JANUS: What COVID variant JN.1 means for you¶

JANUS: What COVID variant JN.1 means for you.

You're probably aware that we are in a "COVID wave" right now. Testing is still tragically low right now, so it's hard to get a view of just how many cases are raging right now. (1/21) But wastewater data suggests we are at the second highest point in the pandemic, beaten only by the initial appearance of omicron.

For years, we've been hearing about "waves" of COVID. (2/21) This phrasing was engineered to naturalize the disease as being just like any other "seasonal" illness. This trend of passively reporting on poorly-defined "cycles" continued until the "waves" gave way to a single high tide. (3/21) It's hard to understate the rhetorical significance of this narrative. You've been trained on "peaks we should worry about and valleys we shouldn't," until one day, they stopped reporting the peaks at all. Every week, high numbers came rolling in, with no fanfare. (4/21) Some have referred to this period as "variant soup" or other colorful nicknames. I maintained that it was a fleeting state of dynamic equilibrium between competing viral populations. Each population maintained its niche within a constantly fluctuating evolutionary context. (5/21) That context being the dynamics of each competing lineage. The primary driver of viral evolution is its ability to infect new people, which depends on a number of traits that SARS-CoV-2 is very good at: (6/21) physically reaching people, entering cells, evading immunity, and pumping out infectious particles that can reach more people.

That point about evading immunity is crucial for understanding the evolution of SARS-CoV-2. (7/21) For a virus that can spread so quickly and so far, the limiting factor is whether or not it can gain a foothold when it reaches a new host. This means that it has to constantly evolve to navigate a population full of people currently mounting a defense to other lineages. (8/21) Omicron represented an enormous shift in the evolutionary landscape, by happening upon a constellation of mutations that made it distinct enough from other variants to make any existing immunity obsolete without compromising on other factors, like cell entry. (9/21) It was so genetically distinct from the original SARS-CoV-2 virus that it became a qualitatively different disease. Omicron is as genetically distant from SARS2 as SARS2 was from SARS1, leading some to start colloquially referring to it as SARS-CoV-3. (10/21) It set the stage for a new era of the pandemic.

As omicron spread, it outcompeted every other lineage so thoroughly that it became the progenitor of every major subsequent variant. Official sources stopped giving variants Greek letter names. (11/21) Instead, they started tossing out strings of letters and numbers, or just referring to everything as an "omicron subvariant." This was communications malpractice, as egregious as if they had never named any variants at all. (12/21) With the simultaneous rise of omicron and institutional pandemic denial, we saw the end of "waves" and the beginning of a constant background of elevated cases. Since late 2021, populations have been getting sicker and sicker... (13/21) ... with less and less awareness that we are even still in a pandemic at all.

This was the context when the next big shift occurred: the emergence of "omicron subvariant BA.2.86," also known colloquially as "Pirola." (14/21) Just as omicron was as distinct from SARS-CoV-2 as SARS-CoV-2 was from SARS, Pirola is AGAIN as distinct from omicron as omicron was from the original strain.

For the first few months of Pirola's existence, it concerned researchers on the basis of its immune evasion. (15/21) However, it hadn't yet made the same innovative leap that omicron had, of balancing that distinctiveness with transmissibility.

Enter JN.1.

JN.1 is the new omicron. This is not just a "surge in cases," but a qualitative leap in the pandemic landscape. (16/21) It is so genetically distinct that, unless you've already been infected with it, your immune system is essentially completely naive to it. It is more transmissible than its parent, and it is driving the largest increase in cases and hospitalizations since omicron itself. (17/21) It is safe to say, there have only been 3 "waves" of COVID: its initial emergence, the rise of omicron… and right now.

The evolutionary landscape is being rewritten as we speak, and it's almost certain that all new major variants that emerge will be spawned from JN.1. (18/21) It is in this context that I believe it deserves its own name. I propose Janus.

In addition to bearing the same letters as the "official" name, Janus refers to the Roman god of transitions: endings and new beginnings. (19/21) As we enter January, the month named for him, we also enter a new era of the pandemic.

With any luck, this new era will bring much-needed changes to how we approach COVID. (20/21) If you were waiting for an excuse to return to practicing COVID safety, individually or organizationally, now is your chance. The institutions you look to for protection are not coming to save you: it's on us to protect each other.

Welcome to the era of Janus. (21/21)