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other mechanisms than increase VL contribute to the high infectiousness of Omicron
Like human behavior, for example. Large unmasked gatherings like family get togethers for Christmas or New Years Eve parties. As I said before, immune evasion is causing more infections with Omicron, but every infection involves an infected person shedding virus and a victim inhaling enough virus to get infected. Two people behaving in ways that contribute to spread, that they probably could have avoided.
And I agree 100% that Long Covid is going to be a huge expensive long-term public health mess. One point of interest in that topic is that nobody has ever found intact virus in human brain tissue, or even in other nerve tissue. They find RNA fragments from "killed" virus that was floating around in the blood, since brain samples taken at autopsy contain blood vessels. They find intact virus in the physical support cells of the nasal "smell sensors", but not in the nerves of those sensors. One hypothesis for brain injury is anoxia and cytokines. Those might be easier to avoid than actual viral infection of brain cells.
