Isnt Covid an mRNA virus?
Yes, covid is RNA not DNA. Oops.
To further correct myself, I have been reading and it seems that COVID is capable of recombination (combining the genomes of related viruses), though I think still not quite as readily as influenza viruses.
Fuji_Abound wrote:
and I guess this is the key, the number of viable combinations are limited, and, hopefully still substantially recognised as Covid.
By now we know a couple of hundreds of variants of the Covid virus – but all of them share pretty similar properties and – most importantly – same S-protein which is an effective target for both vaccines as well as natural immune response.
The challenge with influenza in contrast is, that its most effective target surface protein for immunization, the HA protein is highly variable between strains and therefore both vaccination and natural immunization against one strain is not effective against a strain with a different HA epitope.
The only reason why variants of Covid are publicly discussed is, that the UK government claims that a new mutation is the root cause of the uncontrolled outbreak there late last year (and not at all late and wrong actions by politicians). As written above: Both the slow spread of this new strain across Europe as well as the current case numbers in Portugal actually do not support this claim – and therefore the whole fuzz about new strain could finally turn out as only politicians (successfully) trying to side track from their own failure…
That’s not a good conspiracy theory. This new variant spreads a lot more easily in whatever scenario. Nothing to do with a “delayed” reaction which is in any case only a desire to minimise economic damage.
Anyway the “Kent” variant is not the worry here. It responds to the vaccines. It is the South African and Brazilian ones which are of concern, though there is no actual data either way.
I think Malibuflyer makes a good point.
While it is early days, many other places should be seeing an explosion in cases with the Kent variant, but they are not yet.
I think the Kent variant is a big worry if it is as much more infectious as suggested. Its susceptibility to the vaccine would seem not in doubt, but its ability to reduce the effectiveness of measures to limit transmission is a huge problem until the population has been vaccinated.
Any vaccine resistant variant is clearly also a huge proglem for different reasons.
I am lead to believe that the variants are now considerably more than a couple of hundred. The focus has been on the so called protein spike which enables the virus to attach to the ACE protein, without which the virus would not be a danger. There are mutations in the mRNA that make up the spike and mutations elsewhere. I read there is a discussion that vaccines that dont target the spike may offer more protection against possible resistance in the future.
Peter wrote:
That’s not a good conspiracy theory. This new variant spreads a lot more easily in whatever scenario.
Where is the data for that claim. The data presented by the UK officials is simply that the Case numbers in UK exploded around the same time the new variant was detected.
We have seen such a development nowhere else with this variant. The data we see from Portugal is actually more against it. Yes, case numbers are exploding there since end December but it is still only 20% of the new variant. Actually we have currently no data from any country where the spread of this new variant has caused a further step change in case numbers.
Probably because they aren’t sequencing it.
Malibuflyer wrote:
Where is the data for that claim. The data presented by the UK officials is simply that the Case numbers in UK exploded around the same time the new variant was detected.
I haven’t followed all the links in this Imperial College News article but the Prof Ferguson quote does stand out.
I suspect he is no more a fan of this government than I am :-)
Malibuflyer wrote:
The data presented by the UK officials is simply that the Case numbers in UK exploded around the same time the new variant was detected.
Not only that, but that the new variant constituted a rapidly-increasing proportion of overall infections.
I think Malibuflyer’s point is we seem to know the Kent variant has spread to most countires. We know that from the sequencing done in the UK. Therefore if it is more contagious we should be seeing a similiar rapid increase in cases elsewhere. There wouldnt need to be any particulat sequencing of the new cases, the increase in transmission would speak for itself. I could be wrong, but I dont think this is happening “yet”. It could well be it takes a while for the Kent variant to become dominant and only as it does, does the growth in cases pick up. It could be, as Malibuflyer suggests, the contagiousness of the Kent variant has been exaggerated, it could be other reasons (somewhat tongue in cheek, spreads more easily between fat people, and there are more fat people in Kent – and I am only joking!).
Well, yes, it could be something like that… but also it’s been around since ~ Sept 2020 and the nature of the maths is that these things spread very slowly for quite a long time and then they rapidly speed up.
One could make a tongue in cheek comment that people in Kent have the same DNA, but one could say that about any somewhat remote region of any country, and most islands 
