THE WORLD TOUR OF VARIANTS (20 countries, last 6 months) 1st part.
Far from the excitement on X, and with a lot of caution (<50 sequences/day in some countries), an overall overview, to get your own idea of the situation.
2) WORLD
We recommend to follow EG.5* (orange) still dominant in many countries, BA.2.86* "Pirola" increasing (light brown) and XBB.1.16*(light orange) which seems to leave its place step by stepvto Pirola.
The history of a PANDEMIC is a combination of PERMANENCE and VARIATIONS
To remain permanently among its hosts, the virus constantly invents variations, which we call "mutations"
2) In music, these variations are not mainly expressed, by the speed (tempo), but by the distance between notes.
3) The alternation of mutations, and the relative distance between VOCs, have marked the pandemic much more, than their speed of emergence.
In this sense, the analysis of @LongDesertTrain is very interesting.
2) New review :
"SARS-CoV-2 and the DNA damage response"
DNA damage response pathway components. A very brief description of the role of the DDR protein is given, together with appropriate references microbiologyresearch.org/content/journa…