[jnxx]

> This strain has probably already spread to tens of other countries. Every country which is just about holding things together, whatever their strategy, is going to struggle with a significantly more transmissible variant of the virus.

Yes. If the new variant is duplicating every week even under medium lock-down measures, as it appears, it will be very difficult to contain it, and impossible with the current set of measures. It would require a very strict lock-down at least. And the vaccinenes would not yet help - they will help later but probably not before late Summer, while the new variant will very likely be all over Europe until March.

Thinking about what we know, what appears very likely, and the conclusions of it, the first half of the year will be far away from normal, even catastrophic.