Thread by @whippletom

For people who talk about boys crying wolf...actually the boy has been pretty restrained regarding variants. Remember iota or kappa?

This one is different

thetimes.co.uk/article/b30489…

Those other variants in full:

1. Alpha, the Kent variant. In November of 2020, amid a national lockdown, cases started rising in Sheppey. Everyone thought it was just people in Sheppey doing Sheppey things. Turned out it wasn't. It was a 50 per cent more transmissible variant

(here is the definitive report:reuters.com/investigates/s…)

Verdict: scariant

Beta variant: Found in South Africa at the same time as the alpha variant. Good at evading immunity, less good at transmitting. Caused a terrible wave in SA, but beaten into subsmission by Blighty's world-beating variant.

Verdict: scariant

Gamma: First spotted in Brazil, where it caused a wave in Manaus. This was interesting, in an awful way, because Manaus' first wave had been among the worst in the world. Some immune evasion likely (but how much is controversial).

Verdict: scariant

thetimes.co.uk/article/how-wi…

4. Delta

Remember how at Christmas last year people talked about the Indian anomaly, and how it seemed to have escaped the worst of covid? Maybe they had better immunity? Maybe it was to do with not locking down?

Then came delta. And then delta conquered the world.

Scariant

(spot the continent going down in that graph😬)

Now we are into the more hipster variants.

Epsilon: Showed promise in the lab, five solid spike protein mutations, had a strong summer 2020 in the US. Ultimately couldn't hack the competition. Last seen in July, gone the way of the dodo.

Zeta: Independently evolved the E484K mutation that appears so good at getting around immunity. Interesting example of convergent evolution. Popped up in Rio at the same time as Gamma - but just didn't have the edge. Crushingly, the WHO describes as "Former Variant of Interest"

Eta: should clearly be represented with an E, instead the crazy greeks use an H. In similar fashion, it should clearly have been a scariant - with mutations shared with gamma and alpha - but turned out to be a not-iant.

Iota: in its pomp, this variant claimed 1 in 4 infections in New York. Back in February 2021, the world was at its feet. It seeded 18 countries. But delta was too strong.

Extinct-iant