Eris

Image by Bluerathy-S at DeviantArt under Creative Commons license

What I meant to start the week with can wait. First, let’s take a quick look at the SARS-CoV-2 variant that is currently rising in both of my countries.

Only notable variants get nicknames now. EG.5.1 is nicknamed Eris. It’s among the many, many descendants of Omicron. In Greek mythology, Eris is a goddess of strife and discord. Eris and the earlier variant Arcturus are driving a wave. Yes, in high summer for the northern hemisphere when people used to not get sick much.

News articles will tell you that its symptoms seem like a common cold plus sometimes muscle or joint aches. Be not beguiled. I’ll explain why in a moment.

Top symptoms of Eris include:

1. Sore throat

2. Runny nose

3. Blocked nose

4. Sneezing

5. Dry cough

6. Headache

7. Wet cough

8. Hoarse voice

9. Muscle aches

10. Altered smell

Did you notice what’s missing from the list? What are we accustomed to seeing as frequent symptoms of COVID that isn’t on the list?

Fever. Shortness of breath and maybe crackly lung sounds. Loss of the sense of smell…

In other waves, officials and mainstream media have been quick to say vaccines are protecting us and making COVID less severe. I do not see the usual flood of those messages. They wouldn’t be true anyway. Vaccines did dramatically reduce the severity of acute COVID when they were recent and variants were close to the versions targeted by the vaccines. None of that is the case any more. The virus has raced ahead of the vaccines and most people had their latest jabs so long ago that their effectiveness has dwindled to very little. The antibodies they generate aren’t a good fit any more.

This jostled around in the back of my mind for a while. Is it good news or bad news? It felt like I was failing to see something right in front of me.

Then I realized what we should be asking that nobody seems to be asking out loud.

Why is fever missing?

Fever is not a result of getting an infection. It’s a result of our immune response to infection. Viruses hate it, so it’s a mainstay of our inflammatory response.

I cannot say I know the answer to why it is missing, but I see a hypothesis that needs to be tested. The virus is changing rapidly and so are many of us.

By now, most people have gotten COVID. Many people have gotten it more than once. A neighbor has been through it four times. A colleague and his entire household have been through it five times. Even our most stringently careful neighbor caught it once.

Some viruses leave lasting immunity behind. SARS-CoV-2 doesn’t. It’s well documented that even asymptomatic COVID damages numerous cell types, notably T-cells and B-cells, the lymphocytes which are crucial elements in our immune systems. Many, many people are walking around with immune systems that are not intact.

We keep looking at symptoms of infection by variants as though we are looking at first-time infections. Most infections now are second, third, fourth or more. Both the virus and the infected person’s immune system have changed.

Perhaps COVID symptoms are not getting milder because the virus is milder, and not because our immune systems are better at fighting it.

Hypothesis: The symptoms are milder because prior infections have badly damaged certain portions of the immune system. Symptoms are milder due to weakened immune system response.

I hope this hypothesis is wrong. But on the chance that it could be right… let’s treat Eris with appropriate respect by avoiding it.

P.S.—Rapid tests have become ever more unreliable as the virus changes. Here in the UK, by the end of last year rapid home tests flagged less than half of the infections presented to them. People who have COVID can test day after day and not get a positive result. Anecdotally, Flow Flex tests seem to be detecting the current variants better than most other brands. If you get sick, you may need to know that in order to get appropriate treatment if treatment is available.