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?
According to a research paper obtained by the AP, the new strain was found in samples from two patients collected in August and October in Nigeria’s Osun state. The news service noted that the COVID-19 variant differed from one found in the U.K.
“We haven’t observed such rapid rise of the lineage in Nigeria and do not have evidence to indicate that the P681H variant is contributing to increased transmission of the virus in Nigeria"
According to an investigation by the Scientific Computing Laboratory (LNCC), linked to the Ministry of Science and Technology and carried out in collaboration with the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), the new strain was identified for the first time last October in the city of Rio de Janeiro.
Given the low impact (there’s not a lot of cases on these currently) as well as the fact this is kinda ‘old’ info (apparently the one in Brazil has already had its genome mapped and despite being spotted in October they think it originated in July) it seems the answer here is fear mongering/cashing in on people looking up info on the UK strain. Also from what I gather from these articles there’s recent papers/meetings about these strains they reference so it also seems like a dash of coincental timing
Yeah, it’s weird. the UK and South Africa strains share a common mutation.
But, their last common ancestor was in March. Weird stuff
just like the beginning of the pandemic, We Just Don’t Know Yet. frustrating, but there’s little to do besides wait for people to study these and figure them out.
though i do have to say it’s unsurprising we’re seeing mutations during the global second wave; viruses tend to mutate during spreading events, rather than within hosts.
There’s like what, 25 strains of this stuff?
As for the “maybe” stuff, it’s kind of annoying how often the media props up these “maybe” or “could” questions. It’s hard to eliminate something entirely, “could” questions are almost always answered positively, it doesn’t make anyone any wiser, it just serves to scare people.
