evidence: Q: On Wednesday, the CDC issued its initial risk assessment for the new BA.2.86 variant, which says existing tests, treatments and updated vaccines will likely still be effective, but it "may be more capable of causing infection in people who have previously had COVID-19 or who have received COVID-19 vaccines." What does this mean? [...] So what people are very concerned about is what is going to happen if this variant is that different. Are we not going to have enough immunity to prevent people from getting infected? But the good news is that it appears the existing treatment and testing work, and that the updated booster, which should hopefully come out in a few weeks, does appear to have some level of immunity and should continue to have significant protection against hospitalization, severe disease and death. This again emphasizes why (being up to date on vaccines) is so important.