Lambda In Dallas: What Doesn't Kill You Mutates To Try Again

DALLAS, TX —One of the things Australians like to brag about is how many of the indigenous life forms Down Under can kill you. Things that fly, things that crawl, things that live in the water. The list is long and exotic.

In Texas, we're used to scorpions, rattlesnakes and Gila monsters. But things you can get from a sneeze or a cough are new. In the past few weeks, we've seen a fungus tear through local hospitals, a non-stop spraying campaign to rid the city and surrounding areas of mosquitoes carrying West Nile virus, and now a new COVID-19 mutation is being introduced into the mix.

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But with the delta variant currently accounting for 95 percent of all local coronavirus infections and less than 50 percent of the population immunized, trouble seems inevitable courtesy of the lambda variant.

Lambda was first seen last December in Peru, but now has been isolated in Dallas as well. Like its cousin delta, lambda is also more resistant to vaccination, and also more contagious than the virus that was used to develop the Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson shots.

Scientists say that the vaccines are still successful in inhibiting (although not necessarily preventing) infection, but that as the virus continues to mutate while being circulated through unvaccinated hosts, the vaccines could conceivably fail eventually.

At the moment, medical experts will only say that lambda seems to be no worse than any of the mutations which have preceded it — so far.

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