What’s happening..?

[Averyshinynose]

Starting to feel a little concerned, not in uk but another European country, all family etc in the U.K. why such immediate stopping of flights from so many countries to the uk? If the strain was around since September? Is that true, can someone please explain, I’m not understanding it.

*From the uk entering those countries

Because the UK didn’t tell anyone there was a new strain til today it seems.

In September they didn’t realise the new strain would spread so much quicker, that’s become apparent now so they’re acting quickly to try and stop it spreading further across Europe

But wasn’t there talk of other strains in other countries previously and nothing was different?

Can I ask why it concerns you? I'm not being snarky at all, but just curious.

I can't see any ulterior motive behind it other than a very sensible precaution, but I might be missing something or not getting the bigger picture.

@Hoghedge10 Because I’m worried when I’ll see my parents etc and it felt very dramatic on the news where I am tonight

@Hoghedge10 Not an ulterior motive! But if all is ok, they haven’t done this before with so many countries etc

Absolutely not an expert but have read lots, as I understand whereas yes there have been lots of mutations along the way these don’t seem to have radically altered the two important things about a virus how deadly/or how sick it makes individuals and or how easily it is able to infect individuals.

What they have found with this mutation is that there is quite a significant change to the spike protein - this is the bit of the virus that makes it able to invade human cells and cause infection. This change is meaning it is able to do this much more easily, making it much more infective, they’re saying around 70% more which is bloody scary. It’s important to note though it hasn’t changed the severity of the infection people get.

Someone may come along and correct me but it seems like previously you could be exposed to enough virus to infect but that the virus was only successful in doing this some of the time. Now it looks like this virus is mutation is much more successful.

@Tinselerama21 Thanks so much for the explanation, so just much more likely to catch it now?
Worried about my parents and how long this could go on for, if they can’t get over etc, assuming other countries can fly into uk? But I’m not sure I’d feel comfortable to.

@Averyshinynose, right there with you. I’m in the US, parents and extended family in the UK, and was so hopeful my parents could get the vaccine soon and visit me during April break. It has been one of the few things to lift my spirits during this mess.