It certainly sounds ominous, but the experiments were done in hamsters, whereas human exposure to BA.2 doesn’t seem to pan out the same way. https://www.bloomb

It certainly sounds ominous, but the experiments were done in hamsters, whereas human exposure to BA.2 doesn’t seem to pan out the same way. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-16/study-shows-omicron-sub-variant-no-more-severe-than-first-strain https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-16/study-sho... >Among 95,470 infections analyzed by the national laboratory, 3.6% of those with BA.2 were hospitalized, compared with 3.4% of those with the original strain [BA.1]. Among 3,058 hospitalized patients, 30.5% of those infected with BA.2 developed severe disease compared with 33.5% of those with the original omicron version. And even if we disregard these real-world results in humans, the hamster experiment found that BA.2 was equivalent in lung pathology and overall fusogenicity to B.1.1/D614G, which is still far less fusogenic than delta. Fusogenicity is linked to lymphopenia[1] and blood clots/stroke[2]. 1. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41418-021-00795-y https://www.nature.com/articles/s41418-021-00795-y 2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8664391/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8664391/