vox--2020-12-28--What Biden could do about family separations

The Biden administration will soon inherit a crisis of President Donald Trump ’ s making : the forced separation of at least 5,400 migrant families , many of whom have yet to be reunited even after three years apart .
Attorneys at the American Civil Liberties Union who have been representing the families since 2018 still haven ’ t been able to locate the parents of 626 children , and many more families remain separated .
In an October campaign ad , President-elect Joe Biden promised he would convene a task force to find and reunify children with their families @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prosecuting parents for crossing the border without authorization , which is how Trump justified separating families .
“ Those kids are alone .
Nowhere to go , ” Biden said during a presidential debate in October .
“ It ’ s criminal.
” But immigrant advocates believe Biden needs to go further than simply reuniting the families in order to begin to make amends for the policy , which has inflicted what could be permanent psychological damage on those affected .
They have called on the incoming administration to facilitate congressional hearings investigating @ @ @ @ @ @ @ status in the US and set up a victims fund , among other provisions .
Given that the family separations policy has drawn bipartisan condemnation and is deeply unpopular , Biden has a mandate to move forward on additional relief .
“ We need to make them as whole as possible , ” Gelernt said in a press call .
“ We can never completely undo the damage because the trauma is potentially irreparable , but we need to do everything possible.
” Family separations aren ’ t continuing on a wide scale @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The Trump administration started separating families in immigration detention back in 2017 , beginning with a pilot program in El Paso .
The practice was later expanded across the border in the spring of 2018 , when former US Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced what ’ s called the “ zero tolerance policy ” under which the government started prosecuting any adult who crosses the border without authorization .
Parents were sent to immigration detention to await deportation proceedings .
Their children , meanwhile , were sent to separate facilities designed to hold @ @ @ @ @ @ @ released to other family members in the US or to foster homes .
Previous administrations , in most cases , would have simply released the families from detention together if there was insufficient room in family detention facilities .
When a federal judge ordered the families reunified in the summer of 2018 the government could not locate many of the children ’ s parents .
By then , more than 4,000 families had been separated .
Some of the parents had already been deported back to their home countries in Central America .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ but attorneys are still trying to find the parents of 628 children .
After public outcry , the Trump administration decided earlier this month to provide a database of phone numbers and addresses that could help locate the parents — information it had refused to release for over a year to attorneys and nonprofits , claiming that it did not exist .
Meanwhile , some nonprofit groups working on the ground in Central America were going door-to-door to find the parents .
The government is no longer invoking the zero tolerance policy as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
But since US District Judge Dolly Gee ’ s June 2018 ruling , it has separated more than 1,100 additional families on a case-by-case basis where it finds that the parents are unfit to care for their children .
Officials have cited DUIs and nonviolent offenses from a decade ago , the fact that the parents entered the US without authorization and , in one case , that a father couldn ’ t change diapers quickly enough as grounds to take children away , according to Lee Gelernt , the lead ACLU @ @ @ @ @ @ @ argued that the Trump administration violated the court order in doing so .
The administration has also tried to separate families by other means — or prevent families from crossing the border in the first place .
During the pandemic , the administration pressured parents already detained within the US to voluntarily separate from their children by presenting them with what the administration has called a “ binary choice ” : Either allow their children to be placed with relatives or a foster family in the US while the parents remain detained , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ indefinite detention .
No families , however , agreed to separate .
The Trump administration has also been turning away all migrants arriving on the southern border on account of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention public health restrictions .
meaning that incoming families are no longer being detained in the US .
Those restrictions have largely replaced other policy barriers to seeking protections in the US that were implemented prior to the pandemic .
Biden has not elaborated on what his proposed task force would look like or how it would support @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Jennifer Podkul , vice president for policy and advocacy at the legal aid group Kids in Need of Defense , said in a press call that the task force should ensure that the organizations that have been working on the reunifications have every relevant piece of contact information for the affected families available and provide funding to increase their capacity to conduct searches on the ground .
It should also put in place policies and procedures that will facilitate the swift and safe return of parents to the US so that they can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from deportation .
Many want to make sure his administration doesn ’ t stop there .
Rep. Joaquin Castro , the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and vice chair of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs , told Vox that he wants Congress to investigate the policy , ensure it never happens again and hold the Trump administration officials behind it to account .
He suggested that the effort be modeled after the House select committee on the climate crisis created in January 2019 , which has held a series of hearings @ @ @ @ @ @ @ climate crisis and sought to build a framework for future legislation delivering solutions .
Lee Gelernt , the ACLU ’ s lead attorney working on family reunifications , told Vox that the fact that the Trump administration suddenly found new contact information for the missing parents in December is proof that more transparency into the family separations policy is needed .
“ The Biden administration should immediately begin to try and uncover the full story of what occurred under the Trump administration and support congressional efforts to do so as well , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ also forward information to the Department of Justice about Trump administration officials who intentionally violated human rights , agency policy or federal law in facilitating family separations , potentially leading to prosecutions .
Some have suggested that child abuse or torture could be among the charges .
But ultimately , “ any decision to prosecute would be separate and apart from the commission itself , ” Castro said .
And Gelernt said in a press call earlier this month that he does not believe that the Biden administration would pursue such prosecutions .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ his organization and their partners will ultimately find the remaining families .
While he would welcome any help from the Biden administration in achieving that mission , he says that is “ not where we would like to see the new administration concentrate its efforts.
” Rather , he is calling on the Biden administration to offer the thousands of affected families legal status in the US .
“ Only the government can reunite the families and provide them with legal status in the United States , ” he said .
“ The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the fact that during the litigation we learned that there were at least 5,400 families who were separated and who need relief , many of whom have now not seen their children for years.
” While 628 parents have yet to be found and reunified with their children , many more have been found but remain separated because the Trump administration will not allow them to return to the US .
In some cases , parents were deported without their children and in others , both parents and their children were deported after @ @ @ @ @ @ @ could unilaterally allow them to return at any point , offering them administrative forms of relief from deportation .
“ Thus far , the Trump administration has given parents only two horrendous choices : remain permanently separated or bring their child back to the danger from which they fled , ” Gelernt said .
Gelernt said that the Biden administration also must refrain from deporting any more parents or children who were separated .
The federal government could also pursue legislation ensuring legal status for affected families .
A potential model already exists @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Richard Blumenthal ( D-CT ) that would give all affected children and their parents or legal guardians outside the US the opportunity to return with legal status .
All of those who have not committed serious criminal offenses would also have the opportunity to apply for a green card and , later , citizenship .
The bill would also increase funding for federal programs to educate affected families about their rights and help them obtain legal representation .
Immigrant advocates are also calling on the Biden administration to deliver additional aid to families @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , which the Trump administration knew about before moving forward with the policy anyway .
Commander Jonathan White , who previously oversaw the government ’ s program providing care to unaccompanied immigrant children , told Congress that , beginning in February 2017 , he had repeatedly warned the officials who concocted the policy that it would likely cause “ significant potential for traumatic psychological injury to the child.
” A September 2019 government watchdog report confirmed those effects , finding that immigrant children who entered government custody in 2018 frequently experienced “ intense @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unexpectedly separated from a parent ” even more so .
Each child reacts to family separation differently .
But psychologists have observed three main kinds of effects : disruptions to their social attachments , increases in their emotional vulnerability , and , in some cases , post-traumatic stress disorder , Lauren Fasig Caldwell , director of the American Psychological Association ’ s children , youth , and families office , said .
Those symptoms could be short-term or they could persist ; they could also not even manifest until a child enters their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them could significantly hinder a child ’ s later success in academics and in the workplace .
Parents who were separated from their children have experienced their own trauma — which may manifest in symptoms similar to those that researchers observe in children — and may not have the mental and emotional capacity to be able to provide what their children need .
Podkul said that the administration should also ensure that families living in both the US and abroad receive financial compensation for the “ pain and suffering they have endured.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , whom Biden has tapped for a Cabinet position as secretary of transportation , had similarly proposed offering reparations for separated families on the campaign trail .
In the meantime , the ACLU and others have filed lawsuits seeking financial damages on behalf of affected families against individual Trump administration officials who facilitated the separations , including Sessions , White House senior adviser Stephen Miller , and former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen , among others .
Those lawsuits are still pending .
Gelernt has also suggested creating a victims fund @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mental health care costs , as well as other basic necessities for separated families that are still struggling .
“ There are many mechanisms for doing so , but what is important is that the Biden administration immediately provide relief to ease the suffering , ” he said .

The Biden administration will soon inherit a crisis of President Donald Trump’s making: the forced separation of at least 5,400 migrant families, many of whom have yet to be reunited even after three years apart.
Attorneys at the American Civil Liberties Union who have been representing the families since 2018 still haven’t been able to locate the parents of 626 children, and many more families remain separated. In an October campaign ad, President-elect Joe Biden promised he would convene a task force to find and reunify children with their families. He said he would also stop prosecuting parents for crossing the border without authorization, which is how Trump justified separating families.
“Those kids are alone. Nowhere to go,” Biden said during a presidential debate in October. “It’s criminal.”
But immigrant advocates believe Biden needs to go further than simply reuniting the families in order to begin to make amends for the policy, which has inflicted what could be permanent psychological damage on those affected. They have called on the incoming administration to facilitate congressional hearings investigating the policy, offer the families legal status in the US and set up a victims fund, among other provisions.
Given that the family separations policy has drawn bipartisan condemnation and is deeply unpopular, Biden has a mandate to move forward on additional relief.
“We need to make them as whole as possible,” Gelernt said in a press call. “We can never completely undo the damage because the trauma is potentially irreparable, but we need to do everything possible.”
Family separations aren’t continuing on a wide scale, but the damage has been done
The Trump administration started separating families in immigration detention back in 2017, beginning with a pilot program in El Paso. The practice was later expanded across the border in the spring of 2018, when former US Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced what’s called the “zero tolerance policy” under which the government started prosecuting any adult who crosses the border without authorization.
Parents were sent to immigration detention to await deportation proceedings. Their children, meanwhile, were sent to separate facilities designed to hold children and, in some cases, released to other family members in the US or to foster homes. Previous administrations, in most cases, would have simply released the families from detention together if there was insufficient room in family detention facilities.
When a federal judge ordered the families reunified in the summer of 2018 the government could not locate many of the children’s parents. By then, more than 4,000 families had been separated. Some of the parents had already been deported back to their home countries in Central America.
Some families have since been reunited, but attorneys are still trying to find the parents of 628 children. After public outcry, the Trump administration decided earlier this month to provide a database of phone numbers and addresses that could help locate the parents — information it had refused to release for over a year to attorneys and nonprofits, claiming that it did not exist. Meanwhile, some nonprofit groups working on the ground in Central America were going door-to-door to find the parents.
The government is no longer invoking the zero tolerance policy as a means to separate families en masse. But since US District Judge Dolly Gee’s June 2018 ruling, it has separated more than 1,100 additional families on a case-by-case basis where it finds that the parents are unfit to care for their children. Officials have cited DUIs and nonviolent offenses from a decade ago, the fact that the parents entered the US without authorization and, in one case, that a father couldn’t change diapers quickly enough as grounds to take children away, according to Lee Gelernt, the lead ACLU attorney representing the families. He has argued that the Trump administration violated the court order in doing so.
The administration has also tried to separate families by other means — or prevent families from crossing the border in the first place.
During the pandemic, the administration pressured parents already detained within the US to voluntarily separate from their children by presenting them with what the administration has called a “binary choice”: Either allow their children to be placed with relatives or a foster family in the US while the parents remain detained, or stay together as a family in indefinite detention. No families, however, agreed to separate.
The Trump administration has also been turning away all migrants arriving on the southern border on account of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention public health restrictions. meaning that incoming families are no longer being detained in the US. Those restrictions have largely replaced other policy barriers to seeking protections in the US that were implemented prior to the pandemic.
Congress could investigate the family separations policy
Biden has not elaborated on what his proposed task force would look like or how it would support ongoing efforts to reunify families. But Jennifer Podkul, vice president for policy and advocacy at the legal aid group Kids in Need of Defense, said in a press call that the task force should ensure that the organizations that have been working on the reunifications have every relevant piece of contact information for the affected families available and provide funding to increase their capacity to conduct searches on the ground. It should also put in place policies and procedures that will facilitate the swift and safe return of parents to the US so that they can reunite with their children and offer reprieve from deportation.
Many want to make sure his administration doesn’t stop there.
Rep. Joaquin Castro, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and vice chair of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, told Vox that he wants Congress to investigate the policy, ensure it never happens again and hold the Trump administration officials behind it to account. He suggested that the effort be modeled after the House select committee on the climate crisis created in January 2019, which has held a series of hearings investigating the causes and effects of the climate crisis and sought to build a framework for future legislation delivering solutions.
Lee Gelernt, the ACLU’s lead attorney working on family reunifications, told Vox that the fact that the Trump administration suddenly found new contact information for the missing parents in December is proof that more transparency into the family separations policy is needed.
“The Biden administration should immediately begin to try and uncover the full story of what occurred under the Trump administration and support congressional efforts to do so as well,” he said.
Such a committee could also forward information to the Department of Justice about Trump administration officials who intentionally violated human rights, agency policy or federal law in facilitating family separations, potentially leading to prosecutions. Some have suggested that child abuse or torture could be among the charges.
But ultimately, “any decision to prosecute would be separate and apart from the commission itself,” Castro said. And Gelernt said in a press call earlier this month that he does not believe that the Biden administration would pursue such prosecutions.
Biden could offer legal status to affected families
Gelernt said that he remains confident that his organization and their partners will ultimately find the remaining families. While he would welcome any help from the Biden administration in achieving that mission, he says that is “not where we would like to see the new administration concentrate its efforts.”
Rather, he is calling on the Biden administration to offer the thousands of affected families legal status in the US.
“Only the government can reunite the families and provide them with legal status in the United States,” he said. “The Biden administration cannot lose sight of the fact that during the litigation we learned that there were at least 5,400 families who were separated and who need relief, many of whom have now not seen their children for years.”
While 628 parents have yet to be found and reunified with their children, many more have been found but remain separated because the Trump administration will not allow them to return to the US. In some cases, parents were deported without their children and in others, both parents and their children were deported after they were separated. The Trump administration could unilaterally allow them to return at any point, offering them administrative forms of relief from deportation.
“Thus far, the Trump administration has given parents only two horrendous choices: remain permanently separated or bring their child back to the danger from which they fled,” Gelernt said.
Gelernt said that the Biden administration also must refrain from deporting any more parents or children who were separated.
The federal government could also pursue legislation ensuring legal status for affected families. A potential model already exists: Castro proposed bicameral legislation with Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) that would give all affected children and their parents or legal guardians outside the US the opportunity to return with legal status. All of those who have not committed serious criminal offenses would also have the opportunity to apply for a green card and, later, citizenship. The bill would also increase funding for federal programs to educate affected families about their rights and help them obtain legal representation.
Affected families need additional aid
Immigrant advocates are also calling on the Biden administration to deliver additional aid to families who have undergone the trauma of separation, which the Trump administration knew about before moving forward with the policy anyway.
Commander Jonathan White, who previously oversaw the government’s program providing care to unaccompanied immigrant children, told Congress that, beginning in February 2017, he had repeatedly warned the officials who concocted the policy that it would likely cause “significant potential for traumatic psychological injury to the child.”
A September 2019 government watchdog report confirmed those effects, finding that immigrant children who entered government custody in 2018 frequently experienced “intense trauma” and those who were “unexpectedly separated from a parent” even more so.
Each child reacts to family separation differently. But psychologists have observed three main kinds of effects: disruptions to their social attachments, increases in their emotional vulnerability, and, in some cases, post-traumatic stress disorder, Lauren Fasig Caldwell, director of the American Psychological Association’s children, youth, and families office, said.
Those symptoms could be short-term or they could persist; they could also not even manifest until a child enters their teen years or adulthood. Any of them could significantly hinder a child’s later success in academics and in the workplace.
Parents who were separated from their children have experienced their own trauma — which may manifest in symptoms similar to those that researchers observe in children — and may not have the mental and emotional capacity to be able to provide what their children need.
Podkul said that the administration should also ensure that families living in both the US and abroad receive financial compensation for the “pain and suffering they have endured.” Former 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, whom Biden has tapped for a Cabinet position as secretary of transportation, had similarly proposed offering reparations for separated families on the campaign trail.
In the meantime, the ACLU and others have filed lawsuits seeking financial damages on behalf of affected families against individual Trump administration officials who facilitated the separations, including Sessions, White House senior adviser Stephen Miller, and former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, among others. Those lawsuits are still pending.
Gelernt has also suggested creating a victims fund, which could help cover medical or mental health care costs, as well as other basic necessities for separated families that are still struggling.
“There are many mechanisms for doing so, but what is important is that the Biden administration immediately provide relief to ease the suffering,” he said.


vox--2020-12-28--The new UK coronavirus mutations, explained

Health officials in the United Kingdom and around the world are worried about a new , seemingly more contagious variety of SARS-CoV-2 ( the virus that causes Covid-19 ) , which has emerged in the country and was announced over the weekend .
The evidence that this new strain spreads more easily between people is not rock solid , but it ’ s concerning enough to have forced dramatic action .
Nations are already shutting down travel from the United Kingdom , where the new strain , known as B.1.1.7 ( we ’ ll call it the UK variant , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is rapidly spreading in the southeastern part of the country .
Within the UK , officials are imposing stricter limits on movement and public spaces .
The variant has been detected in other countries too : Canada , Spain , Sweden , France , Italy , among others .
Right now it doesn ’ t appear as though the new UK variant of SARS-CoV-2 is more dangerous in individuals .
It doesn ’ t seem to make people sicker , nor is it more likely to kill them .
“ I think the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ evidence now … that this virus is more pathogenic — creates more problems , more morbidity and mortality — than the previous virus , ” Moncef Slaoui , the scientific lead for Operation Warp Speed , said during a December 21 press conference .
What it does appear to do , at least based on preliminary evidence , is spread more quickly among people .
That alone is a problem : The coronavirus spreads fast enough as it is .
Compounding concerns is that the UK variant echoes a similar story in South @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has become the dominant version among new cases of the virus .
Scientists are wondering whether that strain is more transmissible , too .
The virus has been continually changing its genetics through the course of the pandemic .
That ’ s what RNA-based viruses like SARS-CoV-2 do — they mutate .
Most of the time , the mutations mean nothing .
But this time , something is different .
“ I ’ ve spent a lot of time this year reminding people that mutations are normal , ” molecular epidemiologist Emma Hodcroft @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Nextstrain , said .
For the entire pandemic , scientists the world over have been feeding Nextstrain sequences of the virus , and Hodcroft and her colleagues have been tracking its genetic changes closely .
In the past , mutations haven ’ t warranted big newspaper headlines .
“ I ’ m now finding myself singing a slightly different tune , ” Hodcroft said .
This time , there does seem to be evidence that the new strain is something worth being vigilant about .
“ We probably should consider taking some precautionary @ @ @ @ @ @ @ find out more , ” she added .
At the same time , Covid-19 is surging around the world , even without these new mutations .
Scientists are still trying to figure out what these new variants of the coronavirus actually mean for the pandemic .
It ’ s also unclear where else the UK variant may have already spread , aside from the countries where it has already been detected .
“ The variant could already be in the United States without having been detected , ” the US Centers for Disease @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The good news is that we already know how to respond to these new variants : in the same way we ’ ve been responding to the pandemic overall .
The virus still transmits primarily through viral-laden breaths in the air .
Mask-wearing , social distancing , and good indoor ventilation are as critical as ever .
There ’ s a lot about this story that ’ s potentially very alarming , or confusing .
And the story is not yet complete , as scientists need more evidence to understand whether these new @ @ @ @ @ @ @ add some clarity , here ’ s what researchers have learned so far .
Let ’ s start with the basics .
Viral mutations .
New strains .
Increased transmission .
It all sounds like scary science fiction .
But to demystify things , and to understand why scientists are a little concerned about this new variant — and why most variants don ’ t faze them — it ’ s worth understanding how viruses mutate in the first place .
“ Oftentimes , I think the word mutation in general conjures up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s minds , like , you know , Ninja Turtles or X-Men or cancer , like zombie apocalypse-type stuff , ” Angela Rasmussen , a virologist with Georgetown ’ s Center for Global Health Science and Security , said .
“ A mutation is just a lot more mundane than that.
” Viruses mutate because they ’ re constantly making copies of themselves in enormous numbers .
To accomplish this , they have to hijack the hardware of a host cell that they infect .
However , this process can be a bit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a virus can replicate itself millions or billions of times , Hodcroft explains .
If you were writing a draft of something millions of times on a computer , extremely quickly , you ’ d probably make some typos .
That ’ s what ’ s happening with the viruses .
“ They make a typo ” in their genetic code , she says .
One letter of their ribonucleic acid ( RNA ) chain is replaced with another .
Viruses that use RNA as their genetic material , like SARS-CoV-2 , are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ molecule itself is more unstable than DNA .
The process of copying RNA is also more prone to error .
These typos can be very useful for scientists because they happen at a regular rate , and are passed down through generations of the virus as it spreads through a community .
Often , scientists can use these subtle changes to trace certain strains ’ lineage and their spread through a population .
The majority of these typos are inconsequential when it comes to human health .
“ One typo , or even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ usually change how the virus works , ” Hodcroft says .
Some even harm the virus .
“ You ’ re much more likely to break it than to make it better ” when it comes to mutations , she says .
But in rare instances , some mutations can give a virus an advantage , like allowing it to infect cells more readily or spread among people faster .
Those mutant strains can then become dominant within a population .
That might be what we ’ re looking at here with the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have accumulated typos that could make it more easily transmitted between people .
Four lines of evidence converging on this new mutation being more transmissible So why do scientists think this variant is more transmissible ?
They don ’ t have this nailed down yet for sure , but four converging streams of evidence are all pointing in the same direction .
“ That ’ s making people feel like maybe there is something here to be worried about , ” Hodcroft says .
“ Each one of these things on their own @ @ @ @ @ @ @ convincing.
” But all together , they paint a concerning picture .
One is that in the areas of the UK where this new variant is spreading , it is accounting for a larger proportion of new cases .
“ What this implies is that this new variant is spreading better than other variants that are circulating in the same region , ” she says .
A second is that the increase didn ’ t co-occur with any overly obvious change in human behavior .
“ We don ’ t really have strong @ @ @ @ @ @ @ UK where this variant is spreading ] has just ripped their masks off and is , you know , totally violating restrictions , ” she says .
That said , it could be a coincidence .
It could be just that people who happen to have contracted this variant have it are spreading it more often via their behavior .
After all , “ this new variant has emerged at a time of the year when there has traditionally been increased family and social mixing , ” according to the European Center for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that the transmissibility of the new variant has increased by 70 percent compared to prior versions of the virus .
Both Rasmussen and Hodcroft say the 70 percent more transmissible figure is most likely an overestimate .
A recent , not-yet-peer-reviewed study from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine used a mathematical model to estimate that the new strain may be 56 percent more infectious .
Third , there ’ s some early data about how this variant acts in Covid-19 patients .
“ There may be slightly higher viral loads @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hodcroft says , suggesting the virus has an easier time replicating in the body .
( Viral load refers to the amount of virus in the patient .
Rasmussen also cautions that viral load data is really sensitive to timing and when the patient was sampled in the course of the illness , so there needs to be more data to confirm this . )
Finally , the genetic changes in the UK variant mirror changes in the South African variant , which has also been associated with rising case numbers .
That @ @ @ @ @ @ @ particular genetic change may be behind the increased transmissibility in both variants .
However , this is still short of definitive confirmation that the new variant is more transmissible .
According to Slaoui , figuring this out for certain would require laboratory animal testing to see how easily the virus can spread from one organism to another .
But this testing can take several weeks .
In the face of that uncertainty , many urge caution .
Again , there ’ s still no evidence this new variant causes more severe disease .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
But a more transmissible virus is still a concern .
“ In general , the more people get infected , the number of hospitalizations and deaths rise accordingly as a proportion of that number , ” Hodcroft says .
“ So more cases is also bad news.
” What does the mutation ... do ?
The UK variant of SARS-CoV-2 actually contains 23 mutations in the genome of the virus .
“ We don ’ t really know what they do , ” Rasmussen says .
Individually , many of these mutations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the virus around the world .
But the combination of these changes in a single virus could be making the new variant more likely to spread .
However , scientists do think that some mutations may be more important than others , and there are several mechanisms by which mutations could make the virus more infectious .
Those include : 1 .
The virus could end up with changes to its spike protein that allow it to enter cells more easily .
2 .
The virus could develop a mechanism to replicate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would lead “ to people becoming infectious faster , or contagious faster than they would with another variant , ” Rasmussen explains .
3 .
The virus could theoretically have evolved an ability to counteract the cell ’ s innate immune defenses , making it easier to infect that cell .
One of the pathways scientists suspect may be at work stems from the N501Y mutation , where the amino acid asparagine is replaced by the amino acid tyrosine in the 501st position of the viral protein sequence .
It ’ s one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s spike protein in the UK variant , but N501Y is in the part of the spike that actually comes into direct contact with human cells .
The same mutation has been found in the South African variant of SARS-CoV-2 that ’ s also quickly spreading .
Since the virus attaching to a host cell is critical to the virus ’ s reproduction , the virus ’ s spike protein is especially important — and delicate .
“ If you were just making random changes in the lab , almost any change you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just a dead virus that can no longer get into the cell , ” said Benjamin Neuman , a virologist at Texas A & M University Texarkana .
“ That fact that this thing is able to spread at all tells you that it ’ s at least as good as the original version .
The fact that it ’ s spreading faster may indicate that it ’ s a little bit better at grabbing on to host cells , which is the first step of the entry process.
” But this particular @ @ @ @ @ @ @ strains that have risen and fallen in other parts of the world over the course of the pandemic .
So it may be that the other mutations coupled with N501Y are having some sort of compounding effect .
And scientists still need to do more work to determine if this is actually what ’ s causing the rise of the new SARS-CoV-2 variant in the UK .
Finding out the answer could help researchers come up with ways to counter this variety of the coronavirus .
How did these coronavirus mutations happen ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the UK variant came to be .
But there may be a clue .
Hodcraft is struck by the sheer number of mutations in the UK variant — 23 in all — which makes her suspect it ’ s possible this variant arose in an immunocompromised person .
“ It ’ s an above-average number of mutations , ” she says .
In most people , she explains , the immune system mounts a full-on assault on the virus , eliminating it in a matter of a couple of weeks .
“ In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ though , there ’ s a very different dynamic , ” she says .
“ So , for one thing , the virus could be in them for months instead of weeks.
” That gives the virus more time to evolve , to accumulate mutations that might make it easier to thwart the immune system .
“ It ’ s one scenario , ” she says .
“ We may never know exactly what happened here.
” The basic truth : The more this virus spreads , the more chances there are for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ any person — or animal , for that matter — the chance for a dangerous new variant to arise is rare .
But rare things can happen when there are so many cases : more than 77 million confirmed cases worldwide .
Since viruses like SARS-CoV-2 are mutating and since Covid-19 has spread in so many people , it ’ s theoretically only a matter of time before a certain set of mutations align in a way to give the virus a boost .
What can we do about Covid-19 mutants ?
To @ @ @ @ @ @ @ need to stop the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in general .
For one , that helps us deal with the pandemic overall .
But “ that ’ s also conveniently how we get fewer emerging variants , ” Rasmussen says .
“ If the virus isn ’ t replicating , it can ’ t mutate .
And if it can ’ t mutate , the new variants can ’ t emerge.
” We fight the new variant as we would any variant of SARS-CoV-2 : with masks , with social distancing , with good @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t think people should be panicking , ” Hodcroft says .
“ Lower case numbers , no matter what the variant , are better.
” Scientists have one more tool , though : genetic tracking .
At Nextstrain , Hodcroft and her colleagues receive viral genetic sequences from all over the world to try to paint a real-time picture of transmission chains and keep tabs on how the virus is changing .
But not every place in the world is providing the same amount of data .
The UK does a lot of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was able to pick up on the new viral strain quickly because of that .
In other locations around the globe , that might not have happened so fast .
“ In the US , it ’ s a really spotty picture , ” Hodcroft says when it comes to sequencing .
“ Some states have really invested in sequencing ; some states haven ’ t .
So for some states , we probably have a fair idea of what ’ s going on .
In other states , we really don ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the CDC reports that the US has only sequenced 51,000 of the 17 million cases reported here .
That ’ s .07 percent .
In comparison , the UK aims to sequence 10,000 virus per week , and plans to increase that capacity further ( In addition : The UK sequences the genomes faster than the US , according to infectious disease researcher Trevor Bedford . )
That lack of viral genetic testing creates a big blindspot in the US .
The UK variant could have already arrived here undetected “ given the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been sequenced , ” the CDC states .
More sequencing , overall , would lead to the faster detection of new strains and faster means to contain them if they were deemed problematic .
With new mutations , there is a concern that a new strain of SARS-CoV-2 could arise that would be different enough from previous versions such that prior exposures — whether through a vaccine or an infection — won ’ t offer protection .
So , yes , it ’ s possible that the coronavirus could someday mutate in a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ previous immunity .
Right now , though , scientists think this UK variant would still fall under the same umbrella of protection as earlier strains .
If someone received a Covid-19 vaccine for an older generation of the virus , they would likely have protection against this one .
To explain why , it helps to understand how the immune system deals with viruses .
When the human body detects a hostile foreign entity like a virus , it starts to produce antibodies ( proteins that attach to the virus or to infected @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with how the virus works .
They can also flag the virus or virus-infected cells for destruction by other immune cells .
The specific places where the antibodies attach to the virus are called epitopes , and most Covid-19 vaccines target epitopes on the virus ’ s spike protein ( which is what the virus uses to attach to human cells and enter them ) .
“ The good thing with the vaccine is that it induces an immune response against several epitopes that have been mapped around the spike protein , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one set of mutations would alter all those epitopes , I think , are extremely very low .
The expectation , scientifically , is that these kinds of variations are unlikely to escape fully the protective response by the vaccine.
” More good news : Scientists at the University of Texas Medical Branch have announced ( via a tweet ) preliminary evidence that antibodies that neutralize the more common strain of the virus also neutralize a strain with the N501Y mutation ( the one that impacts the part of the virus that comes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as mentioned above ) .
That suggests that an immune system primed — by a natural infection , at least — to fight the old variant can also fight one with this specific mutation .
Texas A & M ’ s Neuman noted that there ’ s also evidence right now showing how well vaccines can protect against mutated forms of the virus in clinical trials .
Many of the vaccines being administered were engineered to counter the earliest generations of SARS-CoV-2 but are still showing themselves to be highly effective against Covid-19 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ virus .
“ All the tests are being done , all the papers being published , are being done with current strains , which have several mutations relative to [ the first iterations of the virus ] , and it does still seem to be working , ” Neuman said .
Covid-19 vaccine developers say they are keeping a close eye on these changes and testing to make sure their vaccines are still effective .
“ In terms of the new variant , Pfizer and BioNTech are monitoring SARS-CoV-2 sequence changes and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ how well serum from people immunized with [ the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine ] may be able to neutralize the new strain , ” said a Pfizer spokesperson via email .
And the new Covid-19 vaccines are well-equipped to adapt .
The two that have received emergency use authorizations from the Food and Drug Administration — the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and the Moderna vaccine — both use mRNA as their platform .
These vaccines deliver the instructions for making the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 to human cells .
Those human cells then manufacture the component themselves @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it to prepare for an infection .
One huge advantage of this approach is that the mRNA sequence can be altered quickly ; the first such vaccines for Covid-19 were developed within days after the genetic sequence of the virus was posted online .
Could manufacturers like Moderna or Pfizer/BioNTech then retool their vaccines to target the new variants without going through the whole tedious clinical trial process again ?
Possibly , according to Jesse Goodman , a former chief scientist at the FDA and a professor of medicine at Georgetown University .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ variants of the influenza virus are approved every year without large-scale trials .
New versions of a Covid-19 vaccine to accommodate mutations similarly might not need another round of study in tens of thousands of people , but may require some testing to figure out dosing and immune response .
With such a new virus and brand new vaccines , the regulations for these situations have not yet been laid out .
Should we expect more mutations in the future ?
The UK and South African variants are unlikely to be the last @ @ @ @ @ @ @ evolving .
We should expect it to keep changing slightly .
“ There will be new variants that emerge , ” Rasmussen says .
The thing is , with each new significant strain , scientists will have to do careful work to determine whether it ’ s more dangerous .
And there are some mutations we can perhaps even expect — if not in the coming weeks , over the next several years .
Recently , virology researchers at the Fred Hutch Cancer Research Center published a preprint ( i.e.
, not yet @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a coronavirus that causes the common cold evolved from the 1980s onward .
To accomplish that , they got old blood samples , which included antibodies that cling to this particular virus .
They also reconstructed pieces of the cold virus from other eras .
Basically , they wanted to see if older blood could still neutralize newer virus .
If it couldn ’ t , that would indicate the virus has evolved over time to evade the immune system .
Here ’ s what the researchers found : “ This other human @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of multiple years to gradually escape human immunity , ” Jesse Bloom , a virologist who co-authored the study , says .
“ So we think this suggests that there ’ s the potential for SARS-CoV-2 to do the same thing.
” But Bloom stresses that this process takes years .
It ’ s enough time to prepare , to monitor , and to potentially tweak vaccine formulations to keep up with the virus ’ s evolution .
It ’ s not like the virus can evolve into an entirely different beast .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ antibodies , ” Rachel Eguia , the study ’ s lead author , says .
But it can ’ t change so much that it alters its own ability to enter cells .
Scientists are also keeping their eyes out for a rapid , major mutation event known as recombination .
That ’ s where an individual is infected with two different strains of the virus at the same time , allowing the virus strains to swap parts .
These new viruses could then evade the antibodies that targeted their predecessors .
Some @ @ @ @ @ @ @ SARS-CoV-2 originated in the first place .
“ This is all hypothetical in this particular virus , but it happens in other viruses all the time , ” Neuman said .
Faced with these looming challenges , reducing the transmission of the coronavirus in general is still the best way to protect the fragile progress made in the Covid-19 pandemic so far .
Reducing transmissions is also one of the best ways to make sure powerful tools like vaccines remain potent for as long as possible .
The fact that multiple Covid-19 vaccines @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for complacency , and these new variants of SARS-CoV-2 highlight how important it is to remain vigilant .

A new, seemingly more contagious variety of SARS-CoV-2 — the virus that causes Covid-19 — that has been spreading rapidly in the United Kingdom has now been found in the United States in at least two locations.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced December 30 that the new strain, known as B.1.1.7 (we’ll call it the UK variant, for simplicity’s sake), was detected in the southern part of the state. It’s the second report of the UK variant in the US in as many days, following news that the variant was found in a male Colorado National Guard member in his 20s with no history of travel, a sign that the virus is spreading locally.
“There is a lot we don’t know about this COVID-19 variant, but scientists in the United Kingdom are warning the world that it is significantly more contagious,” said Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, in a statement.
The evidence that this new strain spreads more easily between people is not rock solid, but it’s concerning enough to have forced dramatic action, like shutting down travel from the United Kingdom earlier this month. But it wasn’t enough: The variant has now been detected in Canada, Spain, Sweden, France, and Italy, among others.
At the moment, it doesn’t appear as though the new UK variant of SARS-CoV-2 is more dangerous in individuals. It doesn’t seem to make people sicker, nor is it more likely to kill them. “I think the key point is that there is no evidence now … that this virus is more pathogenic — creates more problems, more morbidity and mortality — than the previous virus,” Moncef Slaoui, the scientific lead for Operation Warp Speed, said during a December 21 press conference.
What it does appear to do, at least based on preliminary evidence, is spread more quickly among people. That alone is a problem: The coronavirus spreads fast enough as it is. Compounding concerns is that the UK variant echoes a similar story in South Africa, where a strain called 501.V2 has become the dominant version among new cases of the virus. Scientists are wondering whether that strain is more transmissible, too.
The virus has been continually changing its genetics through the course of the pandemic. That’s what RNA-based viruses like SARS-CoV-2 do — they mutate. Most of the time, the mutations mean nothing. But this time, something is different.
“I’ve spent a lot of time this year reminding people that mutations are normal,” molecular epidemiologist Emma Hodcroft, who works on a project called Nextstrain, said. For the entire pandemic, scientists around the world have been collecting genetic information about SARS-CoV-2 in a public database called GISAID. Hodcroft and her colleagues at Nextstrain draw on this database to closely track genetic changes in the virus.
In the past, mutations haven’t warranted big newspaper headlines. “I’m now finding myself singing a slightly different tune,” Hodcroft said. This time, there does seem to be evidence that the new strain is something worth being vigilant about. “We probably should consider taking some precautionary measures while we’re trying to find out more,” she added.
At the same time, Covid-19 is surging around the world, even without these new mutations. Scientists are still trying to figure out what these new variants of the coronavirus actually mean for the pandemic. It’s also unclear where else the UK variant may have already spread, aside from the countries where it has been detected. While it was reported in the US only this week, it could have been in the country for much longer. “The variant could already be in the United States without having been detected,” the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported December 22.
The good news is that we already know how to respond to these new variants: in the same way we’ve been responding to the pandemic overall. The virus still transmits primarily through viral-laden breaths in the air. Mask-wearing, social distancing, and good indoor ventilation are as critical as ever.
There’s a lot about this story that’s potentially very alarming or confusing. And the story is not yet complete, as scientists need more evidence to understand whether these new variants pose a new threat.
To add some clarity, here’s what researchers have learned so far. Let’s start with the basics.
Viral mutations, explained
Viral mutations. New strains. Increased transmission. It all sounds like scary science fiction. But to demystify things, and to understand why scientists are a little concerned about this new variant — and why most variants don’t faze them — it’s worth understanding how viruses mutate in the first place.
“Oftentimes, I think the word mutation in general conjures up a lot of things in people’s minds, like, you know, Ninja Turtles or X-Men or cancer, like zombie apocalypse-type stuff,” Angela Rasmussen, a virologist with Georgetown’s Center for Global Health Science and Security, said. “A mutation is just a lot more mundane than that.”
Viruses mutate because they’re constantly making copies of themselves in enormous numbers. To accomplish this, they have to hijack the hardware of a host cell that they infect. However, this process can be a bit sloppy.
Within a human body, a virus can replicate itself millions or billions of times, Hodcroft explains. If you were writing a draft of something millions of times on a computer, extremely quickly, you’d probably make some typos. That’s what’s happening with the viruses. “They make a typo” in their genetic code, she says. One letter of their ribonucleic acid (RNA) chain is replaced with another.
Viruses that use RNA as their genetic material, like SARS-CoV-2, are particularly vulnerable to mutations since the RNA molecule itself is more unstable than DNA. The process of copying RNA is also more prone to error.
These typos can be very useful for scientists because they happen at a regular rate, and are passed down through generations of the virus as it spreads through a community. Often, scientists can use these subtle changes to trace certain strains’ lineage and their spread through a population.
The majority of these typos are inconsequential when it comes to human health. “One typo, or even a few typos, doesn’t usually change how the virus works,” Hodcroft says. Some even harm the virus. “You’re much more likely to break it than to make it better” when it comes to mutations, she says.
But in rare instances, some mutations can give a virus an advantage, like allowing it to infect cells more readily or spread among people faster. Those mutant strains can then become dominant within a population.
That might be what we’re looking at here with the UK variant; this new strain may have accumulated typos that could make it more easily transmitted between people.
Four lines of evidence converging on this new mutation being more transmissible
So why do scientists think this variant is more transmissible?
They don’t have this nailed down yet for sure, but four converging streams of evidence are all pointing in the same direction. “That’s making people feel like maybe there is something here to be worried about,” Hodcroft says. “Each one of these things on their own, I would say is not necessarily convincing.” But all together, they paint a concerning picture.
One is that in the areas of the UK where this new variant is spreading, it is accounting for a larger proportion of new cases. “What this implies is that this new variant is spreading better than other variants that are circulating in the same region,” she says.
National testing data shows increased prevalence of the variant in positive cases over time. This is detected incidentally by the commonly used 3-gene PCR test because 69-70del leads to a negative signal. But this does not effect the results of the test. 7/
h/t @The_Soup_Dragon pic.twitter.com/aPpAjjb35W — Muge Cevik (@mugecevik) December 21, 2020
A second is that the increase didn’t co-occur with any overly obvious change in human behavior. “We don’t really have strong evidence that everyone in the southeast [UK where this variant is spreading] has just ripped their masks off and is, you know, totally violating restrictions,” she says. That said, it could be a coincidence. It could be just that people who happen to have contracted this variant have it are spreading it more often via their behavior.
After all, “this new variant has emerged at a time of the year when there has traditionally been increased family and social mixing,” according to the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, which estimated that the transmissibility of the new variant has increased by 70 percent compared to prior versions of the virus. Both Rasmussen and Hodcroft say the 70 percent more transmissible figure is most likely an overestimate. A recent, not yet peer-reviewed study from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine used a mathematical model to estimate that the new strain may be 56 percent more infectious.
Third, there’s some early data about how this variant acts in Covid-19 patients. “There may be slightly higher viral loads in patients with the variants,” Hodcroft says, suggesting the virus has an easier time replicating in the body. (Viral load refers to the amount of virus in the patient. Rasmussen also cautions that viral load data is really sensitive to timing and when the patient was sampled in the course of the illness, so there needs to be more data to confirm this.)
Finally, the genetic changes in the UK variant mirror changes in the South African variant, which has also been associated with rising case numbers. That makes a plausible link: that this particular genetic change may be behind the increased transmissibility in both variants.
However, this is still short of definitive confirmation that the new variant is more transmissible.
According to Slaoui, figuring this out for certain would require laboratory animal testing to see how easily the virus can spread from one organism to another. But this testing can take several weeks.
In the face of that uncertainty, many urge caution.
Again, there’s still no evidence this new variant causes more severe disease. The evidence points only to increased transmissibility. But a more transmissible virus is still a concern. “In general, the more people get infected, the number of hospitalizations and deaths rise accordingly as a proportion of that number,” Hodcroft says. “So more cases is also bad news.”
What does the mutation ... do?
The UK variant of SARS-CoV-2 actually contains 23 mutations in the genome of the virus. “We don’t really know what they do,” Rasmussen says. Individually, many of these mutations have already been seen in other strains of the virus around the world. But the combination of these changes in a single virus could be making the new variant more likely to spread.
However, scientists do think that some mutations may be more important than others, and there are several mechanisms by which mutations could make the virus more infectious. Those include:
1. The virus could end up with changes to its spike protein that allow it to enter cells more easily.
2. The virus could develop a mechanism to replicate more quickly inside a body, which would lead “to people becoming infectious faster, or contagious faster than they would with another variant,” Rasmussen explains.
3. The virus could theoretically have evolved an ability to counteract the cell’s innate immune defenses, making it easier to infect that cell.
One of the pathways scientists suspect may be at work stems from the N501Y mutation, where the amino acid asparagine is replaced by the amino acid tyrosine in the 501st position of the viral protein sequence. It’s one of several mutations in the virus’s spike protein in the UK variant, but N501Y is in the part of the spike that actually comes into direct contact with human cells. The same mutation has been found in the South African variant of SARS-CoV-2 that’s also quickly spreading.
Since the virus attaching to a host cell is critical to the virus’s reproduction, the virus’s spike protein is especially important — and delicate.
“If you were just making random changes in the lab, almost any change you make in that area would result in just a dead virus that can no longer get into the cell,” said Benjamin Neuman, a virologist at Texas A&M University Texarkana. “That fact that this thing is able to spread at all tells you that it’s at least as good as the original version. The fact that it’s spreading faster may indicate that it’s a little bit better at grabbing on to host cells, which is the first step of the entry process.”
But this particular N501Y mutation has already been detected in strains that have risen and fallen in other parts of the world over the course of the pandemic. So it may be that the other mutations coupled with N501Y are having some sort of compounding effect. And scientists still need to do more work to determine if this is actually what’s causing the rise of the new SARS-CoV-2 variant in the UK. Finding out the answer could help researchers come up with ways to counter this variety of the coronavirus.
How did these coronavirus mutations happen?
Scientists don’t know exactly how the UK variant came to be. But there may be a clue. Hodcroft is struck by the sheer number of mutations in the UK variant — 23 in all — which makes her suspect it’s possible this variant arose in an immunocompromised person. “It’s an above-average number of mutations,” she says.
In most people, she explains, the immune system mounts a full-on assault on the virus, eliminating it in a matter of a couple of weeks. “In people that have compromised immune systems, though, there’s a very different dynamic,” she says. “So, for one thing, the virus could be in them for months instead of weeks.” That gives the virus more time to evolve, to accumulate mutations that might make it easier to thwart the immune system.
“It’s one scenario,” she says. “We may never know exactly what happened here.”
The basic truth: The more this virus spreads, the more chances there are for dangerous new variants to emerge. In any person — or animal, for that matter — the chance for a dangerous new variant to arise is rare. But rare things can happen when there are so many cases: more than 80 million confirmed cases worldwide.
Since viruses like SARS-CoV-2 are mutating and since Covid-19 has spread in so many people, it’s theoretically only a matter of time before a certain set of mutations align in a way to give the virus a boost.
What can we do about Covid-19 mutants?
To stop mutations, quite simply, we need to stop the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in general. For one, that helps us deal with the pandemic overall. But “that’s also conveniently how we get fewer emerging variants,” Rasmussen says. “If the virus isn’t replicating, it can’t mutate. And if it can’t mutate, the new variants can’t emerge.”
We fight the new variant as we would any variant of SARS-CoV-2: with masks, with social distancing, with good hand hygiene. “I don’t think people should be panicking,” Hodcroft says. “Lower case numbers, no matter what the variant, are better.”
It’s already been said but if we actually follow protocol and have policies that support those protocols a new variant that is more transmissible would be combatted just as an older variant. So like worry less about mutants and more about masking and distancing and vaccination. — K. Taylor, Ph.D., M.S. (@KYT_ThatsME) December 21, 2020
Scientists have one more tool, though: genetic tracking. At Nextstrain, Hodcroft and her colleagues receive viral genetic sequences from all over the world to try to paint a real-time picture of transmission chains and keep tabs on how the virus is changing. But not every place in the world is providing the same amount of data.
The UK does a lot of viral sequencing, for instance. It was able to pick up on the new viral strain quickly because of that. In other locations around the globe, that might not have happened so fast.
“In the US, it’s a really spotty picture,” Hodcroft says when it comes to sequencing. “Some states have really invested in sequencing; some states haven’t. So for some states, we probably have a fair idea of what’s going on. In other states, we really don’t have many sequences.”
Overall, the CDC reports that the US has sequenced only 51,000 of the more than 17 million cases reported in the country. That’s 0.07 percent. In comparison, the UK aims to sequence 10,000 virus samples per week, and plans to increase that capacity further. (In addition: The UK sequences the genomes faster than the US, according to infectious disease researcher Trevor Bedford.) That lack of viral genetic testing creates a big blind spot in the US. The UK variant could have already arrived here undetected “given the small fraction of US infections that have been sequenced,” the CDC states.
More sequencing, overall, would lead to the faster detection of new strains and faster means to contain them if they were deemed problematic.
Do mutations mean a Covid-19 vaccine won’t work anymore?
With new mutations, there is a concern that a new strain of SARS-CoV-2 could arise that would be different enough from previous versions such that prior exposures — whether through a vaccine or an infection — won’t offer protection. So, yes, it’s possible that the coronavirus could someday mutate in a way that would elude a vaccine or previous immunity.
Right now, though, scientists think this UK variant would still fall under the same umbrella of protection as earlier strains. If someone received a Covid-19 vaccine for an older generation of the virus, they would likely have protection against this one.
To explain why, it helps to understand how the immune system deals with viruses. When the human body detects a hostile foreign entity like a virus, it starts to produce antibodies (proteins that attach to the virus or to infected cells). Antibodies can then interfere with how the virus works. They can also flag the virus or virus-infected cells for destruction by other immune cells.
The specific places where the antibodies attach to the virus are called epitopes, and most Covid-19 vaccines target epitopes on the virus’s spike protein (which is what the virus uses to attach to human cells and enter them).
“The good thing with the vaccine is that it induces an immune response against several epitopes that have been mapped around the spike protein,” Slaoui said. “The chances that one set of mutations would alter all those epitopes, I think, are extremely very low. The expectation, scientifically, is that these kinds of variations are unlikely to escape fully the protective response by the vaccine.”
More good news: Scientists at the University of Texas Medical Branch have announced (via a tweet) preliminary evidence that antibodies that neutralize the more common strain of the virus also neutralize a strain with the N501Y mutation (the one that impacts the part of the virus that comes into direct contact with human cells, as mentioned above). That suggests that an immune system primed — by a natural infection, at least — to fight the old variant can also fight one with this specific mutation.
Some good news (and incredibly fast work) on one of the mutations scientists are worried about: N501Y.
In these lab experiments serum from recovered #covid19 patients was just as good at neutralizing virus with the mutation as without it. https://t.co/SIxfo2x3qp — Kai Kupferschmidt (@kakape) December 22, 2020
Texas A&M’s Neuman noted that there’s also evidence right now showing how well vaccines can protect against mutated forms of the virus in clinical trials. Many of the vaccines being administered were engineered to counter the earliest generations of SARS-CoV-2 but are still showing themselves to be highly effective against Covid-19 caused by more recent versions of the virus.
“All the tests are being done, all the papers being published, are being done with current strains, which have several mutations relative to [the first iterations of the virus], and it does still seem to be working,” Neuman said.
Covid-19 vaccine developers say they are keeping a close eye on these changes and testing to make sure their vaccines are still effective. “In terms of the new variant, Pfizer and BioNTech are monitoring SARS-CoV-2 sequence changes and the companies are working to generate data on how well serum from people immunized with [the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine] may be able to neutralize the new strain,” said a Pfizer spokesperson via email.
And the new Covid-19 vaccines are well equipped to adapt. The two that have received emergency use authorizations from the Food and Drug Administration — the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and the Moderna vaccine — both use mRNA as their platform. These vaccines deliver the instructions for making the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 to human cells. Those human cells then manufacture the component themselves, allowing the immune system to use it to prepare for an infection. One huge advantage of this approach is that the mRNA sequence can be altered quickly; the first such vaccines for Covid-19 were developed within days after the genetic sequence of the virus was posted online.
Could manufacturers like Moderna or Pfizer/BioNTech then retool their vaccines to target the new variants without going through the whole tedious clinical trial process again?
Possibly, according to Jesse Goodman, a former chief scientist at the FDA and a professor of medicine at Georgetown University. He told Vox that vaccines for new variants of the influenza virus are approved every year without large-scale trials. New versions of a Covid-19 vaccine to accommodate mutations similarly might not need another round of study in tens of thousands of people, but may require some testing to figure out dosing and immune response. With such a new virus and brand new vaccines, the regulations for these situations have not yet been laid out.
Should we expect more mutations in the future?
Short answer: yes.
The UK and South African variants are unlikely to be the last to make headlines. Coronavirus is constantly evolving. We should expect it to keep changing slightly.
“There will be new variants that emerge,” Rasmussen says. The thing is, with each new significant strain, scientists will have to do careful work to determine whether it’s more dangerous.
And there are some mutations we can perhaps even expect — if not in the coming weeks, over the next several years.
Recently, virology researchers at the Fred Hutch Cancer Research Center published a preprint (i.e., not yet peer-reviewed) study, looking at how a coronavirus that causes the common cold evolved from the 1980s onward. To accomplish that, they got old blood samples, which included antibodies that cling to this particular virus. They also reconstructed pieces of the cold virus from other eras. Basically, they wanted to see if older blood could still neutralize newer virus. If it couldn’t, that would indicate the virus has evolved over time to evade the immune system.
Here’s what the researchers found: “This other human coronavirus does indeed evolve over the course of multiple years to gradually escape human immunity,” Jesse Bloom, a virologist who co-authored the study, says. “So we think this suggests that there’s the potential for SARS-CoV-2 to do the same thing.” But Bloom stresses that this process takes years. It’s enough time to prepare, to monitor, and to potentially tweak vaccine formulations to keep up with the virus’s evolution.
It’s not like the virus can evolve into an entirely different beast. “It can mutate to maybe escape antibodies,” Rachel Eguia, the study’s lead author, says. But it can’t change so much that it alters its ability to enter cells.
Scientists are also keeping their eyes out for a rapid, major mutation event known as recombination. That’s where an individual is infected with two different strains of the virus at the same time, allowing the virus strains to swap parts. These new viruses could then evade the antibodies that targeted their predecessors. Some researchers think that recombination might be how SARS-CoV-2 originated in the first place.
“This is all hypothetical in this particular virus, but it happens in other viruses all the time,” Neuman said.
Faced with these looming challenges, reducing the transmission of the coronavirus in general is still the best way to protect the fragile progress made in the Covid-19 pandemic so far. Reducing transmissions is also one of the best ways to make sure powerful tools like vaccines remain potent for as long as possible. The fact that multiple Covid-19 vaccines are coming out is not a cause for complacency, and these new variants of SARS-CoV-2 highlight how important it is to remain vigilant.
Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated how Nextstrain gathers data.


vox--2020-12-28--Here are the 9 most interesting conversations I had in 2020

My job at Vox is to talk to interesting people .
And in 2020 , I got to talk to a lot of really , really interesting people .
Nine conversations in particular stick out to me .
They were the ones that challenged me the most , got me thinking in a new way about a difficult problem , or simply explained what the hell was happening in this disorienting year .
There ’ s no unifying thread tying all these conversations together , but each of them , in its own way , left a strong impression on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with Rabbi David Wolpe , who talked about how to find meaning in the middle of all this suffering and why our culture struggles with questions of deep existential significance .
My interview with professor Alexander Wendt about the UFO videos released by the Pentagon earlier this year managed to be both fun and a genuinely provocative discussion about the possibilities of aliens visiting our planet .
I also really enjoyed talking to author Kristin Kobes Du Mez about why evangelical support for Donald Trump isn ’ t nearly as paradoxical as so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , like the one with Eddie Glaude Jr. about James Baldwin ’ s legacy , grappled with the social and political crises we faced this year , and hopefully offered something uplifting and constructive .
Whether you ’ re interested in religion or politics or aliens , there ’ s something in these conversations for you .
So without further ado , here are the nine most interesting conversations I had this year .
1 ) “ We ’ re losing our damn minds ” : James Carville unloads on the Democratic Party @ @ @ @ @ @ @ us to think there are no swing voters , that we ’ re doomed and it doesn ’ t even matter if you have a message because you can ’ t reach anyone .
I think that ’ s bullshit .
I think that ’ s a wholly incorrect view of American politics .
But look , if no one ’ s persuadable , then let ’ s just have the revolution .
Falling into despair won ’ t help anyone , though .
I mean , you can curse the darkness or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ m getting a fucking welding torch .
Okay ?
” —James Carville 2 ) What Camus ’ s The Plague can teach us about the Covid-19 pandemic “ It ’ s not the ‘ attention ’ we find in human resource offices , or in banks , or in department stores , where people are pretending to listen to you but all the while thinking about how they need to respond or what they already have decided they ’ re going to say in response .
What Camus means is what another @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ‘ decreation , ’ which is undoing yourself in order to make room for other selves in your life .
And this is what Camus ’ s characters in The Plague understand .
This is what motivates Rieux and Tarrou — they attend to their patients , to the sick , in ways that are wholly admirable.
” —Robert Zaretsky “ Baldwin ’ s revolutionary inversion is to flip the white man ’ s burden .
The white man ’ s burden becomes the Black man ’ s burden .
That ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ m not the N-word .
Never have been.
’ The question is , why did you need to invent the N-word ?
Once you understand why , then maybe we can get off this damn hamster wheel .
He didn ’ t say it that way , but you get what I mean .
The point is that , ‘ I ’ m not the N-word .
You invented the N-word .
We need to figure out why you invented the N-word .
Until we do that , I ’ m going to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ You must be the N-word.
’ That ’ s the revolutionary move.
” —Eddie Glaude Jr. , author of Begin Again : James Baldwin ’ s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own 4 ) “ The status quo is dead ” : Rebecca Solnit on America after the coronavirus “ Disasters shake us up .
I ’ ve called them a crash course in Buddhism .
You ’ re suddenly aware of ephemerality and interdependence , the fleetingness of all things , and the connection of all things .
Often that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ connection for their neighbors and people undergoing the same experience that people don ’ t necessarily feel at other times .
We often experience everyone around us primarily in terms of their differences rather than the commonalities .
A disaster changes that in an instant.
” —Rebecca Solnit , author of A Paradise Built in Hell 5 ) It ’ s time to take UFOs seriously .
Seriously .
“ I ’ ve thought about this , and I worry less about poking around and getting conquered and more about the potential realization @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an internal implosion of our society .
So I worry about my fellow human beings more than I worry about the aliens .
So I guess in that sense , I disagree with Hawking ’ s premise that they ’ re out to get us .
But sure , it ’ s possible they ’ re on a surveillance mission .
But people have been reporting UFOs for at least 80 years , and that ’ s a really , really long surveillance mission .
And also , why would they want to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ us conquering ants.
” —Alexander Wendt “ This is what ‘ family values ’ evangelicalism looks like , and now it ’ s apparent to everyone .
But for evangelical dissenters , this is indeed a tragedy .
And yet I think even those who are resisting , or who are calling this out and who are struggling with the direction that evangelicalism has taken , still need to reckon with the ways in which they , too , as part of this tradition , have been complicit in this ideology .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
We ’ ve been moving in this direction for a long time.
” —Kristin Kobes Du Mez , author of Jesus and John Wayne : How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation 7 ) A rabbi explains how to make sense of suffering “ I think that the spiritual malaise of the society , the sense of the meaningless at the core , is partly a result of the fact that our tools , which make us so much more efficient , also serve to isolate us from one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and exacerbated that isolation , and people ask deep questions about what is this about and what is this for and how can life just change on a dime and how am I supposed to live in the absence of all the things that I used to take for granted and care about ?
In other words , we have been suddenly plunged into an existential crisis , and we ’ re not a society in general that turns to deep questions of life meaning.
” —Rabbi David Wolpe , author of Making @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Times 8 ) How millennials became the burnout generation “ Burnout is the feeling that you ’ ve hit the wall exhaustion-wise , but then have to scale the wall and just keep going .
There ’ s no catharsis , no lasting rest , just this background hum of exhaustion .
It manifests in not being able to make the sort of decisions you actually want to make — my classic example is that you ’ re so tired , you just scroll Instagram instead of reading the book that you legitimately @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in your life flattens into one endless , ever-recyling to-do list that you just feel like you have to get through so that you can do the next thing on the list.
” —Anne Helen Petersen , author of Can ’ t Even : How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation 9 ) A nun on the radical possibilities of Christianity “ Suffering can be a door by which we exit our isolated ego and we enter into the suffering of another .
And that isolated ego can be transformed into what we ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ relationship of shared life and being in love.
” —Sister Ilia Delio

My job at Vox is to talk to interesting people. And in 2020, I got to talk to a lot of really, really interesting people.
Nine conversations in particular stick out to me. They were the ones that challenged me the most, got me thinking in a new way about a difficult problem, or simply explained what the hell was happening in this disorienting year.
There’s no unifying thread tying all these conversations together, but each of them, in its own way, left a strong impression on me. One of my favorites was with Rabbi David Wolpe, who talked about how to find meaning in the middle of all this suffering and why our culture struggles with questions of deep existential significance.
My interview with professor Alexander Wendt about the UFO videos released by the Pentagon earlier this year managed to be both fun and a genuinely provocative discussion about the possibilities of aliens visiting our planet. I also really enjoyed talking to author Kristin Kobes Du Mez about why evangelical support for Donald Trump isn’t nearly as paradoxical as so many people have suggested.
Several conversations, like the one with Eddie Glaude Jr. about James Baldwin’s legacy, grappled with the social and political crises we faced this year, and hopefully offered something uplifting and constructive.
Whether you’re interested in religion or politics or aliens, there’s something in these conversations for you. So without further ado, here are the nine most interesting conversations I had this year.
“I think the other side wants us to think there are no swing voters, that we’re doomed and it doesn’t even matter if you have a message because you can’t reach anyone. I think that’s bullshit. I think that’s a wholly incorrect view of American politics. But look, if no one’s persuadable, then let’s just have the revolution. Falling into despair won’t help anyone, though. I mean, you can curse the darkness or you can light a candle. I’m getting a fucking welding torch. Okay?” —James Carville
“It’s not the ‘attention’ we find in human resource offices, or in banks, or in department stores, where people are pretending to listen to you but all the while thinking about how they need to respond or what they already have decided they’re going to say in response. What Camus means is what another French philosopher, Simone Weil, called ‘decreation,’ which is undoing yourself in order to make room for other selves in your life. And this is what Camus’s characters in The Plague understand. This is what motivates Rieux and Tarrou — they attend to their patients, to the sick, in ways that are wholly admirable.” —Robert Zaretsky
“Baldwin’s revolutionary inversion is to flip the white man’s burden. The white man’s burden becomes the Black man’s burden. That’s when he says, ‘I’m not the N-word. Never have been.’ The question is, why did you need to invent the N-word? Once you understand why, then maybe we can get off this damn hamster wheel. He didn’t say it that way, but you get what I mean. The point is that, ‘I’m not the N-word. You invented the N-word. We need to figure out why you invented the N-word. Until we do that, I’m going to give that N-word back to you. You must be the N-word.’ That’s the revolutionary move.” —Eddie Glaude Jr., author of Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own
“Disasters shake us up. I’ve called them a crash course in Buddhism. You’re suddenly aware of ephemerality and interdependence, the fleetingness of all things, and the connection of all things. Often that connection is a deep empathic, emotional connection for their neighbors and people undergoing the same experience that people don’t necessarily feel at other times. We often experience everyone around us primarily in terms of their differences rather than the commonalities. A disaster changes that in an instant.” —Rebecca Solnit, author of A Paradise Built in Hell
“I’ve thought about this, and I worry less about poking around and getting conquered and more about the potential realization that these things are here and then an internal implosion of our society. So I worry about my fellow human beings more than I worry about the aliens. So I guess in that sense, I disagree with Hawking’s premise that they’re out to get us. But sure, it’s possible they’re on a surveillance mission. But people have been reporting UFOs for at least 80 years, and that’s a really, really long surveillance mission. And also, why would they want to conquer us? That’s like us conquering ants.” —Alexander Wendt
“This is what ‘family values’ evangelicalism looks like, and now it’s apparent to everyone. But for evangelical dissenters, this is indeed a tragedy. And yet I think even those who are resisting, or who are calling this out and who are struggling with the direction that evangelicalism has taken, still need to reckon with the ways in which they, too, as part of this tradition, have been complicit in this ideology. The Trump era didn’t just happen. We’ve been moving in this direction for a long time.” —Kristin Kobes Du Mez, author of Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation
“I think that the spiritual malaise of the society, the sense of the meaningless at the core, is partly a result of the fact that our tools, which make us so much more efficient, also serve to isolate us from one another. Then the pandemic came along and exacerbated that isolation, and people ask deep questions about what is this about and what is this for and how can life just change on a dime and how am I supposed to live in the absence of all the things that I used to take for granted and care about? In other words, we have been suddenly plunged into an existential crisis, and we’re not a society in general that turns to deep questions of life meaning.” —Rabbi David Wolpe, author of Making Loss Matter: Creating Meaning in Difficult Times
“Burnout is the feeling that you’ve hit the wall exhaustion-wise, but then have to scale the wall and just keep going. There’s no catharsis, no lasting rest, just this background hum of exhaustion. It manifests in not being able to make the sort of decisions you actually want to make — my classic example is that you’re so tired, you just scroll Instagram instead of reading the book that you legitimately do want to read — and everything in your life flattens into one endless, ever-recyling to-do list that you just feel like you have to get through so that you can do the next thing on the list.” —Anne Helen Petersen, author of Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation
“Suffering can be a door by which we exit our isolated ego and we enter into the suffering of another. And that isolated ego can be transformed into what we’re really created for: a deep relationship of shared life and being in love.” —Sister Ilia Delio