· Became dominant strain in South Africa in like a week (way faster than Delta). Must be either a superspreader event, much more transmissible, or much more evasive of antibodies.
· No real data on that cause, and no evidence for increased lethality. Will find out in next 1-2 weeks probably. Decent chance this becomes dominant worldwide and US soon, but not clear if that will be a problem or not.
· The one worrying data we know is the variant has a lot more mutations than other variants, which would make it likely to evade vaccine/antibody treatments – but not necessarily the other kinds of treatments.
· WHO not recommending countries to limit travel. Also problematic that vaccines aren't updating for new variants, and good chance FDA will be the bottleneck there.
· Became dominant strain in South Africa in like a week (way faster than Delta). Must be either a superspreader event, much more transmissible, or much more evasive of antibodies.
· No real data on that cause, and no evidence for increased lethality. Will find out in next 1-2 weeks probably. Decent chance this becomes dominant worldwide and US soon, but not clear if that will be a problem or not.
· The one worrying data we know is the variant has a lot more mutations than other variants, which would make it likely to evade vaccine/antibody treatments – but not necessarily the other kinds of treatments.
· WHO not recommending countries to limit travel. Also problematic that vaccines aren't updating for new variants, and good chance FDA will be the bottleneck there.