Good post by a great guy on MillwallOnline forum (used with permission obviously) Thought it was sharing on a few forums on Vital, just to help settle our obvious nerves a tiny bit! Nighmare innit!
We now have a 'Nu' variant. Pun intended. The MSM, of course, are enjoying the discovery immensely. There's no doubt that this new variant has a number of mutations to the spike protein that could enable it to escape vaccines.
However, we need to realise that this variant is not competing against vaccines - to survive and reproduce it must compete against other viruses. These mutations may give it an advantage over vaccines, but will they confer an advantage over other viruses? All these viruses are in continual battle for survival in a crowded antigenic space.
South Africa has had a relatively low number of cases for a while now. This might sound strange, but this provides an ideal breeding ground for new variants because they can find the space they need to infect people and reproduce.
Over here, we still have a very dominant Delta variant, which could prove to be 'fitter' than the Nu variant and squeeze it out. This is happened many times already to other variants of concern.
We also have very high levels of 'super immunity' in the UK. A little while ago I mentioned that getting vaccinated and then infected with COVID was the gold standard of immune protection. This is still the case. In addition, recent data suggests that the AZ vaccine provides better long-term protection through T cells than the Pfizer vaccine. The jury is still out on this idea, but it could explain a lot.
The Nu variant will only present a problem here if it can overcome the huge barrier provided by widespread vaccine and infection induced 'super immunity' in the UK and can compete successfully against our dominant Delta strain.