“There is much we don’t know about the new COVID-19 variant—but everything we know so far suggests a huge danger.”
A new variant of the coronavirus is spreading across the globe. It was first identified in the United Kingdom, where it is rapidly spreading, and has been found in multiple countries.
Viruses mutate all the time, often with no impact, but this one appears to be more transmissible than other variants—meaning it spreads more easily. Barely one day after officials announced that America’s first case of the variant had been found in the United States, in a Colorado man with no history of travel, an additional case was found in California.
A more transmissible variant of COVID-19 is a potential catastrophe in and of itself. If anything, given the stage in the pandemic we are at, a more transmissible variant is in some ways much more dangerous than a more severe variant. That’s because higher transmissibility subjects us to a more contagious virus spreading with exponential growth, whereas the risk from increased severity would have increased in a linear manner, affecting only those infected.
I dismissed the news initially because viruses mutate all the time and there have been too many baseless “mutant-ninja virus” doomsaying headlines this year. The exaggerated, clickbaity alarmism makes it harder to discern real threats from sensationalism. (Continued)
Source: The Atlantic