authorities sounded the alarm on november 24. it was already in europe as early as november 19th, and it s now been found in at least 20 countries. that much we do know. as for what we don t know, namely whether vaccines will still protect us from this variant, there are head-snapping predictions from the ceos behind the pfizer and moderna vaccines. the head of biontech, a partner in the pfizer vaccine, tells reuters that current vaccines will still likely protect us from severe cases, even though there may be some diminished protection against mild or moderate cases. meantime, the head of moderna says that existing vaccines will be much less effective at battling omicron than earlier strains of covid, telling the financial times, quote, i think it s going to be a material drop. i just don t know how much because we need to wait for the data. but all the scientists i talked to said, this is not going to be
the financial times in an interview that current vaccines are going to struggle with omicron. he said there s no world i think are where the effectiveness is the same level we had with the delta variant. he went on to say, i think it s going to be a material drop. i just don t know how much because we need to wait for the data. but all the scientists i ve talked to are, like, this is not going to be good. a lot of people are reacting to that, sanjay. what do you think? first of all, again, we don t know that this will necessarily become the dominant strain because of what we re seeing in south africa. it doesn t mean it will happen around the world as i was mentioning. right. that s the backdrop of all this. but i ve talked to several different people who work on vaccines and they sort of echo the same thing, but it can mean different things to different people. you get a cushion effect when you get a vaccine, so you get the number of antibodies that are protected against dis