Thread by @WheatNOil

To understand mutations, it helps to know how viruses work. First, viruses can’t make more of themselves on their own. Two coronaviruses can’t get together, go on a date, have too much to drink, and have a baby COVID.

They need someone else to make more of them.

https://twitter.com/WheatNOil/status/1341010115499945984

COVID gets into our cells (using the asshole protein) & basically hijacks our cells. It’s got a gun to our cell and says “Look at me, I’m the captain now.” So our infected cells spend all day doing the virus’ bidding: copying thousands of viruses & making more of them.

But our cells don’t make more virus by loading up Word, pressing print & turning up the number of copies. It has to write out each virus RNA (it’s genetic code) by hand. Like Bart writing lines in the Simpsons opening credits. Over & over, thousands of times. With no spell check.

When you do that over and over, you’re going to make a mistake. THAT’s a mutation. A typo.

Most of the time, the typo makes no sense. Like this poor monkey’s work.

But sometimes the typo actually makes sense. Maybe the typo makes the virus more deadly, or less deadly, or spread faster or gives the virus a sweater-vest.

That typo is encoded in the new virus’ RNA. Every copy of the new virus, now has a sweater-vest.

Lots of times these new viruses die out. Sometimes they stick around & become a new strain. A sweater-vest strain.

Sometimes the new strain sticks around by fluke, sometimes it sticks around because it spreads better than the other strains.

It’s important to know that this happens ‘all the time’. Right now, there’s LOTS of different COVID strains around the world. Some that wear sunglasses, some wearing jean shorts, some that wear socks with sandals. Mostly it doesn’t matter. They’re all mostly equal assholes.

Right now there’s a sweater-vest asshole going through the UK. That ‘could’ be b/c it spreads faster. They think so but don’t know for sure. Could legit be random chance that most of the COVID in London are sweater-vest assholes.

But you don’t want to take a chance.

For the most part, small changes in the virus won’t change our immunity. If we have memory of the asshole protein & a different part of the virus changes, we don’t care. Even if the asshole protein changes a bit, our memory cells will recognize that bastard for what it is.

The sweater-vest guy in the UK does have some minor changes to the asshole protein. The expectation is that our immune system will still recognize an asshole protein when it sees one. Even if it’s got some small changes.

Also, your immune system doesn’t just come up with ‘one’ way to attack an asshole protein. It’ll have a few: uppercut, roundhouse kick, evil laugh. If one of those doesn’t work any more, it’s got a few more tricks up it’s sleeve. That’s why the vaccine should still work.

The asshole protein has to change so much that our body doesn’t recognize it BUT it still works against our cells. That’s a narrow window. Which is why the mRNA vaccines are brilliant. But nothing is foolproof.

So our best bet is to slow the virus spread, slow the typos, vaccinate when we’re able and give our bodies the best chance to beat the snot out of this virus before it can take over our cells and make more copies to create more typos.

Not necessarily. It’s warranted to be concerned and cautious. A more rapidly spreading strain of the coronavirus would be something to clamp down harder on to prevent spread. That’s appropriate. Especially while we get more info. There’s a cost to being too slow.

https://twitter.com/scott311_/status/1341086053197819910

Damn. Early data suggests the sweater-vest asshole version of COVID spreads more quickly in children ‘compared to the regular strain’. It’s not more deadly, but it will spread faster through the population.

Best data to date suggests the vaccines should still work BUT...

https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1345382699071102977

It’s important to remember that there is no way we can vaccinate fast enough to stop the new sweater-vest strain in the short term. That’s an intermediate to long-term strategy. The new strain makes it more important to slow spread ‘now’.

Yes. Not more deadly for ‘each person’ infected but because it spreads faster, it will lead to more death total.

https://twitter.com/clbs100710/status/1345400927520493572