Pfizer vaccine working well against variants

There is a now-common format to stories stoking fear about variants of COVID-19. They start out with by scaring readers with assumptions that new variants might defeat vaccines and be far more contagious (“The devil is already here!”), and you have to keep reading a ways to find out that even the evidence for substantially increased contagion is unclear and there’s no evidence that vaccines won’t be effective against them at all.

Anyway, once again Eeyoreism doesn’t really seem to be holding up:

The Covid-19 vaccine from Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE showed a high ability to neutralize coronavirus strains first detected in Brazil, the U.K. and South Africa, according to a new study.

In lab experiments, the shot demonstrated “roughly equivalent” levels of neutralizing activity against the Brazil and U.K. strains compared with a version of the virus from early last year. It also showed “robust but lower” activity against the South Africa variant, according to a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine.The day’s biggest storiesGet caught up with the Evening Briefing.EmailSign UpBy submitting my information, I agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Service and to receive offers and promotions from Bloomberg.

While the research needs to be validated with real-world data, it offers another reason for optimism that the Covid vaccines are generally performing well against variants of the virus.

I’m not saying that there’s no reason for concern at all about mutations — indeed, that’s one reason why speeding up delivery of the vaccines and convincing people to take them when offered is so important — but save counterproductive fearmongering speculation about vaccines being rendered ineffective by specific variants until there’s actual evidence that it’s happening.