South Africa to go on UK red list as new Covid variant 'worst we've seen

November 25, 2021 12:45 PM

UK scientists sounded the alarm on Thursday night over the B.1.1.529 variant, which has the potential to evade immunity built up by vaccination or prior infection. The variant has over 30 mutations - around twice as many as the Delta variant - which could potentially make it more transmissible and evade the protection given by prior infection or vaccination.
posted by folklore724 (4 comments total)

Was just reading about this earlier. There's a sort of "but of course" combined with a "the suspense is thick" and a large sauce of "we should have been vaccinating much better".
posted by hippybear at 12:48 PM on November 25, 2021

Scaremongering reporting and a completely irresponsible headline (and, I'd argue, FPP).

This twitter thread outlines the facts so far, which are few, because we don't know very much yet about this variant, including whether or not it's going to evade the protection of the vaccines (in which case new vaccines will and can be made to combat it).
posted by fight or flight at 12:50 PM on November 25, 2021 [8 favorites]

Right now, it is all way too soon to tell. This new variant definitely warrants caution, but that article is straight up fearmongering based on very preliminary evidence. Can we not amplify these sorts of things until there's a clearer picture emerging?
posted by tclark at 12:55 PM on November 25, 2021 [6 favorites]

An FPP that links to one of the clear-headed twitter threads would be vastly better than UK garbage media.
posted by seanmpuckett at 1:08 PM on November 25, 2021 [2 favorites]