Mridul K. Thomas
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ecology - phytoplankton - functional traits

02/02/2021

2/2/2021

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Re-upping this weekend Covid post explaining variants, mutations and how the virus' evolution is likely to play out. The past couple of days have brought bad news that unfortunately bear out predictions from some recent posts.

New cases of the UK variant B117 show it has evolved further and has mutation E484K (see post). This mutation probably makes our antibodies (from existing vaccines & earlier infection) somewhat less effective against the virus. E484K is a major reason why the South Africa variant B1351 is such a threat, and we need to worry about this new mutated B117 for the same reason. It appears to be very rare right now (known only from a few cases in the UK) and I hope we can eradicate it. But we sequence very little, so similar evolution may be happening in other places and we wouldn't know.

Also, more evidence accumulates that the UK variant is more lethal than earlier ones, with about a 65% increase being most likely.

Vaccines ARE still effective, especially in protecting against severe disease and death. Get vaccinated as soon as you can.
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    Why I do this

    I am not an expert on Covid, viruses, or vaccines, but I am a scientist with relevant training. I believe we have a responsibility to clearly communicate science to the public, especially in emergencies. So I started to write summaries of Covid developments on facebook in March 2020 to help friends and family understand the situation as it unfolded. This is an archive of those posts (created much later).

    I also track the spread of alarming Covid variants at http://covidvarianttracking.com/ and map the consequences of faster variant spreading at https://tabsoft.co/2YwHCmZ.

    Please do let me know if you find errors in the most recent posts. 

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