In July 2020, China was plagued by huge floods due to the heavy rains that poured down for two months.
As the record-breaking rain continued to raise the risk of collapse of the Sansha Dam, the Chinese authorities blew up the embankments in some areas and discharged the river water into the surrounding farmland.
It was a desperate measure to avoid the worst collapse accident by relieving the water pressure on the dam.
What kind of flood are you talking about all of a sudden with corona mutation in the title?
This is because the image of the flood at that time comes to mind when looking at the recent situation of Corona 19 in China.
For the CCP, more important than fighting the coronavirus is maintaining control over the people.
As the people's backlash against the reckless zero-corona policy reached the brink of an explosion, the Communist Party unleashed its COVID-19 quarantine measures at once, as if bursting an embankment.
The number of confirmed cases is increasing as if the water had burst in the literal sense.
Just as muddy water bursting out of an embankment sweeps away the surrounding farmland, the aftermath has begun to reach our country as well.
Infection spreads in China 'too fast'
Summarizing the stories coming out of China, it is estimated that more than 90% of Beijing, the capital with a population of 22 million, and more than 70% of Shanghai, with a population of 25 million, are infected.
On the 2nd, Taiwanese and other Chinese media reported that it is estimated that the number of people infected with Corona 19 in China has exceeded 600 million.
That's more than 40% of China's 1.4 billion people.
According to a tally from Johns Hopkins University in the United States, the cumulative number of infected people worldwide is 660 million, and according to reports, the number of infected people in China is approaching this in just one month.
If the infection increases explosively, the possibility of the emergence of a mutant virus increases.
This is why many countries around the world are looking at China with mixed eyes.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs protests, saying, "The viruses currently prevalent in China are the types that have already spread around the world," but voices warning of the possibility of mutations came from inside China, and from the highest authority in China.
Why do mutant viruses occur?
If you look at the principle, you can understand what Academician Zhong Nanshan was concerned about, and what countries around the world are concerned about.
I will explain it with a learning cartoon.
How viruses mutate
Viruses cannot self-replicate because of their simple structure.
In order to produce more viruses like itself, they must parasitize the cells of living things.
The COVID-19 virus does the same.
Being infected with Corona 19 means that the Corona 19 virus penetrates the cells in your body and replicates itself.
(In this way, when the number of cells damaged by the virus is increased, 'symptoms' begin to appear.)
However, self-replication of viruses is not as sophisticated as self-replication of human cells.
Due to the rapid printing, there are cases in which genetic information is incorrectly copied.
It is similar to the fact that if another student copies the answer sheet he cheated on while taking the test and repeats the process, a totally different wrong answer comes out.
When a cloned virus becomes different from the original virus, it is called a 'variant'.
The faster and more copies are made, the greater the possibility of errors, and the greater the possibility of new mutations as errors accumulate.
"China has a large population. Large-scale infections in a short period of time not only affect daily life, but may also lead to the emergence of new mutations," Zhong Nanshan's concerns are very valid.
Vaccines reduce the chance of mutation
To reduce the chance of mutation, we need to prevent the spread of the virus from person to person.
If you can't stop it, you should at least slow it down.
There are two ways to do that.
Blocking human-to-human encounters, another is to reduce infection through vaccination.
The human body does not allow viruses such as Corona to freely enter and destroy our cells.
The immune system kicks in in several stages.
One of them is to create 'neutralizing antibodies' to prevent viruses from entering the cells.
The vaccine contains the genetic information of the Corona 19 virus.
When we get the vaccine, our body's immune system learns what Corona 19 is and trains how to fight it.
Our body will be able to make more neutralizing antibodies that are perfect for Corona 19, and other immune functions will be strengthened to better fight Corona 19.
This is why people who have been vaccinated several times are less likely to be infected with the virus and are less likely to become seriously ill even if they are infected.
It can also prevent the recklessly copied virus from spreading to others.
The possibility of mutation is reduced.
However, viruses also change their attack tactics.
The problem is that viruses don't just suffer.
The virus changes (i.e., mutates) into a form different from what our body has learned, breaking through the defenses of neutralizing antibodies and infiltrating cells.
Omicron mutation is just that.
Omicron evaded neutralizing antibodies to levels never seen before and spread out of control.
However, the effectiveness of the vaccine is not limited to making neutralizing antibodies, it also strengthens other aspects of the immune system, so those who still received the vaccine tolerated Omicron better.
Even though the number of Omicron confirmed cases increased enormously, the seriousness rate and fatality rate were lower than before.
However, recently, news of a new mutation has come out.
That's XBB.
XBB is the latest updated version of Omicron
The COVID-19 virus, first discovered in Wuhan, mutated at some point as errors piled up while repeating replication-replication-replication.
Several mutations such as alpha beta delta came out and reached the omicron.
(Greek alphabet names were added in order. There was also a saying, “This will lead to an omega mutation.”) The graphic below summarizes the progress of the Corona 19 mutation on a site called’Next Strain’.
The mutant virus changes little by little as it replicates again.
If it changes a lot, it will be given a completely different Greek alphabet name, but it's not that far, so I put a version number after 'Omicron'.
Omicron subvariants have diversified into BA.1, 4, 5, BF, and BQ.
However, in the fall of last year, two sub-mutation viruses of Omicron (BA.2.10.1 and BA.2.7) were mixed in someone's body.
As these two merged, a new sub-variant was born, which is the Omicron XBB.
(X means the two viruses were 'recombined')
The XBB mutation has only recently attracted attention, but in fact, the World Health Organization (WHO) already announced that reports about XBB were coming in last October.
XBB at this time was version 1, and it was first discovered in India and spread to nearby countries such as Singapore.
Already in mid-October, 26 countries reported XBB.1.
In the meantime, sub-mutations were added little by little.
In the United States, XBB.1.5 was first confirmed in New York at the end of October.
Since then, in December, it has rapidly spread around large cities in the Northeast.
The virus appears to have spread more actively during the Thanksgiving holiday in November and the Christmas season in December, when large-scale tourists gather in large cities in the eastern United States, such as New York.
The biggest feature of XBB is that it evades the immune system better than the existing Omicron mutants, that is, it is more susceptible to infection.
If you look at the data that the US CDC surveyed every week to see what subvariant virus the confirmed patients were infected with,
XBB barely came out until the end of November, but by the end of December it accounted for more than 40%.
Currently, about 80% of new infections in the eastern United States are of the XBB family.
It is becoming the dominant species at an alarming rate.
In China, the BF.7 series is still dominant, but there is a possibility that XBB.1.5 will increase rapidly like in the United States.
Although more time is still needed for the medical characteristics of XBB1.5 to be properly studied, it is known that the symptoms are not significantly different from those of existing Omicron mutations according to the treatment experience in the United States.
▶ Reference article: "XBB causes abdominal pain and diarrhea" Stock price is also excited...
The fact is?
(SBS Reporter Lee Kyung-won)
Why China is more concerned than the US (1) Vaccines
The country with the strongest spread of the latest variant of XBB (1.5) is the United States, but there is no significant change in the seriousness rate, hospitalization rate, or mortality rate in the United States.
If XBB isn't causing more symptoms or increasing fatality rates than conventional Omicrons, what's the problem?
The problem is that they multiply faster and have a better ability to evade antibodies.
People who have been infected once are more likely to become infected again.
Antiviral treatments such as Paxrovid are still showing to be effective.
However, in the case of people with reduced immunity due to underlying disease or old age, they need to receive antibody treatment, but the problem is that the XBB mutation has an excellent ability to avoid this.
The United States and South Korea are less worried.
This is because they have already experienced operating the medical system over the surge in infected people and have been widely vaccinated with m-RNA vaccines that have been proven effective.
(Pfizer Moderna vaccine is an m-RNA vaccine.)
m-RNA vaccine injects the genetic information of a tool used when a virus enters the body and opens the cell door into the human body.
As an analogy, it is a high-tech method that allows the security system to learn how a real thief unlocks a door.
The immune system, which has learned through such a vaccine, can cope with the virus to some extent even if it changes its shape and enters.
However, China only vaccinated domestic vaccines that are less effective.
The Chinese vaccine essentially kills the virus and injects it as a learning aid for the immune system.
It is called dead vaccine.
Past epidemics could be prevented to some extent with this type of vaccine, but it is useless against advanced strength (the latest variant of Corona 19) with excellent immune system evasion ability.
It is similar to a soccer team that played a practice game against young students and cannot play when it is matched against a pro.
It is said that China has been vaccinated with its own vaccine, but as soon as the zero corona is released, the number of infected people explodes because the efficacy of the Chinese vaccine is insufficient.
So, there is a high voice that China should introduce the latest m-RNA vaccine made in the West, such as Pfizer and Moderna.
(It is said that Chinese companies have developed an m-RNA vaccine and are conducting clinical trials, but the vaccination plan is unknown.)
If the infection spreads defenselessly without an m-RNA vaccine, China could cause 500,000 deaths by April A warning also came out.
This is an estimate from an international research institute founded with money by Bill Gates.
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