Dr. Howard Smith Oncall

  Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/q0PeLQEeG-U   As the vaccines made against the wild type CoVid are helping us weather the pandemic fueled by variants that first arose in Great Britain, the B.1.117 alpha, in South Africa, the B.1.351 beta, in Brazil, the P.1 gamma, and yes in India, the B.1.617 delta, all is not well.  Since not enough people have been fully vaccinated, even in countries with advanced health systems such as the US and European countries, the virus has continued to mutate.   One particularly worrisome variant has arisen in South America, the C.37 lambda.  While the Delta variant is more contagious than the wild type and earlier variants and can break through mRNA vaccine immunity to cause infection, those vaccine-immunized do clear the virus quickly.  The lambda variant, now dominant in some South American countries and in the process of spreading around the world, appears to even more poorly bind the protective antibodies generated by our current vaccines.  The result: more severe CoVid breakthro