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by makomk 2007 days ago
It seems the answer is that we don't know if it's spread yet. To quote the ECDC's briefing, "However, most EU/EEA countries sequence much smaller proportions of virus isolates than the UK, so ongoing circulation of this variant outside of the UK cannot be excluded". https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/sites/default/files/documents/SAR...

Basically, the UK is just better set up to detect variants like this than a lot of other countries. The other possibility is that even if this variant hasn't spread yet, there are other variants out there with similar properties that just haven't been detected due to the lack of widespread RNA sequencing. South Africa apparently has one that's similar but unrelated.
1 comments
imeron 2007 days ago
https://twitter.com/The_Soup_Dragon/status/13403496399466291...

If this chart is true EU countries announcing the closing borders the last couple of days is waaay to late to prevent the spread of the new strain in Europe.

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makomk 2007 days ago
Yeah, all the evidence seems to point to the border closures being a stupid, counterproductive attempt to close the stable doors after the horse has bolted and maybe shoot the messenger in the process. Unfortunately, there seems to be a bit of a push here in the UK to spin this as a necessary and inevitable measure that the government should have anticipated, including the closure of the border to road freight - which I think is a siginificant escalation compared to the previous EU border closures - for, basically, Brexit-related partistan political reasons.
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Someone 2007 days ago
I think it may be too late, but if it isn’t, bordering of a population where it is more widespread will help. Even if it is too late to prevent this variant from leaving Britain, it will lower the speed at which it spreads, giving time to prepare (assuming it is more widespread in Britain than elsewhere)

Because of that, I think this move may be overcautious, but I don’t see how it can be stupid or counterproductive.

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sjg007 2007 days ago
It makes sense to stop further introduction.
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Closi 2007 days ago
Being a little more cynical, the strain probably started somewhere else in Europe and came across the border.

It's probably not a coincidence that this strain was first detected as spreading right next to the Dover crossing.

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