The worst vicious cycle brought by new variants of COVID

 A recent report on the latest epidemic of COVID19 by CNN tells us there could be a vicious cycle in outbreaks. 

BA.5 subvariant of Omicron is more transmissible and more immunity evasive than the previous strains. It causes a large number of infected people in the society. The larger virus load among people could bring more chances of mutation to this virus toward more infectivity/immunity evasiveness. Such a new strain may bring another peak of outbreak. And the same process goes on. It is the worst vicious cycle.  

In that vicious cycle, there could be increasing number of long COVID cases. The break through infection is known to augment the risk of long COVID. Another report in Fortune says there are 1 to 2 % of all workers unable to go on working due to long COVID. It is not only a problem of each individual suffering from long COVID but could be a serious burden to the society from the standpoint of social security. 

We seem to go on that vicious cycle at present. The number of infected cases hit 20K recently. If it goes after the situation in the US, it may rise to 40K or 50K in a day. Among them, there should be certain percentage of long COVID cases. The number of long COVID cases unable to work may reach several hundreds of thousand in the near future. Most people are ignorant of this problem. Even worse, the government seems reluctant to investigate on long COVID cases or to inform about it to them. The government even tries to manage COVID19 cases in the same manner as common cold or influenza. It sure will worsen the epidemic in the society.

I really hope this prospect for the worst vicious cycle won't come true. But something like antiviral med or new vaccine for universal antigen would be available not too long from now. However, I could not help being pessimistic for the foreseeable future. Especially the attitude of the government regarding this issue dismays me a lot.