[randywaterhouse]

I think it's largely too early to say (in the sense that it has yet to be thoroughly researched in vaxx'd areas). It's clearly taken over the population of infections in South Africa but they're rolling with fairly low vax rates (I have seen a few figures reported but < 40%).

There are some protein/spike characteristics of this variant which alarm scientists who think it might evade vax-generated antibodies better--i.e. alpha/delta-targeting vax antibodies may provide less resistance to this one.

So on the one hand it //could be// worse than Delta but I am personally waiting for more data to flow out (esp. beyond SA).

[shadowgovt]

It also, in early estimates, has a higher infectivity rate than the Delta variant, which is disquieting because Delta was already about as contagious as chicken pox.

Numbers this early can be very misleading, but anecdotes have cropped up about infections occurring from one hotel room to another, possibly through the HVAC system, which is not a durability trick that previous variants were believed to have.