Let's think positively...

[DailyPotion]

We know viruses often mutate. We know they often become more contagious but less deadly.

Chris Whitty said the new strain seems to be like a cold.

So, until we know how severe it is, knowing it will transmit more easily, the current precautions make sense (leaving aside that it could/should have been announced much earlier). However, on balance, it could be very good news indeed?

I think it could be too OP.

Do you have a link to Whitty saying it was like a cold? I'm interested in any potential positive news at the moment.

Any links? Personally I prefer to keep an eye on hospitalization and death rates rather than the number of infections to gauge the situation.

(leaving aside that it could/should have been announced much earlier).
The Govt only had this info on Friday. I think that they moved very quickly in making changes on Saturday.

I didn't hear Chris Whitty say the new strain seems to be like a cold. When did he say that?

I have to say it does seem very well, convenient that all this drama has come at the time of 1. Brexit and also 2. a good way of changing the advice with rising cases 'due to the new variant' as opposed to the gov messing up and changing its mind..

Hopefully it is a milder one.

Quite interesting on mutations in general, from Nature

www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02544-6

Hmm, I thought it was an answer to a question yesterday? I can only find the transcript to his statement which says there's no evidence it has a higher mortality rate but it does spread more quickly.

They've been talking about a strain that spreads more quickly in Kent for at least a week

Hancock told the Commons on 15 Dec that there was a new strain, with faster transmission, affecting the SE.

I don't think he said it was like a cold at all.

However thinking positively it's great that we have a vaccine that will probably still work and the new strain doesn't seem to change the course of the illness.

This is the dark before the dawn.

This D614G variant which seems to be the general 'covid' one seems to also have been met with alarm about its mutation / transmission...

“D614G is increasing in frequency at an alarming rate”1. It had rapidly become the dominant SARS-CoV-2 lineage in Europe and had then taken hold in the United States, Canada and Australia. D614G represented a “more transmissible form of SARS-CoV-2”, the paper declared, one that had emerged as a product of natural selection.

These assertions dismayed many scientists. It wasn’t clear that the D614G viral lineage was more transmissible, or that its rise indicated anything unusual, they said. But alarm spread fast across the media. Although many news stories included researchers’ caveats, some headlines declared that the virus was mutating to become more dangerous. In retrospect, Montefiori says he and his colleagues regret describing the variant’s rise as “alarming”. The word was scrubbed from the peer-reviewed version of the paper, published in Cell in July2.

The work sparked a frenzy of interest in D614G. Even those who were sceptical that the mutation had changed the virus’s properties agreed that it was intriguing, because of its meteoric rise and ubiquity. For months, that lineage has been found in almost all sequenced samples of SARS-CoV-2 (see ‘Global spread’). “This variant now is the pandemic. As a result, its properties matter,”

That is not this new one by the way.

That is the one which is in most samples worldwide.

@Calmandmeasured1 Hancock mentioned the new mutation on Monday in the HoC, and the first case was reported in September. Perhaps do some fact checking?

My Mum just told me she and her husband (both 91) are getting vaccinated on Christmas Eve. So I don't feel bad about cancelling seeing them on Boxing Day. They should have their second vaccinations in late January and I shall plan a get together after that.
Feeling positive for post vaccination normality!

"@Orf1abc*

Calmandmeasured1 Hancock mentioned the new mutation on Monday in the HoC, and the first case was reported in September. Perhaps do some fact checking?
I stated what I heard from Hancock's mouth today on the Andrew Marr show.