The situation that we're seeing on the ground, and I get this from talking to a number of my colleagues who actually do the genomic surveillance, is BA.2 is kind of creeping up in terms of numbers, but it's not the meteoric rise that we saw with BA.1.

Angela Rasmussen

It doesn't appear to be a supervirus. by Angela Rasmussen

It doesn't appear to be a supervirus.

Angela Rasmussen

It's so soon after that initial BA.1 peak that Angela Rasmussen have a lot of people who were either vaccinated or boosted... [ or ] got Omicron, and so right now all of those people will have relatively high titers of antibodies, neutralizing antibodies that will protect against infection.

Angela Rasmussen

I'd be very surprised, with the current state of the global population in terms of immune status, if we didn't see more variants emerge.

Angela Rasmussen

Your body has basically a fire alarm system that's a sprinkler system all at the same time... [ This ] is the first line of defense against different viral infections. When that system is delayed at triggering the alarm, and then consequently triggering the defenses, people tend to have worse outcomes and more severe disease, we're still learning about what makes that delay happen. But that does seem to be one of the major driving factors in how sick people will ultimately get.

Angela Rasmussen

Identical twins may be genetically identical for the most part, but they're actually still very different individuals, they're also living different lives ; they're separate autonomous individuals.

Angela Rasmussen

We still don't know a lot about what predisposes an individual person to get severely ill while another person who has very similar characteristics may not.

Angela Rasmussen

So, genetically identical twins are actually not genetically identical in terms of the repertoire of antibody-producing B cells and T cells that they have. That could also factor into how they're going to respond and how effectively they're going to clear a given infection.

Angela Rasmussen

When you eat any kind of food, whether it be hot or cold, that food is going to go straight down into your stomach, where there's a high acidity, low-pH environment that will inactivate the virus.

Angela Rasmussen