“Running behind a moving train” is the inefficient strategy by which humanity is trying, dose after dose, to fight COVID-19 after 22 months of pandemic, rather than investing in the development of universal vaccines.
This is the image chosen by the Dr Gary Kobinger, world expert in vaccines against emerging infectious pathogens and new director of the National Biodefense Laboratory (security level 4) in Galveston, Texas, to describe the more or less effective assault currently being carried out against the Omicron variant by the different states.
“There, we are running after a moving train that is going faster than us, that we can neither catch up nor stop. After more than two years, it’s time to sit down and say, “OK, as we run behind this train, let’s add more strategies to stop it.” It is not known whether the virus will progress to a more severe or more contagious form. This is why we must prepare for the worst and modify our vaccination strategies, ”he underlines.
The co-inventor of the Ebola vaccine and adviser to the World Health Organization on priority pathogens believes that the scientific community must, rather than constantly improving current targeted vaccines, continue basic research and collaborate to create universal SARS-CoV-2 vaccine platforms that would protect humanity against multiple coronaviruses and various variants.
Much of the funds that had been allocated to COVID-19 vaccine research by states are now being massively diverted to purchasing billions upon millions of doses, he laments.
“Governments say to themselves: ‘What’s the use of funding other avenues, since we already have vaccines?’ he says. There are universal and polyvalent vaccines, particularly against influenza, which protect against the most common strains of the last 20 years.
“Developing a more universal and effective coronavirus vaccine means going back to the drawing board and moving away from the current approach. It means adding time, easily a year of work, to get there. But right now, government decisions are more often based on fear than science. »
A panic reaction
The Dr Kobinger judges that the Legault government’s plan to impose a health tax on unvaccinated people is guided more “by panic”. “I don’t do politics, but I think it’s a hasty reaction to a very natural process that will continue to happen, which is the emergence of a pathogen that spreads across the planet,” he says.
All in all, it is too late to prevent the replication of SARS-CoV-2 with current weapons. “It is an illusion to think that vaccination will get us out of the pandemic. It succeeds in reducing the disease and saving lives, that’s the goal. But this pathogen has established itself in the human population and will now become part of our infectious disease environment,” says Dr.r Kobinger.
Right now, government decisions are more often based on fear than science
The objective should not be to make the virus disappear – an unattainable goal, according to him -, but rather to adapt to its presence and limit its “nuclear” scale replication, which, in turn, allows the emergence strains even more harmful to humanity.
“We were too optimistic from the start. You always have to prepare for the worst. The virus now replicates at stratospheric levels in communities where 20-25% of people are immunosuppressed due to untreated HIV infection, where people live on top of each other, or among groups of people displaced by political conflict and climate change. To see that the doses of vaccine are not allocated in priority to these subgroups and to think that we are going to get out of the pandemic, that does not hold on a scientific level, ”he laments.
That said, the former director of the Infectiology Research Center at Laval University believes that humanity must learn from the history of coronaviruses. These have always rubbed shoulders with humans, and most remain fairly harmless. But this is the first time in known history that a coronavirus has spread so quickly across the globe, he agrees.
It is an illusion to think that vaccination will get us out of the pandemic
“It’s part of the learning that remains to be done, to understand that infectious diseases do not disappear. They can disappear when the epidemic is slowed down very early, as was the case with SARS, but they can re-emerge. We must continue to be concerned about other emerging viruses that continue to be present, in particular the coronavirus causing MERS [syndrome respiratoire du Moyen-Orient], which has a much higher mortality potential than SARS-CoV-2. It remains important to contain this other pathogen, while we still have time, before it evolves towards a transmission capacity as great as SARS-CoV-2. »
The infectiologist remains relatively confident about the coming months and believes a clearing is possible. “Will the virus continue to cause such great social disruption? No one can assure it. It progresses to the upper respiratory tract, where it causes less damage, and not to the lungs. This is what characterizes the coronaviruses that cause the common cold. So the spread is increased, but the disease is less severe. I think in the summer, we’re going to get our heads above water, and that’s probably one of the biggest waves [la cinquième] that we will have. But no one can tell [avec certitude]. »