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The Problem With Stories About Dangerous Coronavirus Mutations
There’s no clear evidence that the pandemic virus has evolved into significantly different forms—and there probably won’t be for months.
As if the pandemic weren’t bad enough, on April 30, a team led by scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory released a paper that purportedly described “the emergence of a more transmissible form” of the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. This new form, the team wrote, “began spreading in Europe in early February.” Whenever it appeared in a new place, including the U.S., it rapidly rose to dominance. Its success, the team suggested, is likely due to a single mutation, which is now “of urgent concern.”
The paper has not yet been formally published or reviewed by other scientists. But on May 5, the Los Angeles Times wrote about it, claiming that “a now-dominant strain of the coronavirus could be more contagious than [the] original.” That story quickly went … well … viral.
But “the conclusions are overblown,” says Lisa Gralinski of the University of North Carolina, who is one of the few scientists in the world who specializes in coronaviruses. “To say that you’ve revealed the emergence of a more transmissible form of SARS-CoV-2 without ever actually testing it isn’t the type of thing that makes me feel comfortable as a scientist.” She and other virologists I’ve spoken with who were not involved in the Los Alamos research agree that the paper’s claims are plausible, but not justified by the evidence it presents. More important, they’re not convinced different strains of the coronavirus exist at all.
“We have evidence for one strain,” says Brian Wasik at Cornell University.
“I would say there’s just one,” says Nathan Grubaugh at Yale School of Medicine.
“I think the majority of people studying [coronavirus genetics] wouldn’t recognize more than one strain right now,” says Charlotte Houldcroft at the University of Cambridge.
Everyone else might be reasonably puzzled, given that news stories have repeatedly claimed there are two, or three, or even eight strains. This is yet another case of confusion in a crisis that seems riddled with them. Here’s how to make sense of it.
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But influenza is notable for mutating quickly. Coronaviruses—which, to be clear, belong to a completely separate family from influenza viruses—change at a tenth of the speed. The new one, SARS-CoV-2, is no exception. “There’s nothing out of the ordinary here,” says Grubaugh. Yes, the virus has picked up several mutations since it first jumped into humans in late 2019, but no more than scientists would have predicted. Yes, its family tree has branched into different lineages, but none seems materially different from the others. “This is still such a young epidemic that, given the slow mutation rate, it would be a surprise if we saw anything this soon,” Houldcroft says.
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The bottom line: It will take time to know whether different strains of the new coronavirus even exist, let alone whether any are more or less dangerous than the others. Any claims of that kind should be taken with a grain of salt for the next several months, if not longer. “In the short term, it’s highly unlikely that we’d be able to define new strains,” Wasik says.
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The misconceptions about dangerous strains are also seductive in their own right. If we believe that the virus has changed into some especially challenging form, we can more easily explain why certain people and places have been hit worse than others—a mystery whose answer more likely (but less satisfyingly) lies in political inaction, existing inequalities, and chance. Powerful antagonists make for easy narratives. Ineptitude, bias, and randomness make for difficult ones.