We all know about the new UK strain (every other headline is about how it’s been detected all over the world already, that some tests might not be able to detect it, and that the vaccinations might need to be updated), but did you hear about the others?
Scientists detect new strain of coronavirus in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Another new coronavirus strain found in Nigeria: Africa CDC
My impulse is to find it fishy (NOT to question the science, but rather the policy) when weird patterns emerge. Fear mongering, or what?
I forget what the word for it is, but there’s a syndrome that we experience where certain events seem like they are clustered together instead of randomly distributed. Like how if you hear about a plane crash on the news, suddenly you’ll hear about three more plane crashes that week. But it’s not that the plane crashes are actually happening together, it’s that they were escaping your attention before you heard about the first one.
A more drastic version of this happens now with news and especially social media. A story breaks about a new virus strain, new virus strains become the hot topic, and now people and the algorithm are sharing stories about virus strains.