It is perhaps because she took a stroll this Sunday on the snow-covered plateaus of the Cévennes that Mylène Ogliastro spins the metaphor of the mountain that stands before us.
For the vice-president of the French Society of Virology, the variants of the coronavirus, and in particular the British, must make us react, and quickly.
Research director in Montpellier (Hérault), she says it: only a new confinement can allow us to reverse the trend.
According to Boris Johnson, the English mutation of the virus could make it more deadly ...
MYLENE OGLIASTRO
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Until this Saturday evening, I was dubious and I wondered if the British Prime Minister did not confuse contagiousness and mortality of the virus.
And then, an English consortium - the Nervtag, the equivalent of our scientific council - showed, from statistical analyzes collected in different hospitals, that the variant could increase pathogenicity by 30%, which therefore includes mortality.
Clearly, the risk of severe form and death seems greater with this variant than with the original virus.
VIDEO. Covid-19: the British variant would have "a higher degree of mortality", indicates Boris Johnson
Does this worry you all the more?
Yes, but we already knew that we had to be wary of it.
The data indicated that it is more transmissible because the mutations it carries increase its ability to enter and replicate in our cells.
However, mathematically, the more there are cases, the more we multiply those with severe form of the disease.
This time, two facts are cumulative: it is more transmissible but also, as the English scientists suggest, more dangerous.
Here is a double reason to worry, even if only one was already quite sufficient.
What is the risk ?
That its distribution on the territory does not further increase the saturation of hospital services.
It's as if we were back to square one, that we were thrown back a year: you absolutely have to flatten the curve before you are overwhelmed.
For that, you have to strike fast, and hard.
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How? 'Or' What ?
Already through vaccination.
It is crucial to speed it up.
And by more restrictions to prevent the R0, which says how many a person will infect others, from exploding under the influence of the variant.
For this, it is necessary to establish a new containment, while waiting for the vaccination to take effect.
It's very hard, very restrictive, but epidemiologically speaking, we have no choice.
The earlier "severe" restriction measures are taken, the more quickly the spread of the virus will be limited.
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It doesn't sound like much, but it's huge.
Like a grenade ready to unpin.
We are today in a plain, before attacking the mountain.
The further upstream we act, the less steep the slope will be.
I am optimistic by nature, we can still do it.
But the longer you wait, the more complicated the effort.
The mutations concern in particular the S protein, which helps the virus to attach itself to our cells and which is also the target of the vaccine.
Are we really sure that it will always be effective?
Against the British variant, yes.
Perhaps there will be a slight drop in effectiveness, but nothing that does not affect the vaccine in the short term.
On the other hand, the more it is allowed to circulate, the more it is likely to evolve in the medium term and to find other forms of resistance.
A bit like the South African and Brazilian variants.
You know, Darwin's species theory applies to viruses.
They mutate, then a selection of shapes will adapt to the environment.
A bit like us after all!