Virginia is in a race between two opponents on the opposite ends of the health spectrum: vaccines and virus variants. The race winner will determine if COVID-19 cases – already growing statewide – will explode to a peak higher than the January surge or eventually fade to a controllable level. This particular match-up has been predicted for weeks by a COVID-19 model specifically geared to Virginia’s part of the pandemic. A report released Friday by UVA’s Biocomplexity Institute has dropped an optimistic tone it had in early March when infections were down and vaccines were up.