Now there are two of them

November 28, 2025 Radagast Uncategorized 0

I feel like sharing that I still don’t really believe we’ve seen the end of SARS-COV-2 yet. Recently we saw an avalanche of new BA.3.2 sequences, 13 in total, 4 in Germany, 9 in Australia. It’s clearly slowly growing.

This a recipe for one of the worst case scenarios, something I already warned about for BA.2.86: The introduction of a secondary lineage, that’s so genetically distinct that it doesn’t force the old lineage into extinction, but continues circulating together with it. The sublineage BA.3.2.2 is now the fastest growing lineage, so it’s probably going to take over:

What this means in practice, is that you could see the average person go from two SARS-COV-2 infections per year, to four infections per year:

We see this with Dengue: Exposure to one serotype means you’re generally protected against that serotype for the rest of your life, but the other serotypes can reinfect you within years. With more circulating serotypes, you would similarly expect SARS-2 to become capable of more rapid reinfection.

We’ve never really seen a virus like this before in our species in modern times, because an airborne SARS virus that causes immunodeficiency and chronic infections is kind of incompatible with a population of 8 billion people. We have the genetic evidence for that: The SARS viruses decimate a population, over a period of multiple generations of people. It’s going to take time, before this virus shows its teeth. That’s why China persisted with these lockdowns for so long: They knew what had escaped containment is a very nasty thing.

Right now we’re at two serotypes circulating simultaneously: The JN.1 serotype and the BA.3.2 serotype. At some point, we may see enough separate serotypes circulating simultaneously, that most people are reinfected before their immune system has recovered from the previous infection. That’s when you could expect to start seeing signs of immunodeficiency in most of the population.

The BA.3.2 lineage meets the characteristics I predicted: A deletion in the immunogenic loops of the N-Terminal Domain of the Spike protein, resulting in a shorter NTD. In simple English: It got rid of the easiest place for antibodies to bind. And the effect looks rather nasty:

In most other places, the downslope of each XFG.* wave has looked smooth and steep.

But in Germany, it seems the downslope has hit a ramp and is possibly trending back up now.

Early signal of BA.3.2.*? More severe?

— Mike Honey (@Mike_Honey_) November 21, 2025

Here’s what I wrote:

As I have said before, you can now expect deletions to emerge, around these regions:

14-26 (N1), 141-156 (N3) and 246-260 (N5).

Well, that’s BA.3.2.

I know there must be some of you out there who think I’m talking out of my ass. But what I predicted has now happened: We see a massive deletion in the N3 loop of the NTD, of the new fastest rising highly divergent BA.3.2 lineage. With a big enough deletion like this, you’ll deform the shape of the entire N-Terminal Domain, it can thus be enough to shake off (almost) all of the anti-NTD antibodies. It also deleted the cysteine pair, that folds the NTD into its proper shape, so that also makes it harder for the antibodies to bind.

We all know virulence has decreased a lot over the past five years. The question is why. If it’s mainly due to these antibodies that neutralize the virus through the immunogenic loops of the N-Terminal Domain, then BA.3.2 could now end the trend towards reduced virulence.

What you’ve seen twice now, is that a new lineage came along and wiped out everything else. First Omicron wiped out everything else. Then BA.2.86 emerged, developed some mutations and wiped out all the other Omicrons.

The fact that you saw this twice however, is no guarantee it will unfold like this again in the future. As the virus gets fitter over time, it becomes harder for something new to emerge with a big enough advantage to wipe out the existing pool of genetic diversity. If BA.3.2 continues growing slowly, which is what I expect, the other lineages get a chance to adapt and survive.

In contrast to what you might think, SARS-COV-2 has not started behaving like a normal respiratory virus yet. It’s the only one that is infecting people year-round:

The completely aseasonal pattern of this virus, is suggestive of antibody dependent enhancement of infection. The exact same antibodies that prevent infection by a virus at high concentrations, can increase infection risk once they decline to low concentrations. That would explain why you see this virus spread in summer, when none of the other viral respiratory pathogens spread.

This year-round spread we see years after its emergence is a signature of an unnatural pandemic, one that is being worsened by antibody dependent enhancement due to mass vaccination with leaky vaccines.

How has a bat SARS virus managed to establish itself permanently in the human population, year-round? Why haven’t the other SARS and MERS viruses achieved this? Why is this the only respiratory virus that infects us year-round? Those are questions people ought to be asking, but aren’t.

I know, it’s been four years. Most people have moved on by now, which by all means, you should. But the death toll from this pandemic and the devastation from the accompanying lockdowns is estimated at 27.3 million people. And the reality is, that we’re just not done with it yet.

The population’s vulnerability to this virus is masked by abnormally high concentrations of antibodies against it, levels estimated to be ten times above normal. This interferes in the protection against other respiratory pathogens, hence why we see abnormally large waves of influenza and other respiratory pathogens around the world.

You can’t just stack endless numbers of B and T cells in the lungs. The immune system, is characterized by constrained space. All those B cells and T cells in the lungs that are looking for SARS-COV-2 Spike proteins leave less room for T cells and B cells that look for other pathogens.

We’ve known for a long time that inactivated influenza vaccines increase the risk of infection by unrelated respiratory pathogens. This is the reason for that. We would expect the same thing for SARS2 vaccination: Protection against SARS2 will have come at the cost of protection against unrelated respiratory pathogens.

A few months ago, an interesting study was released. It treated COVID-19 patients, by donating Natural Killer cells from an unvaccinated convalescent donor. Other studies have also looked at how the unvaccinated naturally immune have a unique expansion of a population of natural killer cells after infection. This is the main noticeable different manner in which the immune system would naturally respond to a novel respiratory pathogen of this nature.

The antibody response against SARS-COV-2 is ultimately an unsustainable strategy, as the virus simply develops a strong dense glycan shield against the antibodies, as is seen in Arenavirus. It also learns to avoid neutralization through the N-Terminal Domain, by deleting highly immunogenic regions there, that don’t have glycans. This was first seen in BA.2.87.1 and now we’re seeing it happen through BA.3.2.

You also have to keep in mind, that there’s nothing that stops BA.3.2 from simply passing on its improved NTD to the already circulating lineages, through recombination. The fact that it seems to have some minor disadvantages in its backbone won’t be enough to stop it.