Scenarios for the next COVID-19 variants: the SAGE document

What will COVID-19 develop into? What variants should we expect?

I’d like to continue my futures exploration of the pandemic today by focusing on a set of scenarios recently published by Britain’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE). It’s an interesting document, sharing a range of possibilities well grounded in current epidemiology, from what I can understand. These potential futures are ones colleges and universities need to consider as they plan for 2021–2022.

Let me summarize and excerpt them here, then develop some implications for higher education.

COVID-19 status as of this post, via Johns Hopkins.

SAGE’s method — implied, but not fully stated — seems to focus on several scenario variables: virus transmissibility, lethality, and ability to escape vaccines, all driven by mutations to the virus’ shape and contents.

“Scenario One: A variant that causes severe disease in a greater proportion of the population than has occurred to date.” In other words, this new COVID variant injured and kills more people and a greater range of us. SAGE offers two modern analogies to help us visualize how terrible this could be: “For example, with similar morbidity/mortality to other zoonotic coronaviruses such as SARS-CoV (~10% case fatality) or MERS-CoV (~35% case fatality).”