Analysis: old coronavirus variants are unlikely to come back but new ones are not necessarily worse

Could old coronavirus variants ever come back? The virus is evolving through a "continual game of cat and mouse between the virus and our immune systems," an epidemiologist explained. YahooNews

What happened to the variants that once wreaked havoc? “For all intents and purposes, we can consider them gone,” said David Dowdy, an epidemiology professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

As the virus spawned new variations that were better at infecting people, they edged out old types, including the alpha variant of early 2020 and delta from 2021. It happens through a “continual game of cat and mouse between the virus and our immune systems,” Dowdy said.

But a new variant isn’t necessarily bad news. The alpha and delta variants were actually known to make people more ill, and as those variants faded away, so did some of their most severe symptoms and outcomes.

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