Yeah, this is terrible news, TH. Not just for the UK, but, little by little for every other country I imagine. The spread of regular covid has been pretty much unstoppable, and now...

As happened back in March, I bet asymptomatic carriers have already taken the new varient to various countries, flying in under the radar, and reducing the effectiveness of bans. Remember the US, with its "fifteen cases", now at approx 310,000 ? What chance of restricting something 70% more contagious?

Yes, that's casting a further cloud over my already troubled conscience for coming back to Holland this winter. I've had no symptoms and neither has anyone in my family, but still you never know, and things might have been different.

^^ You don't live in Holland? Or by Holland you mean the region in the Netherlands? I confuzzled.

I'm Dutch and I grew up in Holland but I live in the UK (since last year)

From the BBC:

"But if we let it add more mutations, then you start worrying," said Prof Gupta.

"This virus is potentially on a pathway for vaccine escape, it has taken the first couple of steps towards that."

Vaccine escape happens when the virus changes so it dodges the full effect of the vaccine and continues to infect people.

This may be the most concerning element of what is happening with the virus.

This variant is just the latest to show the virus is continuing to adapt as it infects more and more of us.

A presentation by Prof David Robertson, from the University of Glasgow on Friday, concluded: "The virus will probably be able to generate vaccine escape mutants."

That would put us in a position similar to flu, where the vaccines need to be regularly updated. Fortunately the vaccines we have are very easy to tweak.


From me: Oh ****! :(

Cool, for work or study?

For a PhD, so kind of a gray area in between

It’s too bad we didn’t know that letting the virus spread like crazy gives it more opportunities to mutate. Shucks

Unfortunately, my daughter now has Covid. She is a hospital worker and I feared this would happen eventually. She has been running high fevers and is exhausted (which is a slight blessing as she sleeps most of the time). The fevers are scaring me - she's been running 102-103F every day.