the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, A lot of media hype has been generated about how much more dangerous some variants of COVID-19 are. But on closer inspection, many of those claims prove to be greatly exaggerated.
Take the more contagious coronavirus variant first identified in the United Kingdom, and known as the U.K. variant. A new study found those infected by it did not experience more severe symptoms and were not at higher risk of death.
Scientists are struggling to pin down the nature of the U.K. variant, which has become the dominant strain across Europe and, as of last week, in the United States.
The new study, published in the medical journal Lancet, looked at data from last fall in the U.K., shortly after the variant was first detected.
The researchers found that patients infected with the variant were not at increased risk of becoming severely ill or dying. They did find that those with the variant had greater quantities of virus. That could be one explanation for why the UK variant is more easy to transmit: those with it are simply making more virus.
Of course they did.