Covid-NEW strain in South Africa!

Doesn't sound good at all.

Just a matter of time before we see it here, or is it here already and we just haven't found it yet.

ReadyMom wrote:New Coronavirus Strain Discovered In South Africa, More Severe Than Previous Variants
https://www.republicworld.com/world-news/rest-of-the-world-news/new-coronavirus-strain-discovered-in-south-africa-more-severe-than-previous-variants.html

According to reports, the new strain of the COVID-19 virus named '501.V2 Variant' is said to be more severe as it contains a higher viral load.

You have to separate what the article actually says, from what they want you to believe.

"It is still very early but at this stage, the preliminary data suggests that the virus that is now dominating in the second wave is spreading faster than the first wave. It is not clear if the second wave has more or fewer deaths, in other words, the severity is still very unclear. We had all of these different strains routinely spreading in South Africa during our first wave and subsequently. What became quite different that we did not expect is the rapid way in which this variant has become dominant in South Africa," Mkhize said in a statement.

So, in spite of the headlines and a bunch of rhetoric, nothing has really changed.

This virus has been making minor mutations all along. One constant in those mutations is that they trade ease of infecting new people for harm they do to people. In other words, the faster strains give milder symptoms. A fast mild strain will dominate the numbers, very quickly, because, in addition to spreading more easily, people will be less likely to know they have it and therefore take fewer precautions.

Some good news, and some bad.

ReadyMom wrote:Another coronavirus mutation was discovered – and this one might be more dangerous
https://bgr.com/2020/12/19/coronavirus-mutation-south-africa-501-v2/
   A new coronavirus mutation was discovered in South Africa, where a version called 501.V2 seems to be fueling the second wave of COVID-19 in the nation.
   The new strain seems to be more dangerous, causing more severe illness in younger patients who do not suffer from other medical conditions.
...

First the good news:
As to the article above and others like it: we need to separate journalistic pandering from reported fact. If you go the article and do a word search for "severe" you can quickly discover that a media reporter said the new variant does cause more sever illness, and the South Africa’s Health Minister said it might cause more severe illness, but the UK "health officials" said "The mutation did not appear to cause more severe illness."

Several other medical experts agree with the UK health officials.

So, right now, it appears that, contrary to media pandering, that this virus is NOT more severe.
(Of course, this isn't the last word, since we have been studying the new variant for less than 6 weeks.)

Now for the bad news.
All variants until now were simply alterations in the layout of the spikes on the surface of the virus, and each time it increased the ease with which it could attach itself (making it easier to spread) it would decrease its virulence (making the illness less severe). And these changes had no effect on our ability to use antibody treatments, vaccines, and the idea that having fought the virus once would leave you immune (with rare exceptions) for months or years.

Until now. This new variant harboring the mutation E484K which has been named 501Y.V2, while it may not be more severe, it seems to be genetically different enough to evade the vaccines we are rolling out.
https://afludiary.blogspot.com/2021/01/preprint-genomic-evidence-of-sars-cov-2.html

This had not been confirmed, but the xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.

Wow. Dang. I wrote the above off of a 7 Jan 2021 article, and the very next day, this gets published:
https://afludiary.blogspot.com/2021/01/preprint-neutralization-of-n501y-mutant.html

Given the steady stream of negative reports surrounding the emergence of COVID variants (B.1.1.7 and 501Y.V2) around the world, the headlines overnight - based on a preprint study - (see Reuters Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine appears effective against mutation in new coronavirus variants -study) heralds welcomed - if incomplete - news.

The study (see below) - while not yet peer-reviewed, and based on lab tests on blood from vaccine recipients - suggests that the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine is likely still effective against a key mutation (501Y) that occurs in both of these variants.

So, the jury is still out.

This new strain of coronavirus has health experts worried:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/second-new-coronavirus-variant-worries-health-experts-heres-what-we-know-000414839.html

I said, before, the jury is still out.
Someone coined the phrase: the absence of evidence is once again, not necessarily the evidence of absence.

Sadly, the jury is now in.
And there is evidence that some of the new strains, containing mutation variants 501Y, L452, and E484K are showing increasing levels of severity and higher mortality, in addition to replicating faster and escaping our antigen treatments (meaning they may also be less affected by current vaccinations).

Moderna is now researching how to make their vaccine more effective against the new strains, but in the mean time, we may see a new wave of infections.