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Quick reference to COVID-19 variants of concern:
B.1.1.7: first identified in the UK, more transmissible.
B.1.351: first identified in South Africa, some vaccines are less effective.
We& #39;re going to try to use the genome-based names rather than the place names.
B.1.1.7: first identified in the UK, more transmissible.
B.1.351: first identified in South Africa, some vaccines are less effective.
We& #39;re going to try to use the genome-based names rather than the place names.
It& #39;s not fair to the countries that identified these to name variants after them. They identified the variants by doing GOOD epidemiology, including thorough genomic sequencing.
It& #39;s hard to remember the genome-based names when nobody else is using them, though. We wanted a quick reference to refer back to. So we made one.
Feel free to RT it and use it yourself. We& #39;ll add further variants to this thread, as they become newsworthy.
Feel free to RT it and use it yourself. We& #39;ll add further variants to this thread, as they become newsworthy.
Oh - also, even if you don& #39;t think that stigma as a social system is unjust and should be abolished, using place names for infectious diseases skews people& #39;s mental models of how infection works.
For example, it biases people subtly towards assuming that a disease isn& #39;t actually *in* their community, long after it is endemic there.
B.1.427 and B.1.429: first identified in California, more contagious and more severe symptoms.
Thanks to the friend who pointed us towards that. We& #39;ll be continuing to update this thread as needed.
B.1.526: First identified in New York.
B.1617: First identified in India, practical differences not yet known but suspected to be more contagious.
