Unclear. We’re not sure how dangerous the new strain that popped up in London is. Often viruses tend to get less lethal as they get more infectious, like the common cold. Certainly I’d still advise caution, but London might not be in terrible shape yet.
The best evidence right now suggests that B.1.1.7 is significantly more trasmissible, but doesn't produce less (or more!) serious cases. (See the cohort matching study in this week's PHE report on the variant[0]). Maybe a statistically significant difference will emerge once we have more data, but at least for now it's better to not assume that.
But let's say for argument's sake that the new variant is indeed half as serious, while being 70% more transmissive. That gives you one single multiplicative change in hospital utilization, but a permanent change to the exponent of the epidemic growth curve. The multiplicative benefit will basically get nullified by the increased growth in a week or two, and after that it is all downside.
Isn't that because it's easier to transmit when the host doesn't die. Like a survival of the fittest thing. Covid isn't deadly enough to stop transmissions
Generally speaking it’s better for the virus to not kill the host, yes. Covid isn’t lethal enough to burn itself out rapidly, but one can imagine that the R0 would be a smidge higher if it was less lethal, since all those dead people could’ve spread it just a bit more if they’d lived.
But it doesn’t appear like Covid is the absolute Max lethality possible for a pandemic; the 1918 flu pandemic seems to indicate that a virus can have a higher CFR and not burn out. So it could certainly get worse, but in general the trend is towards being less lethal making viruses more fit.
All early of course. But it doesn’t appear the new variant is more deadly, but also its not clear its less deadly yet either. Assuming it’s about the same severity as the current variant then that spells bad news. This thread here does a decent job explaining that https://twitter.com/AdamJKucharski/status/134356742510788198...
Actually we’re pretty sure now. They did studies of the new strain based on contact tracing and it was found to have a 50 % greater chance of infecting contacts. It’s also in the US now.
With mass testing, public awareness, social distancing, etc., I'm not sure if the virus getting less lethal will hold. We're certainly selecting for more virulent strains, though.
