Read on Twitter
It sounds like there's tentative evidence that the new variant does transmit more rapidly.
This is one of the reasons we should take strong action early. Mutations are a known risk of letting a virus transmit widely. If we'd crushed it sooner, this might never have happened. https://twitter.com/ewanbirney/status/1340318434530344960
This is one of the reasons we should take strong action early. Mutations are a known risk of letting a virus transmit widely. If we'd crushed it sooner, this might never have happened. https://twitter.com/ewanbirney/status/1340318434530344960
It's painful to hear such strong statements from the PM when the experts clearly aren't sure though. You know what else could be causing the uptick in cases? Continuing piss-poor policy. https://twitter.com/EvolveDotZoo/status/1340281500084936705
tl;dr? Given (i) that the mutations look like they might be significant, (ii) we don't know what they do in combination, and (iii) that this variant has grown very rapidly in the UK, we need to do more lab experiments and look out for this strain globally https://twitter.com/arambaut/status/1340335291647881218
(Paraphrased from the conclusion of that article.)
If it turns out this does add even 20% to R we are really going to regret letting it spread enough to collect this combination of mutations. We were already struggling to keep R ≈ 1, so even more stringent policies might be needed if we're now playing on hard mode.
How hard can it be to write these things up for the website before a big announcement? https://twitter.com/jamesrbuk/status/1340346634228674561
This is a very good point in an excellent thread. Government policy is so incoherent. How have they learned so little since the spring? https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1340361221153955847
