The prediction market Kalshi [0] is showing a ~50% chance that the CDC will designate a variant of high consequence [1] by March, up from a ~20% chance 36 hours ago.

A biostatistician friend of mine pointed me to this relatively optimistic Twitter thread [2], though this response [3] is much more pessimistic.

[0] https://kalshi.com/markets/VOHC-001

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/variants/variant-i...

[2] https://twitter.com/jbloom_lab/status/1464005676842184705

[3] https://twitter.com/theodora_nyc/status/1464257411582148608