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New coronavirus variants are emerging across the globe: Everything we know CNET 2/17/2021 © Bloom Lab (https://jbloomlab.github.io/SARS-CoV-2-RBD_DMS/) Maps like these, produced by the Bloom lab at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, guide research on mutations. At significant sites in the RBD, the team analyzes how mutants change the binding affinity. Blue is increased affinity, red is decreased. The N501Y mutant is a deep blue, showing how this mutant has increased binding affinity to ACE2.  The coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 has constantly evolved since it was first detected in humans...

Published: Jan 06, 2021 By Mark Terry SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, has mutated into several strains. Most of them are not particularly different than the primary strains, but two, B.1.1.7, which was first observed in the U.K., and now 501.V2, which originated in South Africa, have virologists watching closely. Although neither strain appears to be more deadly or to cause more severe illness than earlier strains, both appear to be more transmissible, or “catchy.” The South African variant has been identified in the U.K., Switzerland, Finland, Japan, Australia, Zambi...

Outwitting the foe: predicting evolved antibody escape in SARS-CoV-2 From the Bloom Lab (Basic Sciences Division) January 18, 2021 • By A Isabella The Covid-19 pandemic has redefined normalcy in our lives. But humans are a resilient species, and we have, though not without much pain and heartache, admirably adjusted to this ‘new normal’ a mere year after the virus’s emergence on the world stage. Unfortunately, to compound the challenges, it seems that every time we get our feet beneath us, the pandemic presents a new challenge to throw us back into uncertainty....

GM The vaccines are non-sterilizing in their current form. They will only generate enormous selective pressure in the direction of evolving new variants that escape them. Not only that, but because so far immune escape has been coupled to these things, those variants will be more contagious, and perhaps deadlier too. upstater It is VERY hard not to get depressed about all this… And the notion that Team Blue can fix any of this is simply magical. Here we are almost a year in and we can’t make N95s in sufficient quantity, quarantine and contact tracing are jokes, ad infinitum.

Dr. Scott Gottlieb warned that vaccinating against Covid is more critical than ever, especially as the new South Africa variant appears to inhibit antibody drugs.