[jyl]

Some of the lesser-known monoclonal antibody drugs are (preliminary data, subject to confirmation) effective against Omicron. For example the GSK/VIR sotrovimab - which is why VIR is +50% since last Thursday night when mapping of Omicron's mutation sites strongly suggested that the REGN LLY mAb would lose effectiveness and the GSK mAb would not.

The really cool thing is that GSK recently got clinical trial data showing the intramuscular injection dosing is as effective as the intravenous infusion dosing; since IM is just a shot instead of the hour on a IV drip, this could make GSK's mAb far more used than the REGN/LLY mAbs have ever been.

The PFE oral antiviral also targets a highly conserved site that is common to SARS and SARS2 and, I think, to other coronaviruses. It inhibits replication of the virus and thus works upstream of the mAbs that attack virus after replication.

The two classes of drugs could even be used together.

My view is that in 2022, with increasing vaccination rate, boosters, and new therapeutics, the USA and other rich/developed countries should be pretty resilient to new Covid variants.

The developing world will still be very short of vaccines and therapeutics - but amply supplied with anti-vax disinformation and the political groups that exploit it - so they will continue to be eff'd and churn out new Covid strains that will circle the globe.

Hopefully one of those won't turn out to be the "Voldemort strain" that breaks through all the vaccine and therapeutic defenses built up over the last two years.

China seems unwilling to buy the Western drugs (astonishingly, despite Chinese pharma Fuson holding a license for the Pfizer vaccine since 2020, China still hasn't approved it), hasn't as yet developed its own equals (even African countries are not actively taking the Chinese vaccines, in part because of the prices the Chinese are charging), so it is sticking to its "zero Covid" policy and probably will at least through the Winter Olympics. Stupid, but whatever.

Incidentally, REGN will sell about $5BN this year of its mAb REGN-COV while VIR's market cap is $6BN.