Quote from: sirazimuth on Today at 12:57:43 AM

Quote from: Tzupy on Today at 12:22:04 AM

Potential biological significance of mutations

<snip...lots of technical shit no normal folks understand or care to read about>

https://www.cogconsortium.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Report-1_COG-UK_19-December-2020_SARS-CoV-2-Mutations.pdf

IAW... wear a fucking mask in public, don't mingle in crowds, and stay home, its a pandemic.

Well, excuse me for reading (quoting you) "lots of technical shit no normal folks understand or care to read about"...

The point is that the new strain is definitely more infectious, and so far unclear how much more pathogenic.
It is more infectious because of the higher binding to hACE2, also appears more capable of immune evasion because of 69-70del.
It is yet unclear to me if P681H, which occurs at the Furin cleavage site, is going to make it more pathogenic.
If the virus depends more on Furin, this usually means it's more pathogenic.

As for your advice, I've been wearing a mask with a P3 filter (>99.99% particle retention) for 5 months now, am taking 400 mg of HCQ / week,
am definitely avoiding crowds, but I effing won't "stay at home".