It’s just the flu, bro.
Indian variant...there are a bunch of words like “global concern”...but I know I certainly don’t care about variant B.1.617. Rest assured this variant will raise the alarm of the media when someone gets this variant in the US, even though it is essentially the same as all the other variations. How exciting...the media sort of gets a whole new fresh pandemic every time a new variant spreads to any new country. And they get to use the word “concern” in every article that discusses it.
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3955023/posts
Indian variant is now in Israel and is raising “concern”.
IBTAK
The US has 201 confirmed cases of the B.1.617 variant. First recorded case of it here was Feb 23, 2021 (https://www.gisaid.org/hcov19-variants//). Existing vaccines do provide protection, though with the specific mutations this variant has, they’re likely at a somewhat reduced efficacy. That said, they should still be effective in reducing the spread and the severity of symptoms for those who catch it who’ve been vaccinated.
It’s here and it’s being handled the same as the rest of the variants. Not a big deal. The thing worth watching is what else comes out of India, since they’re selling off most of the vaccine doses they’re making and leaving most of their people to act as hosts. Each host gives the virus 10,000,000,000–1,000,000,000,000 opportunities to mutate (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7685332/). So worth keeping an eye on, but certainly not worth any panic. The boosters in testing right now provide much more targeted protection against the mutations in this variant.