New COVID Strains: Should You Be Worried? (Wise Decision Maker Guide 36)

Greetings Decision maker,

The news headlines about mutated COVID strains originating in the UK, South Africa, and elsewhere have spread anxiety about the implications for organizations and individuals alike. Recently identified in the US, these new COVID strains likely arrived here by mid-November, with hundreds of probable cases by now. We even have a variant similar to the UK one that originated in the US and became predominant in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio, over three weeks from late December to early January. Yet should you be truly worried and change your plans?

The media, experts, and officials have focused on concerns about vaccine effectiveness. While some legitimate concerns exist that our vaccines might be 10-20% less effective against the new COVID strains, this relatively small difference shouldn’t make you too worried. In fact, scientists may quickly update the mRNA-based vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech to make them fully effective against these new COVID variants.

So once the US achieves herd immunity through mass vaccination by the end of 2021, these new COVID strains won’t really matter. However, another aspect of these new strains should make you very worried indeed: they’re much more infectious. Unfortunately, the implications of their infectiousness have received little news coverage. Moreover, prominent public officials have downplayed concerns about the new strain, saying there’s no cause for alarm.

Such complacency reflects our sleepwalking in the pandemic’s early stages, despite numerous warnings from myself and other risk management experts. Our brains don’t deal well with such threats, making it much more difficult to adapt successfully to slow-moving and high-impact train wrecks such as the pandemic itself, or to a much more infectious variant.

To learn more about the implications of these new COVID strains and how to prepare for what’s to come, check out this blog.

What’s Up With Me

To be honest, I’m feeling down. That’s not only due to the medium-term problem of the new COVID strains, but also the more immediate issue of the political turmoil in Washington, DC. Never imagined I’d see rioters in the seat of Congress. Reminded me of some of the scenes in Eastern European countries, the region of the world from which my parents took me when I was 10 so I would grow up in a stable democracy without such strife. I really hope we can return to stability politically. I also hope the government will pay attention to the new strains, but don’t feel optimistic about it, as you can tell from my article/video/podcast.

Recommendations For You

While it's easy to feel powerless in the face of current political turmoil and widespread misinformation, there's a powerful step you can take: take the Pro-Truth Pledge.

The Pro-Truth Pledge is a nonprofit nonpartisan effort that I co-founded in 2017 in order to fight misinformation and incivility in public discourse. It's something I'm truly passionate about, which is why my consulting business, Disaster Avoidance Experts, donates all profits to support this project. The PTP is based on behavioral science, and peer-reviewed studies confirmed that it's effective at promoting truth in the public sphere (1 and 2).

When you take the pledge at www.protruthpledge.org, you'll join over 12,000 politicians, leaders, and everyday people in protecting facts and civility through truth-oriented behaviors. At a time when lies and misinformation are causing so much pain and strife in our society, few things are more important than taking a stand for truth and facts.

Help Me Serve Your Needs

How alarmed do you feel about the new COVID strains? What might you and your team gain from addressing normalcy bias, hyperbolic discounting, and planning fallacy in your approach to the pandemic and other major disruptors? What next steps will you take to change your plans to adapt for the new COVID strains?

Look forward to your feedback! I strive to improve my ability to help you avoid decision disasters and maximize success, so any feedback you can provide on this content - or anything else - will help me serve your needs better.

Decisively Yours,

Gleb

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