suggest that these new Omicron subvariants will likely be able to lead to surges of infections in populations with high levels of vaccine immunity as well as natural BA1 and BA2 immunity,” Barouch wrote. “However, it is likely that vaccine immunity will still provide substantial protection against severe disease with BA4 and BA5.”

Note what is being said here: we are being told that the vaccines will protect people better from getting sick from the BA.4 and BA.5 variants, but implies, though it does not directly state, that immunity from the vaccine will protect you where “natural BA.1 and BA.2 immunity,” from having contracted and recovered from the virus will not.

They recently found that the BA.4 and BA.5 viruses were more likely to escape antibodies from the blood of fully vaccinated and boosted adults compared with other Omicron subvariants, raising the risk of vaccine-breakthrough Covid-19 infections.

The authors of that separate study say their results point to a higher risk for reinfection, even in people who have some prior immunity against the virus. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates 94.7% of the US population ages 16 and older have antibodies against the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 through vaccination, infection, or both.

Simply put, the vaccines will not prevent you from contracting the virus, but will, at best, keep you from getting as sick from it. We might as well face it: masks don’t help anything, and we’re all going to contract the virus at some point. In all probability you have already contracted it at some point, but may not know that you had it.

BA.4 and BA.5 caused an estimated 35% of new Covid-19 infections in the United States last week, up from 29% the week before, according to data shared by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday.

BA.4 and BA.5 are the fastest spreading variants reported to date, and they are expected to dominate Covid-19 transmission in the United States, United Kingdom and the rest of Europe within the next few weeks, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.

I am certainly no anti-vaxxer, and have been vaccinated, and twice boostered myself. But these were my free choices, and I believe that everyone should have the right to choose freely whether or not to take the vaccines.