If you do one thing today, listen to this episode (#696) of This Week in Virology wherein a group of experts smack down the “British mutant strain” story point by point. The discussion starts at 55:36; nutshell below. microbe.tv/twiv/
Nutshell: 1. There is no new strain of COVID. It is a variant, not a strain 2. The spread of the variant in England likely comes down to dumb luck.
3. There have been no experiments whatsoever that demonstrate any of the scary scenarios we’re being told to worry about w/r/t this variant 4. When a story like this spreads like wildfire, you gotta wonder why.
This story is serving to undermine vaccination efforts as well has cause diplomatic problems between the UK and the rest of Europe. So yeah, I really do wonder why this story was put into the media ecosystem.
(as well *as* cause diplomatic problems, not has)
And here Prof. Racaniello breaks it down again:
https://twitter.com/HappyLuckyIdiot/status/1341428895774490624?s=20
His bottom line: let's move away from the scary headlines and instead focus on vaccination, because vaccination is how we will get ourselves out of this pandemic. I do enjoy a grumpy rant from an expert now and then.
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