A Doomsday Covid Variant Worse Than Delta and Lambda May Be Coming

Despite the range of scary variants, coronavirus has a basic reproductive strategy that works by chopping up a large protein into smaller components in order to make more virus. That limits variation so that coronavirus will never mutate as quickly as influenza.

While Delta is a real and scary threat it has also been largely blocked or at least limited by vaccines. Additionally because it spreads so fast it also burns through potential hosts very quickly which is at least part of why the flare up in the UK has gone back down as fast as it started.

And keep in mind that all of the variants are so weak that exposure to sun and wind or soap and water are almost always enough to kill off even large amounts of shed virus.