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Message: <blockquote data-quote="NotAYakk" data-source="post: 8256928" data-attributes="member: 72555">Oh yes, I took it eyes open.---[URL unfurl="true"]https://news.yahoo.com/news/michigans-covid-wards-filling-younger-165132047.html[/URL]So apparently B117 is starting to hit the USA like it already is hitting Ontario.B117 is what caused the UK to panic around Christmas.  In environments that had Covid under control (reproduction under 1), it spreads faster and basically doubles every week.  It is 60% more lethal, and tends to make younger people much sicker than the baseline strain.It is believed it was incubated in an immunocompromised person; the covid evolved to reproduce better and evade the immune system.  Human immune systems usually win when they get a fingerprint of an infection; in immunocompromised people, it stumbles along, and the virus had time to adapt in multiple ways.  It then spread from there.  (This is the general theory of most of the variants of concern, because they have too many mutations all at once).Vaccines tend to protect against variants of concern less well.  Both mRNA and protein-based vaccines are being tested that specifically target the variants.India is also experiencing a B117 wave; it also has another variant which isn't dominant there but biologists think is extra concerning.In an old folks home where 50% of staff and like 90% of residents where vaccinated, B117 was 8 times as likely to infect an unvaccinated as vaccinated, but vaccinated people died and got very sick from it; in comparison, baseline covid 19 killing someone vaccinated is under a one-in-a-million event.---In related news, someone did a comparison of death rates from 1918 flu and covid 19 in NYC, and covid 19 was deadlier in almost every metric.</blockquote>

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