NEW: The British dampened some vaccine joy yesterday with news of a possibly hyper-transmissible variant. How scary is this new variant?

Bottomline: Scientists should watch and worry, yes, but the rest of us need not panic. 1/x https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/20/health/coronavirus-britain-variant.html
The Coronavirus Is Mutating. What Does That Mean for Us?

Officials in Britain and South Africa claim new variants are more easily transmitted. There’s a lot more to the story, scientists say.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/20/health/coronavirus-britain-variant.html
The new variant has 23 mutations. Some are also in the new South African variant, and others were in the Danish mink and more importantly, showed up in an immunocompromised person, decreasing response to convalescent plasma. 2/x
The big worry, of course, is that the virus will mutate to become resistant to the vaccines. But for that to happen, it will likely take years and many more mutations, multiple experts told me 3/x
In the meantime, is this variant more transmissible? Maybe. Some of the mutations are in the spike and might allow the virus to infect cells more efficiently. But the data could also be explained by behavioral changes in the population 4/x
Viruses mutate by random all the time, and this coronavirus is turning out to mutate more often than we thought. Some of these are going to turn out to be beneficial. Scientists are (and should continue to) tracking the changes carefully 5/x
This is a super complicated topic, and I am grateful to the many scientists who took the time to walk me through it all. Please read the story for full details. 6/6

feat. @jbloom_lab @mugecevik @GuptaR_lab @dgurdasani1 @ChandranLab @firefoxx66 @trvrb https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/20/health/coronavirus-britain-variant.html
The Coronavirus Is Mutating. What Does That Mean for Us?

Officials in Britain and South Africa claim new variants are more easily transmitted. There’s a lot more to the story, scientists say.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/20/health/coronavirus-britain-variant.html
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