1/ Top German Covid expert pours scorn on Boris Johnson's ‘mutant strain’ claims, saying ‘politicians simply called it 70% more infectious’ https://mol.im/a/9075233 

2/ "Suddenly there's a figure out there, 70%, & nobody even knows what it means. The fact that top politicians are reciting scientific content to the media, saying that there's been a mutation and that cases are growing by this and that much here and there, that's unusual."

3/ "The question is - was it the ['new strain' of the] virus's fault, or was it simply that in the area where this virus happened to be... methods of transmission came into play which would have brought any other virus to the surface?"

4/ "If you want to know if a virus is more transmissible, you've have to look at pairs of people who were infected. You'd have to see who infected whom and how long it took"

5/ "Drosten said the new variant was probably already in Germany. 'We know that it's already in Italy, in Holland, in Belgium, in Denmark, even in Australia,' adding that none of these had reported a surge in mutant cases."