Talk:SARS-CoV-2 Alpha variant/Archive 1

Archive 1

South Africa Strain - Article or Subheading?

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/12/mutant-coronavirus-united-kingdom-sets-alarms-its-importance-remains-unclear

If I am interpreting this correctly, there is a new strain in South Africa with the same problematic spike protein mutation leading to apparent increased spread in VUI - 202012/01. As of now there is a yet to be created article on the South African strain. Should there be a separate article or just a subheading about it? Two strains with similar mutations and similar consequences, but different articles, could lead to confusion. Nmurali02 (talk) 00:52, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

N501Y

"The N501Y mutation has also been detected elsewhere, in Australia in June-July, in the US in July and in Brazil in April, and it is not yet clear if it arose spontaneously in the UK, or was imported." Needs a citation. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 01:14, 21 December 2020 (UTC).

 Done All the best: Rich Farmbrough 01:19, 21 December 2020 (UTC).

Keeping nation lists tidy

In the interests of not letting the article become too crowded, we can broaden certain parts like the Control section to just which region or continent(s) are affected. That section is rapidly expanding so please don't name specific countries... if we can get a map or something that might be ideal. https://twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1340826024049860615 This isn't a reliable source, but it looks like a lot more countries are banning travel than we can cover yet (sources are slim for some). I'd like if we can find an authoritative, all-encompassing source with a map or list like this. I'm having trouble finding that, coverage is spotty. If somebody else gets a hold of it, especially one or two that anybody can view without a paywall, I would appreciate it. I just took the sources for Iran off because it's now covered in an already used source. Details about travel bans might be better suited for the individual COVID-19 by country pages. Chillabit (talk) 01:46, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

VOC-202012/01

Public Health England has redesignated VUI-202012/01 as VOC-202012/01 as of 18/12/2020, this is an upgraded status from Variant Under Investigation to Variant Of Concern. Source. --IgnoredAmbience (talk) 14:36, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

 Done. —Biscuit-in-Chief :-) ^{(/tɔːk/ – /ˈkɒntɹɪbs/)} 15:46, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Kentish Flu

I believe this is what it is being referred to in the UK following the identification of the initial cases in Kent. My update to the article got removed - so i won't re-add. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.213.41.156 (talk) 19:10, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Spread

Also spread to Denmark according to the Irish Times — Preceding unsigned comment added by 185.69.145.20 (talk) 10:46, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

Also spread to 1 case in Gibralter 212.187.183.33 (talk) 23:24, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Hi. You can add this, along with a reliable reference, yourself. —Biscuit-in-Chief :-) ^{(/tɔːk/ – /ˈkɒntɹɪbs/)} 23:32, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

need for a new wiki page

From the title of your wiki page , can a common person understand the significance of the gene phenotype alternation happing in COVID19, moreover why is there a monopoly for a specific page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chinmayamahapatra (talk • contribs) 11:43, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

What do You mean with "monopoly for a specific page"? --Manorainjan 11:46, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

The outdated(?) label "VUI-202012/01", should perhaps be menitoned earlier in the article

I searched for the topic "VUI-202012/01", and the first hit in the article was in section 3. ("The UK scientific advisory body NERVTAG concluded on 18 December 2020 that they [...] that VUI-202012/01 was substantially more ...").

Should perhaps "VUI-202012/01" be mentioned in the lede, or at the top of "History" section?
(If I see, or not see "VOC 202012/01" and "VUI-202012/01" as the same things, is not the point I am trying to make.

I am merely pointing out how I think the article might be improved.) What say—or do—you? Regards! 89.8.167.184 (talk) 03:15, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

It looks like VUI-202012/01 is mentioned in the "nomenclature" section (the first section in the article), which is where alternative names are listed and discussed. Seems like a good spot for it. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:01, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

New PHE technical briefing

There's a new technical briefing from Public Health England, mainly concentrating on epidemiology: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/948152/Technical_Briefing_VOC202012-2_Briefing_2_FINAL.pdf. —Biscuit-in-Chief :-) ^{(/tɔːk/ – /ˈkɒntɹɪbs/)} 20:51, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Detected in November 2020 in Germany

How to adjust the article to deal with that fact that the oldest case is now from Germany?

• Neue Coronavirus-Variante auch in Niedersachsen nachgewiesen
• New coronavirus variant in Germany since November - Die Welt

Jamplevia (talk) 01:47, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

@Jamplevia: Hi. It wouldn't be the oldest case. See Variant_of_Concern_202012/01#Detection: The two earliest genomes that belong to the B.1.1.7 lineage were collected on 20 September 2020 in Kent and another on 21 September 2020 in Greater London. I really don't think this needs anymore than, perhaps, Switzerland confirmed their first cases on 24 December; Germany also confirmed its first case of the variant on 24 December, but it was later found in samples taken in November ... or something like that. —Biscuit-in-Chief :-) ^{(/tɔːk/ – /ˈkɒntɹɪbs/)} 02:33, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

I meant oldest case in Germany. Jamplevia (talk) 16:04, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 25 December 2020

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: NOT MOVED. WP:SNOW close/withdrawn by nominator. (non-admin closure) {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 20:16, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

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Variant of Concern 202012/01 → VOC-202012/01 – I suggest moving the article title back to its original title. It is more succinct, and I'm not seeing any WP:RS commonly using the full name anyway. I could move the article title back if I could, if it weren't for technical issues. Love of Corey (talk) 13:18, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose, Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 and Coronavirus disease 2019 are the proper article names, even though their short forms (SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19) are used almost everywhere else. The title "Varient of Concern" provides more context to readers, "VOC" does not. JackFromReedsburg (talk | contribs) 15:26, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose, As it is (VOC-202012/01 as a redirect and Variant of Concern 202012/01 as title for this article) it is perfect. Especially since even specialists in the field seem to tend to call a variant a strain, this explicit title might help to minimise those misunderstandings. You know that even technically competent people tend to say things like LCD-Display, which is a Pleonasm. Rather than moving this page back and forth, one should work on Strain (biology) and Variant (biology) in order to remove the confusion as much as possible. --Manorainjan 15:53, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

• Support. Both names are difficult to memorize because of the 202012/01 part. So might as well make it easier to type for the people that go to the trouble of memorizing the last part. A google search with double quotes around each term turns up 1,200 results for the long name vs 42,000 results for the short name, so I conclude that the short name is much more common. –Novem Linguae (talk) 15:56, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

"SARS-CoV-2" brings up 251 million results, whereas "Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2" only brings up 2.2 million. Previous consensus for COVID-19 articles supports keeping the long name as the title, and the short name everywhere else. JackFromReedsburg (talk | contribs) 16:03, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

Oppose, That short names are more commonly found than longer ones, is self understood and not an argument for a short lemma at all, only an argument for adding a redirect with the short name to the long name, noting else. Don't You have an real argument? --Manorainjan 16:29, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

No need to be rude bro. It's just a poll on a move. Not something that you need to be calling people's arguments fake over. Merry Christmas. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:39, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose the Gov source uses "Variant of Concern 202012/01" at the top of the article so I don't think MOS:ACROTITLE is satisfied, it is in common speech also called a "variant". Crouch, Swale (talk) 17:18, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose We migth (in theory) call it something like "Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 variant of concern VOC 202012/01", but just "VOC 202012/01" is like naming an article about an iPhone model by it's model number (like A1457). Well, not quite; number of google hits (e.g.) will prove me wrong. Still, "Variant of Concern blah-blah" works as a name; "blah-blah" doesn't. If this variant proves to be as much of a concern as it seems at the moment, it will probably receive a more snappy name - "SARS-CoV-3", "Johnson Virus" or whatever (hardly any of those two, though!), and then, of course, we should rename the article again.--Nø (talk) 16:15, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose per TITLECHANGES. The proposed change is of negligible improvement for any reader, the change makes offsite references and memories confused, and this is a developing topic. As this stain continues to dominate, it will very like produce a family of new strains, and there will in short time be new names again. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:29, 27 December 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose "Variant of Concern" is succinct without being cryptic -even though it sounds a bit too much like "person of interest"... kencf0618 (talk) 22:23, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose Just keep it the way it is. This name is more common while the other is just a short form. 24.150.136.254 (talk) 16:54, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose The redirect is just fine, I don't see any need to rename the article. Giggity (talk • contribs) 00:49, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose -for (almost) all the reasons above- keeping VOC-202012/01 as a redirect and Variant of Concern 202012/01 as this article's title (giving a hint more info about the content of this article) feels just right. Yadsalohcin (talk) 08:46, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose per Manorainjan. Gazamp (talk) 17:01, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
• Comment as OP - Given the amount of oppose votes, I hereby withdraw my call for a rename. Love of Corey (talk) 18:57, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

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The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Transmission in children

This article is largely silent on the concern that part of the new mutation makes the virus more transmissible in children::

• New coronavirus strain may infect children more easily, says scientist on Covid advisory group to UK government
• UK coronavirus variant may be more able to infect children: scientists
• Scientists investigate higher proportion of coronavirus cases in children

Is this intentional (i.e. are we waiting for more research)?

Mentioning it would help readers to understand why they are closing schools again in the UK (and also Ireland I believe)? thanks 109.255.90.188 (talk) 13:47, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Would need some WP:MEDRS to say anything about risk. Doubt there's any yet. Might be okay to say something about concern. Alexbrn (talk) 13:48, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Transmissibility

There appears to be a lot of confusion what selection coefficient s=70% means. See [1] and [2]. Also the media appears to get it wrong, or at least confuses stuff. Because not everybody can be presumed to be proficient in reading differential equations, I flushed out the contents of the video and some of the slide deck in the Variant of Concern 202012/01#Transmissibility section. Some further comments about this: a) The natural logarithm was apparently used. b) When using natural logarithms, the selection coefficient is equal to the increase of the contagiousness (as a percentage) FOR SMALL VALUES of these quantities. However, because regular (non-delay) differential equations are used, there is a difference for larger values: The transmissibility factor (and thus the associated R values) is equal to the exponent of the selection coefficient. When using regular differential equations, there is (unphysical) compound growth during the generational interval, which gives these at first sight inconsistent results between the two values. Having said that, the bottom line is to know how fast the odds ratio of the mutant variant exponentially grows. The bottom line is that mutant variant was doubling in ~6.4 days (slight faster than the generation time of 6.5 days.) This can be seen in all the plots of log_e(OR) as well. c) There are also values for R deduced in the literature which are different (typically lower), but these were derived from other, complementary data. d) There was also confusion about the B.1.117 (the A222) strain and the B.1.1.7 (the mutant strain) in the youtube ref. Jmv2009 (talk) 21:15, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Might it be possible to introduce material more accessible to the layman in the section Work of Imperial college (Erik Voltz et al)​? I don't doubt the veracity of what we have at the moment, but perhaps a worked example would be useful. Also, 'mutant' strain - wouldn't 'new variant' or 'novel variant' be better? The word 'mutant' is slightly problematic. Arcturus (talk) 17:24, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

As currently drafted, the transmissibility section is challenging to comprehend. One reason is it (like above) focuses on "growth", but it's not apparent what that means. Is it growth of cells in a culture? Is it growth of an infected population of humans? Is it something else? Setting that aside, I think there's an undue quantity of math in this section compared to the rest of the article, and it doesn't really belong. (p.s.: The idiom is "fleshed out"; "flushed" is the opposite). jhawkinson (talk) 18:04, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

Agreed, WP:TECHNICAL states that equations should (also) be written in plain English. The WP:RELEVANCE and implications should also be written in plain English if it is to be kept. Will add technical banner to section. ArcMachaon (talk) 22:11, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

• Section removed per WP:NOT, as completely inappropriate. Alexbrn (talk) 02:01, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

Putting the section here for now as reference.

Work of Imperial college (Erik Voltz et al)

The selection coefficient $s_{c}$ (where c stands for "compound") of the mutant, was defined using the non-delay differential equation$${\tfrac {d}{dt}}\log _{e}(OR(t))={\tfrac {s_{c}}{\tau _{g}}}$$where $\tau _{g}$ is the generational interval, which was presumed to be 6.5 days, and $OR(t)$ is the odds ratio of the mutant strain. As a solution to the above equation, the logarithm of $OR(t)$ is expected to grow linearly:$$\log _{e}(OR(t))=\zeta +{\tfrac {s_{c}}{\tau _{g}}}t$$where $\zeta$ reflects the initial conditions. This is equivalent to$$OR(t)=e^{\zeta }e^{{\tfrac {s_{c}}{\tau _{g}}}t}=e^{\zeta }exp(s_{c})^{\frac {t}{\tau _{d}}}$$The selection coefficient $s_{c}$ was determined to be ~70% (0.7). $OR(t)$ was thus growing exponentially by a factor of $e^{0.70}=2.0$ per 6.5 days:$$OR(t+t_{d})=e^{s_{c}}OR(t)$$ As one can see, in this model, unphysical compound growth occurs during the generational interval.

The $OR(t)$ is the odds ratio, defined by$$OR(t)={\tfrac {f(t)}{1-f(t)}}$$where $f(t)$ is the fraction of the mutant strain, which then follows a sigmoid logistics curve, which early on is also exponential growing, as it is equivalent to $OR(t)$ for $f(t)\ll 1$.

In later work of the group, the following definition of $s$ was used:

The ancestral strain grows exponentially as$$c_{a}(t+t_{d})=Rc_{a}(t)$$where R is the reproduction number of that strain, and the mutant variant growing as$$c_{m}(t+t_{d})=R(1+s)c_{m}(t)$$so the multiplicative advantage factor is $1+s$.

With$$f(t)={\frac {c_{m}(t)}{c_{m}(t)+c_{a}(t)}}$$the following formula is trivially derived$$OR(t+t_{d})=(1+s)OR(t)$$corresponding to the increase in virulence as a multiplication factor. This is the same formula as before, but without the compound growth during the generational interval. The following relationship holds$$1+s=e^{s_{c}}\sim 1+s_{c}+s_{c}^{2}/2$$so for small values of s they match. With slightly different data, the multiplicative advantage factor $1+s$ was determined to be 1.74.

Jmv2009 (talk) 06:16, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

References

Countries

Should we add the countries with the Covid-19 variant on a separate page? Because this variant appeared in a lot of countries.

Eray08yigit (talk | contribs) 14:23, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

India becomes first country to culture U.K. variant strain

Please mention in this article: India becomes first country to culture U.K. variant strain. Source Rizosome (talk) 06:19, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

"COVID19 new" listed at Redirects for discussion

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect COVID19 new. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 January 5#COVID19 new until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. _pseudonym Jake Brockman ^talk 02:55, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Nomenclature section

@Lovewhatyoudo, Biscuit-in-Chief, Novem Linguae, Rauisuchian, Nø, and JackFromReedsburg: I don't want to edit war, so moving this conversation here (from edit summaries). This overlaps somewhat with #Name? (hence pings) but I think it is a separate concern.

The question is what order the Nomenclature section should list names in, and what level of extra information should be provided along the way. To me, this is very much a question of WP:PYRAMID, and getting the important information to the reader up front first before they skip the section entirely. Because there are a lot of different terms being used for this variant, and there may well be more as time goes on, it's important to make it easy for the reader to see what they are clearly, without confusion, before launching into extended definitions or histories of those terms. We also need to recognize there is not a single right answer, because the scientists working on this have not agreed upon a particular nomenclature and no central authority (WHO?) has made a determination.

The section needs to cover at least the specific names "Variant Under Investigation in December 2020 (VUI – 202012/01)", "Variant of Concern 202012/01", "lineage B.1.1.7", and can reasonably also mention the generic names that were used when writers didn't have a name: "UK COVID-19 variant" and "UK coronavirus variant."

My position, founded in WP:PYRAMID, is that the section should begin with the current naming, and emphasize the short names that humans actually use. Because the article is titled "Variant of Concern 202012/01," I don't think the section should lead with that—the reader already knows that's where we are. So to me, the section should introduce the B.1.1.7 name (which is what is used in the mainstream American media to actually identify the virus, e.g. WaPo + NYT, although they use a generic description in the headline, which is a different kind of use and makes sense), and then backtrack to the VOC and VUI, and only at the end discuss the generic geographical names. Indeed, for the same reason that "Wuhan flu" has become a politicized and problematic name, there is reason to take pause before talking about "UK COVID-19 variant" and take especial care before emphasizing it.

Some editors have added phrases that I think are unhelpful, because they mean the actual names aren't available at the beginning of the lede of the section:

"Early media reports"

This doesn't help the reader understand anything, and to the extent it conflates government announcements with news media under the banner of "media," it just adds confusion.

"in popular media"

Similar.

"It is most popularly and imprecisely referred"

We haven't established "most popularly" and probably can't meaningfully do so. That would be WP:OR. And if we were to sit down and analyze the recent English language news media corpus, we would find a lot of initial articles that used the generic nomenclature because they didn't know what to call it, and more recently now that there are actual names, articles that used those. Would we say that the volume and attention to those initial articles where the writers didn't have a name so used a generic name contribute to a "popular" use of the generic name? Perhaps, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't use clear and specific names now that we have them, rather than ambiguous generic ones.

"Within the medical professionals,"

At least in American English, this reads as "within doctor's bodies." Maybe it's OK in UK English (I don't think so?), but at least it should be "Among medical professionals" or "within the medical profession." But it's not as if there are medical professionals using one name and public health professionals using another and government officials using a third. There are only the names from scientists (B.1.1.7, VOC 202012/01, BUI 202012/01) and then the generic names.

"In initial government and media reports, as of early January 2021, it is commonly referred"

1) there's no reason to say "government and media", 2) those reports were in Dec. 2020, there's no reason to say "as of {now}," and 3) this no reason to give the generic names top billing, where it means reader will stop and skip the section before they get to the discussion of the current, specific names.

I don't want to hit WP:3RR so I'm not fixing the obvious errors in the last two (that remain in the article right now).

Also, because this is a high-importance article that is rapidly changing, it's especially important to use clear edit summaries that explain edits. A lot of edits haven't done that, and it makes a lot harder for other editors.

Thank you. Sorry this is long. jhawkinson (talk) 15:41, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

The section isn't that long, but it doesn't flow well. I'm tempted to convert it to a bulleted list. I don't have any strong opinions about the order... the two main names are covered in the lead, so the weight of these minor names seems about equal to me. –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:03, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

I agree with Novem Linguae's view that "the two main names are covered in the lead, so the weight of these minor names seems about equal to me." This is one of the reasons why I ordered like that. Besides, I am actually rather dissatisfied by the fact that the lead selectively pick a rarely used term as the only alternative name to be listed. It does not fit the principle of weight. -- love.wh 09:14, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

If Nomenclature were to reflect the evolution of terminology, it would be useful to specify the date of emergence/prevalence of each term. -- love.wh 09:14, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, the section is a bit of a mess (the whole article is, really ...). I think we should leave out the terms used by news media since they literally use dozens of different terms, often even erronous or misleading (like "UK coronavirus variant"). And we should definitely delete Within medical professionals, the variant has been designated B.1.1.7 as well as Variant of Concern 202012/01. since this is all explained in the sentences after. —Happy New Year from Biscuit-in-Chief :-) ^{(/tɔːk/ – /ˈkɒntɹɪbs/)} 19:48, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

Definitely should not use terms such as "UK COVID/Coronavirus", despite how many media outlets say otherwise. (COVID-19 isn't "Wuhan or Chinese Flu", this article should follow that convention.) Saying which medical professionals use which terms is not encyclopedic (unless there is a good reason for inclusion, currently there is not). All that should be stated is "VUI-202012/01", "B.1.1.7", and "VOC-202012/01". I agree that there is no need to say ""as of {now},", as all Wikipedia articles are "as of {now},". JackFromReedsburg (talk | contribs) 01:32, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

Indeed, in a spirit of goodwill it would be nice to censor names like UK COVID-19 variant irrespective of its prevalence. -- love.wh 09:14, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

@Lovewhatyoudo: I'm extremely troubled by your recent edits. Although you're correct that "consensus is still being reached in talk page," it's very clear that no one is advocating that we feature the terms "UK COVID-19 variant" or "UK coronavirus variant," and yet your edit this morning places them first and foremost in this section. (That is why in my edit, I placed them at the end of the article, and noted the burgeoning discussion here would support removing them entirely, but chose not to go that far.) You also add back "In government and media reports it is commonly referred," yet no one has advocated for that phrasing, and the conversation here makes clear why it is not appropriate. Firstly, because "commonly" is original research that is not supported. Secondly, because there is no purpose in distinguishing between or highlighting "government" and "media" reports. Please don't make these kinds of edits that are opposed to the emerging consensus — it comes across as if you're using the lack of a conclusion to the discussion to restore your favored language that no one seems to be supporting.

Secondly, please always use an edit summary on this article! It's a high-profile article with a lot of eyes and editors shouldn't have to carefully close-read diffs in order to figure out what you did. You next edit replaced "colleagues" and "co-authors" with "et al." That's adding back technical jargon that was recently removed, and you haven't supported it. When you revert someone's edit, you should say so and explain why. And in this encyclopedia, we try to write for regular readers, avoid technical jargon, and use plain English. Your edit doesn't support those things. Why did you do it? Furthermore, adding "Among scientists," appears to set up the naming as if there is a debate with scientists on one side and "government and media" on the other. That's a false dichotomy. Scientists and public health professionals are the ones who name these things, and generalized communications professionals have to figure out what to call things before they have clear names, so they begin using generic names. Your edits suggest a conflict where none exist, and they are reverting other edits without explanation.

Please stop this behavior. If you disagree with other editors, please raise it on the talk page, here in this thread. Don't unilaterally make changes that buck the emerging consensus. Thank you. jhawkinson (talk) 16:25, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

As for your comment that "Commonly" is not supported - Google reveals 5.4 million results of "UK coronavirus variant" (archived url), 5.8 million results of "UK COVID-19 variant" (archive url) and 10,000 results of "Variant of Concern 202012/01". I am extremely restrained to not include the most used terms in the lead. It would be unthinkable to censor these two terms with 5.4+5.8 = 11 million usage.

Would you also comment on @Novem Linguae's view that "the two main names are covered in the lead, so the weight of these minor names seems about equal to me"? Note that the weight of "minor names" have 11.2 million results while the "main name" has 10,000 results.

You talked as if you foresee/assume a certain name would eventually enjoy overwhelming usage, and you would like to join the PR effort to push such names. This is not what Wikipedia for, please refrain from doing that. Also, you talked as if you foresee/assume "UK COVID-19 variant" would phrase out. I would like to see evidence. Or is this your wish/ opinion?

As for your comment that "no purpose in distinguishing between or highlighting government and media reports", surely there is a purpose - to tell readers who use such names. Readers might not know the government also use these names, so it is worth pointing it out. As for your comment of "Among scientists", no one suggests there is a debate between scientists and government/media, it simply demonstrates who use which terms - the professionals push one term, while the public (served by the media and the government) use another. If that mislead you, do you have a suggestion? How about "Among the professionals"?

As for "et al.", I am okay with either.

-- love.wh 18:04, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

lovewhatyoudo, please do not use terms like "unthinkable." What could that mean? Obviously other editors have told you that they think the terms should not be used. By all means, muster the best argument you can, but please don't use absolute labels that don't have any meaning and are incredibly subjective.

Your original research about prevalance is inapposite. When Google tells us that "UK coronavirus variant" appears, that does not mean it is used as a name. We absolutely expect to see things like, "There is a new UK coronavirus variant, it is called B.1.1.7." Your search does not distinguish between the phrase as a formal name and generic reference, so it is not helpful. (That's part of why original research is a problem, even when it looks "obvious" or "simple" initially.)

I'm not sure whether you mean the lede of the article or the lede of the Nomenclature section when you characterize your behavior as "restrained." But I think your behavior is not at all restrained (you've made edits reverting what appear to be consensus-supported edits while there's pending discussion here). I don't really think those names belong in the Nomenclature section, but if they do, they should be at the end, far after names like B.1.1.7 and VOI 202012/01. Yet you have pushed them forward, ahead of those names, in opposition to what everyone else here has said. That seems to fly in the face of consensus.

I don't particularly agree with Novem Linguae about the article's lede, because there hasn't been a robust discussion about the article's lede, either, and those edits can change quickly and the focus of the lede can change (but it is not a strong disagreement). There is a balance between repetition and prominence in this kind of nomenclature section, but the article lede doesn't explain the origin of the names.

I do not think we have a "PR effort" to promote certain names, but we are also an encyclopedia, we promote proper usage and over uninformed cluelessness. If popular media tells you to jump off a cliff, do you do it? We're not a popularity contest, we're a source of authoritative information. And we would be naive to think that the phrasing of Wikipedia articles does not influence other people's behavior on emerging and rapidly changing topics like this one.

We absolutely do not (and should not, I think!) build a dichotomy between "government and media" on one side and "scientists" on the other, as your edits have done and promote. Readers might not know that "government also use these names" is like saying "Readers might not know that the government also talks with words that others use." Your wording elevates a happenstance choice from government speakers (sourced from ignorance of the topics: not knowing a standard name) into a strongly intended choice, and puts it front and center ahead of the names that the actual practitioners -- medical and public health professionals -- use. That is not something we should do. The names you label "among scientists" are what should begin the Nomenclature section, and only later should we acknowledge (maybe! as above, others think we should not) the vague and generic names. We should not call them "commonly" used, because it is their genericness that makes it impossible to tell when they are used as a name and when they are used as a label or introductory reference, so we lack sufficient information to make that kind of characterization, which is then easily misread as a recommendation (that we have no standing to make). It's not necessary to say "Among professionals" or among anyone at all. It's clear from the references and the in-line text where these uses come from (e.g. "by Meera Chand and her colleagues").

I will revert your "et al." changes when I am next up for tackling this article. jhawkinson (talk) 13:31, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

How about rephrasing as "It is colloquially referred as UK COVID-19 variant[ref] and UK coronavirus variant,[ref] by the press and some governments."? Among the 11 million Google results of these two terms, some are used as a name, others are used colloquially, as you pointed out.

As for the weight, this article is named after a little-known scientific name and the lead of the article only lists two little known scientific names. As @Paul Carpenter pointed out in RfC below, your proposal to suppress the most (colloquially) common usage of "UK COVID-19 variant" and "UK coronavirus variant" only disinform and turn away readers, because readers could not confirm they are reading what they are looking for after reading the article's lead and the opening 10 sentences of Nomenclature. You mislead readers into believing they land on the wrong article and they will leave. Take some time to consider this chilling effect.

-- love.wh 18:28, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Nomenclature as list

There have been comments about the Nomenclature section and forms of words to use ("government and media" ...). There has also been a tendency to remove some documented usages as redundant or overkill (B117 is sometimes used). I would suggest that it would be useful to have two simple lists of names used ("Scientific" and "General use") as the main content of the Nomenclature section. Perhaps alphanumerical order.

Scientific
B.1.1.7<refs>
VUI – 202012/01 Original, now obsolete<refs>
...

General
British virus (used by Angela Merkel)<refs>
UK COVID-19 variant/strain<refs>
...

The purpose of this is to make the article more useful to readers. People will have seen references to "the B117 strain"; it would be useful for a Wikipedia article search (without the need for a lot of redirects) to find it on entering 'B117 covid', 'B117 coronavirus', etc. And it would be useful on reading the article to find that the B117 variant is indeed the one first identified in Kent, and is not the same as "B.1.1.207".

The same approach would be useful in the separate articles on each variant, and indeed in the sections of Variants of SARS-CoV-2.

Note re "variant vs "strain", "lineage", etc.: names used should be listed, regardless of whether they are deemed "correct" or not.

Best wishes, Pol098 (talk) 13:49, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

Thank you, everyone

I was in a meeting with some CDC sequence-epidemiology folks last week. They mentioned the high quality of this page, and wanted to thank everyone who has worked on it. Jaredroach (talk) 02:30, 17 January 2021 (UTC)

YOU WHAT? The CDC? That's insane! Thanks for passing it on! —Happy New Year from Biscuit-in-Chief :-) ^{(/tɔːk/ – /ˈkɒntɹɪbs/)} 02:35, 17 January 2021 (UTC)

Name?

In Danish media (that I see most), and from the Danish health authorities, the variant is named N501Y, after what appears to be the most important mutation. I also see "new corona mutation", but that does not really qualify as a name. Obviously, there is a slight difference between discussing the "VUI - 202012/01" variant, and the "N501Y mutation"; not everything that can be said about one is true about the other (like: Was it seen in Australia in June/July?). But equally obvious is it that "VUI - 20212/01" is not a good name, and I am convinced this article should and will be renamed at some point. I suppose we should follow reliable English-language sources, but not neccesarily the scientific ones. -- What names do you see? What is the best name for this article?--Nø (talk) 10:53, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Hejsa. Definitely leave the name as it is. the UK government, GISAID, and ECDC (albeit without the dash) all call it "VUI – 202012/01" or "VUI 202012/01". English-speaking media also use that name; the only other name I've seen specifically for this mutation in English-speaking media is "lineage B.1.1.7". I really don't know why Danish media (at least DR) keep calling it "N501Y"—VUI – 202012/01 has 17 defining mutations; N501Y is just the most important of them (probably, anyway). Regardless, we should always use the official/scientific names. —Biscuit-in-Chief :-) ^{(/tɔːk/ – /ˈkɒntɹɪbs/)} 13:56, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

SSI use it too, https://www.ssi.dk/aktuelt/nyheder/2020/ny-covid-virusstamme-i-england --Nø (talk) 19:17, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Once again, English-speaking scientific sources and authorities are the most authoritative on this subject. We can't just change that because of one non-English-speaking country's serum instiute. —Biscuit-in-Chief :-) ^{(/tɔːk/ – /ˈkɒntɹɪbs/)} 19:57, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Especially when they fly the Union Jack upside down! ~~

Yes, N501Y is a poor name for the variant, as that mutation has been seen previously, as mentioned in the article. It may of course transpire that one of these previous genomes is the source for this variant, but we have no information about that yet. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 22:39, 21 December 2020 (UTC).

Obviously, Danish media and health authorities are not who should define which name we use here. Nonetheless, "VUI 202012/01" is a terrible name, unlikely to prevail in public discourse. I asked what names you see, and if the answer at this point is predominantly "VUI 202012/01", even in popular but reliable media, then that must be our name, for now. I see English-language media use descriptions like "variant Coronavirus", in order, I suppose, to avoid "VUI 202012/01", but again, that hardly qualifies as a name (even though they use it as if it was a clear identification of this particular strand).--Nø (talk) 09:53, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

I've seen it called the "UK Strain" or "UK Coronavirus", but that has its obvious issues and shouldn't be the title of the article. JackFromReedsburg (talk | contribs) 13:46, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

I totally agree. It is temptingly straightforward, and we've had e.g the Plague of Justinian (541), Russian Flu (1891), Spanish Flu (1917) and MERS (2012), where common names explicitly reference a country, its sovereign, or a region But that is not "PC" today (and never really made sense w.r.t. Spain anyway). We do not call SARS-CoV-2 the Chinese virus.--Nø (talk) 14:14, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

There was a page called New Covid that I redirected here. Is that a name used in reliable sources? Apparently it trended on Twitter, but that's not a source we can use. Fences&Windows 23:01, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

No, not at all. That name is simply factually incorrect: it isn't a new COVID-19, it's a variant of SARS-CoV-2. —Biscuit-in-Chief :-) ^{(/tɔːk/ – /ˈkɒntɹɪbs/)} 23:20, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Lineages come from SARS-CoV-2 lineages there are also the clades from Nextstrain and GISAID. The article Geographical and temporal distribution of SARS-CoV-2 clades in the WHO European Region, January to June 2020 has a "Rosetta Stone" showing lineages and clades side-by-side, but it's old and does not include the B.1.1.7 lineage and the GV clade. Jamplevia (talk) 20:26, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, not logged in, and certainly not authorative, but my vote would go for B.1.1.7 - at least you can write and memorize that semi-decently (The german state / province of Baden-Württemberg used that name to refer to the variant when they announced the first identified case). Just my 5 cent. 37.209.66.137 (talk) 23:04, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

This Guardian article on the first report of the variant in Colorado refers to it as B.1.1.7. Rauisuchian (talk) 08:56, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Why not just wait for a few weeks? The media might start calling it Covid-20 or something, and right now, VOC 202012/01 seems fine. I feel (maybe?) adding a space to make it VOC 2020 12/01 would be better. Thanks, Thanoscar21^talk_{contributions} 22:26, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

Don’t use the term UK variant since it is not exclusive to the UK. Call it by the scientific name to meet the double standards of the coronavirus. It is not reasonable to use a non scientific name because it is popular. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.230.136.178 (talk) 19:08, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

Please do not call it a strain. (variant, mutation, change)

• In spite a lot of media outlets use the term strain, it is a Variant Of Concern and not a strain of concern.
• SARS-Cov-2 itself is a strain of the SARS-Corona-Viruses, the strain #2. If it ever mutates that much, that it becomes a different virus with distinctively different properties, it might be called SARS-Cov-3 or so. Than it would be a different strain.
• When it mutates, that could result in a number of changes like deletions (69-70del) or exchanges (D614G). Means, one mutation could consist of several changes. Not every single change is "the mutation".

--Manorainjan 10:27, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

"There is no universally accepted definition for the terms 'strain', 'variant', and 'isolate' in the virology community, and most virologists simply copy the usage of terms from others."

Pol098 (talk) 15:50, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

That reference is from 2012. In 8 years no progress made? ;-) --Manorainjan 16:03, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

(I added a reliable source from 29 Dec 2020, see a bit further down.) Pol098 (talk) 11:43, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

Referencing from other Wikipedia policies, I feel that we should remain consistent within articles. So while the three words may be interchangeable, we should stick to one word for the sake of consistency. Since this article is titled "Variant of Concern 202012/01", we should use variant, and only variant. Maybe a proper discussion should be had on the usage of these terms, but for now, we should retain consistency within each article. JackFromReedsburg (talk | contribs) 15:57, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

I completely agree with JackFromReedsburg. Moreover, SARS-CoV-2 uses "strain" to describe the virus, and VOC-202012/01 is undoubtebly in a subclass of SARS-CoV-2. —Biscuit-in-Chief :-) ^{(/tɔːk/ – /ˈkɒntɹɪbs/)} 18:04, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Having posted the comment about strain and variant not being well-defined, I don't mean that we should actually use the terms interchangeably, just that it's not such a big deal. Even the experts sometimes talk of the "strain" (in 2020 as well as 2012):

At present, the variant is referred to as "SARS-CoV-2 VOC 202012/01" (i.e., the first variant of concern from 2020, December), or "B.1.1.7." The press often uses the terms "variant," "strain," "lineage," and "mutant" interchangeably. For the time being in the context of this variant, the first three of these terms are generally being used interchangeably by the scientific community as well. (http://web.archive.org/web/20210122060907/https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/more/scientific-brief-emerging-variant.html CDC, 29 Dec 20)

Again, I merely comment, it seems perfectly sensible to talk of "variant", though "strain" is not unambiguously wrong, or all that objectionable. Best Christmas wishes, Pol098 (talk) 19:00, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

I agree with @Pol098 and Manorainjan: on this issue. AnotherEditor144 ^{talk contribs} 10:40, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

RfC on UK Coronavirus usage

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

There is consensus to include the UK name in lead. In particular, editors expressed concern about the article clearly identifying its subject to readers in light of the name being frequently used in the media (non-admin closure) (t · c) buidhe 08:40, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

---

Should the article include the terms UK Coronavirus variant, UK COVID-19 variant, or related "UK" names? (Sources are listed in Talk:U.K. Coronavirus variant and Talk:U.K. Covid-19 variant)

• Option A - Include
  • A1: in article's lead
  • A2: in Nomenclature's opening sentence
  • A3: brush it off at the end of Nomenclature
• Option B - Don't include
• Option C - Mention that the strain was initially called "UK COVID-19 strain", in a similar way to COVID-19#Name

Thanks, JackFromReedsburg (talk | contribs) 15:55, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Framing concern [Option A3]: To me the question is less whether to include, and more how to do so. So my preference would be for an A/B hybrid. Mention them, but in as minor and non-prominent a fashion as possible, i.e. at the end of the Nomenclature section, behind all other names. I guess I'm not entirely sure what Option C means, and maybe that's the same as what I am saying…but I don't think so, since the #Name section there starts with "During the initial outbreak in Wuhan, China, the virus and disease were commonly referred to as "coronavirus" and "Wuhan coronavirus"" which is very similar to what we have now that I am trying to avoid (with the extensive discussion about at #Nomenclature section). jhawkinson (talk) 16:11, 5 January 2021 (UTC); A3 jhawkinson (talk) 03:46, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

I add Option A1/2/3 to make our choices more clear. -- love.wh 18:28, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Option B. I don't think we should use literally incorrect names like "UK COVID-19 variant/strain/..." or very broad names like "UK coronavirus variant/strain/..." (that could technically refer to any subtype of Orthocoronavirinae) since they've only really been used as a description of the variant rather than a proper name for it (like VOC-202012/01 is). —Happy New Year from Biscuit-in-Chief :-) ^{(/tɔːk/ – /ˈkɒntɹɪbs/)} 16:29, 5 January 2021 (UTC) Upon reading the arguments for A, I vote for options A1 and A2, as long as we remember to still refer to the virus as SARS-CoV-2 and not "coronavirus" or "COVID-19". —Happy New Year from Biscuit-in-Chief :-) ^{(/tɔːk/ – /ˈkɒntɹɪbs/)} 19:13, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Comment If we don't include the names, what would we call it? Spudlace (talk) 20:39, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Option A: Whilst I'm personally not a great fan of calling it the UK variant, Wikipedia is WP:NOTADVOCACY and WP:NOTCENSORED. As far as I can see, most media outlets refer to the UK when they talk about this new variant. Many reputable news sources call it the UK variant etc. and Wikipedia should reflect that. ArcMachaon (talk) 02:28, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Option A1 or A2, this needs to be prominent enough - I think Paul's suggestion (A1) below is appropriate. ArcMachaon (talk) 15:35, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Option A1 in the lead, as it'll give readers quick confirmation to readers that they've landed on the right page. We can say "informally known as..." to avoid giving the impression that it's an 'official' designation. --Paul ❬talk❭ 15:36, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Option A. Unfortunately, no other sensible name has emerged, so the media, careful not to call SARS-CoV-2 "the Chinese virus", seem to go with "the UK variant", "the UK mutation", etc. I am happy we don't have one of those as the title of this article, but they must appear prominently in the article.--Nø (talk) 15:55, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Probably A1: Prominently, as I wrote before, means preferably in the lead, but with some indication that this terminology is dubious ("..., in popular media often referred to as ..."). I'm not sure these popular names should appear in the "Nomenclature" section at all. If the section was called "Naming", it would be natural to discuss popular names too, but "Nomenclature" suggest to me names used in a professional, scientific context.--Nø (talk) 09:24, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Option 50% B + 50% C. Although it was first identified as considerably disseminated in the UK in December (with first data entries of the B.1.1.7 lineage, the probable ancestors of this variant, in September 2020), the scientific community should avoid naming diseases/virus/strains according to geographic manifestations of phenomena, and should instead follow nomenclature. So, I agree with User:Biscuit-in-Chief, that we should never use incorrect, unscientific names to refer to any of these elements. What we could do here is guarantee that the article mentions that this variant is/was "colloquially called" those other names in the media, in government speeches and in the general population. In fact, at the moment the page is already somewhat good regarding this aspect, namely in the Nomenclature section and avoiding these mentions on the lead. ACLNM (talk) 16:26, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Option A1. Google reveals 5.4 million results of "U.K. Coronavirus variant" (archived), 5.8 million of "U.K. Covid-19 variant" (archived) and 10,000 of "Variant of Concern 202012/01". They are the best known (colloquial) terms. Wikipedia is not the place for pushing/assigning undue weight to an obscure term with 10,000 usage. As Paul Carpenter pointed out, suppressing th UK- terms only disinform and turn away readers because readers could not confirm they are reading what they are looking for if we elect Option A3/ B. We would mislead readers into believing they land on the wrong article and leave. -- love.wh 18:28, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

• In the UK is is generally called "the new variant" by the BBC but that's obviously because the articles are aimed at UK readers, as the article notes its not known if it actually originated here or if we were the first to detect it. Similarly Spanish flu hasn't been confirmed to be from Spain but it got most publicity because Spain was neutral. Crouch, Swale (talk) 18:22, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

• Option A1 For the reasons given above. Also, though, this has been used in contrast with the "South African variant", a term which is not currently present in the 501.V2 variant article. It may be worth adding that there also? Awoma (talk) 20:53, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

• Option A1 Pretty straightforward include here, the term UK variant is used sometimes in the UK, and a lot elsewhere. Well-sourced so it goes in. Boynamedsue (talk) 13:31, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

• Option A1 as "UK" and "British" variants are very much the colloquial terms I'm seeing in a lot of popular press items. ScrupulousScribe (talk) 23:47, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

NY Times explainer

This might be a good external link: Corum, Jonathan; Zimmer, Carl (January 18, 2021). "Inside the B.1.1.7 Coronavirus Variant". New York Times. Fences&Windows 17:49, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

I agree (as an external link). Good graphics and easy to understand. Any objections? —Happy New Year from Biscuit-in-Chief :-) ^{(/tɔːk/ – /ˈkɒntɹɪbs/)} 19:35, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

 Done since there were no objections. —Happy New Year from Biscuit-in-Chief :-) ^{(/tɔːk/ – /ˈkɒntɹɪbs/)} 10:34, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

World map

There is a map "Countries with confirmed cases of VOC-202012/01 as of 16 January 2021", colour coding number of cases per country. As the numbers grow, I think it would be more relevant to colour code either the number of cases relative to the total number of COVID-19 cases in the country foloowing a certain date, or relative to the population of the country.--Nø (talk) 12:09, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

> Nice idea. However, one needs to be very careful, as not every COVID-19 case is checked for this variant, strongly skewing the results. Only a handful of countries have done representative sampling of COVID-19 cases to check for the variant. Denmark, France, Netherlands. Less representative is data from Portugal (not dated), Israel (sketchy, not dated, and contested), and US (only some states).

> It is very important the data is accurately dated, as the growth is so fast. The typical difference between start of symptoms date and the publication date is hugely important.

> In the end a factor of 3-4 doesn't actually matter when the virus is still at <1%, as this only changes the time projected time of dominance by two weeks. However, above this number, with delays in reporting, going through the five stages of grief, and decision making, one can easily hit dominance before settling on the right amount of protective measures. For maximum benefit, the right amount of protective measures should be enacted WAY BEFORE hitting variant dominance, saving a huge amount of trouble. This is exacerbated by often very low genetic sequencing percentage, where just a couple of cases already present a huge problem, also adding to doubts about proper sampling. Jmv2009 (talk) 11:32, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

@Nø and Jmv2009: I support changing the world map at the top of the article from confirmed number of cases to "number of cases relative to the total number of COVID-19 cases in the country". Darkest red should be used for all states with a dominant share above 50% (currently UK, Ireland, Netherlands and Portugal). Another colour could be used for countries with 10-49% (Israel, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, France). Third color for states with a 1%-9% share (Spain). A special colour could be used for "countries without B117 share data", or alternatively such countries could still be colored into 3 subgroups of countries (#1 countries with more than 100 cases, #2 countries with 1-99 cases, #3 countries without cases). Danish Expert (talk) 10:26, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

Article name

Hi there. I'm just wondering if there's been any discussion about using a more commonly recognised name as the article title, rather than this rather odd phrase not ever used outside of the scientific community. Per WP:REMEMBER (and WP:JARGON), we should be naming articles based on what the general public would recognise the subject of the article as, not what the scientific or technical term is. In this case, "Variant of Concern 202012/01" is not used in common literature (literally, searching for "Variant of Concern 202012/01" in Google brings up journal articles and technical briefings only), whereas better terms like UK COVID strain are much more commonly used and recognised. While there would need to be a full discussion on what the alternative naming would exactly be, the current article name isn't recognisable. ItsPugle (please ping on reply) 05:27, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

I am vehemently opposed to using the racist term "UK COVID strain". Referring to it as the "China virus" is widely seen as racist and unacceptable, so why should referring it as the "British strain" be any different Buttons0603 (talk) 22:15, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

If I may, exactly what part of "UK COVID strain" is racist? I think the semantics and intentions behind a term are more important than just the face value of a word. The phrase "China virus" is commonly considered racist because it often is coupled with Sinophobia and Xenophobia, trying to insinuate some sort of guilt of the Chinese government or populous for the occurrence of COVID. But what you're saying is like calling the Spanish flu, MERS, Ebola, or Zika virus racist. Also, unlike "China virus", the term "UK COVID strain" is used by media around the world, including by public health organisations like Queensland Health, the Ministry of Health in New Zealand, and the CDC. It's pretty obvious that we're not perpetuating some sort of racist undertone here... ItsPugle (please ping on reply) 10:24, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

I would not be opposed to renaming the page to "UK variant" or "British variant" as per WP:REMEMBER, and it's been discussed before. I personally don't think British people make up a "race" for the page name to be deemed racist, and I'm not concerned with the animosity that it may bring upon us as a people, because like I added to the page, the UK was doing something like 50% of all genomic sequencing, so its no surprise we'd find novel variants before others did. Soon the South African variant may become even more notorious, and there will be many more. ScrupulousScribe (talk) 23:58, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

Review request

Reviewed [3], which was widely reported, as it suggests the variant MAY be more deadly, mainly suggesting you have a higher chance getting admitted. Once admitted to a hospital, the mortality risks would be roughly the same. That would be a hypothesis. Without sounding crass, something like a 30% change in mortality is "cute", only of scientific interest, unless one is considering achieving group immunity through going through the disease (no country has tried this). But one also has to consider the possiblity that pragmatically, the virus is not containable anymore. For low immunity levels (e.g. <30%), this virus attempt to grows an extra factor of 4 over two weeks, and more beyond that, so in that sense this virus is large factors more deadly, for the same level of protective measures. Conversely, the amount of protective measures required over time to keep the hospitals open are barely impacted by what fraction are admitted, and almost solely determined by the infectiousness. This is the same question as: How much does a ~30% slower build up of natural immunity help over time? The more "deadly" is sensationalism, distracting, besides the point. More seriously, the individual studies barely disprove the null hypothesis with 95% confidence. Many of the studies are different, and with different results. If results coalesce to a single number, of coarse allowing for statistical variation, one has something. Soon much more data can be accumulated. If it is real, the statistical noise lowers with the square root of the amount of data. We can then say if the signal stays as large as it is now, and studies will give a similar size of the signal. Jmv2009 (talk) 19:49, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

Please consider restoration of disambiguation of biological and epidemiological transmission - sourced from blog post

Reply and objection to this removal:

Revision as of 14:47, 30 January 2021‎ by Diannaa: remove content copied from https://www.virology.ws/. It's compatibly licensed, but it's a blog. See WP:MEDRS

This is, in fact, a blog post. It is usable here however since the blog post is from a subject-matter expert who is a published scientist and co-author of a well know textbook on the principles of virology. In general, blog posts are not to be used but this is an exception due to subject-matter expertise. See WP:MEDRS. The material is germane and on point as posted in the Transmission sub header Misconceptions.

The author is making a very important point that biological transmission (agent to host) not be misconstrued with statistical transmission (fitness in a population.) Biological transmissiblity is one component cause of several causal pies that might exist to augment fitness between variants. This is a confusion in the presentation in the genomic reporting of VOCs in general.

Can we at least agree to restore this with a more data is needed qualifier? It is possible that biological transmissibility is increased with B.1.1.7 but there is no current study showing this to be the case.

Here is the edit in question.

Revision as of 19:36, 29 January 2021‎ by Wiki.12022017: Added disambiguation of biological transmission from statistical transmission to misconceptions header under transmission

Cite of added Content from the edit:

"Biological transmission should be disambiguated from statistical transmission. The statistical models that have been used to approximate the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 variants cannot prove the biological property of transmission because drive through a population can be a consequence of various fitness parameters. Examples of other possible factors are increased physical stability of the particle, increased resistance to immune responses, longer duration of virus presence in the nasopharynx, increased infectious virus produced within the host, more efficient establishment of infection in a host, and founder effect. Experiments either in animal models (in which case the relevance to humans is unknown) or measurement of infectious virus in humans are needed."

I would leave this out than create controversy or re-edit. I don't think there is anything controversial in this disambiguation. It is appropriately sourced from the subject-matter expert. Not all blogs are useless. In fact many blogs - especially ones from experts such as this - far outweigh news sources with respect to credibility.

An example of the consequence of this disambiguation is the component cause to statistical transmission that increased resistance to immune responses might present (now or as the pandemic progresses.)

Another example might be the effect of race. A variation could be more fit (and reported as more tranmissible) in population of novel genetic diversity. It is best to term variant spread (and virulence for that matter) in terms of fitness by population than attribute transmissibility to genomic differences alone. I will send a note to the editor here but put this to the talk under this section.

Please consider this. Wiki.12022017 (talk) 12:02, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

I think we can agree that infections of this variant grows much faster than the other variants SOMEHOW. That it grows much faster than the other variants is also the main concern: Since the two variants behave independently(except for building immunity in the population), one can properly speak of two epidemics at the same time, where the new one is spreads much faster. We may not know how or why. Not sure it matters much, pragmatically: this, or another variant takes over quickly, and we'll be dealing with the new version, with all it's quirks and characteristics. We could add a sentence explaining we don't know why. Already in the Youtube presentation of Eric Voltz, he explained that epidemiology can detect more infectious variants earliest. Jmv2009 (talk) 06:55, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

Detect... not explain. Both are required in science. Jmv2009 - your edits and groupthink are driving the explanatory models out of this article. You assume the transmissibiliy is due to the virus. Voltz is right. You are wrong. There is no abstract truth on the best model, but it is rarely one's own that is correct. Please think about this.

It is not necessarily a SOMEHOW. The edits here and also your retraction of Worobey/Larsen's work limit the discussion of the B.1.1.7 variant in the United States. It is a matter of SOMEWHERE, more specifically SOME WHY. To focus on the epidemiology to the exclusion the virus biology is certainly possible. In fact your edits and Diannaa's do just that. For some reason B.1.1.7 hasn't spread in California and the United States as fast as it has in the U.K.. It is spreading faster in Florida but again not as fast. Wales and London were considered part and parcel in the NERVETAG presentation - they are not. That deserves consideration.

The best course is to be conservative and open minded. In my opinion this article has 'jumped the shark'. The 100K Human Genome Project created a wealth of genomic resources in the United Kingdom. That wealth brought focus to the genomics of SARS CoV2 to the exclusion of the biology, sociology, public health and welfare of other nations, perhaps.

Yes variants out-compete others. That can and does happen often without substantially affecting overall biological transmissibility of the strain. I'm not saying that is driving this here. But people can't begin to understand if scientists and experts outside epidemiology are edited out. These are all WP:MEDRS compliant edits that you and others are removing.

The U.S. data should be forthcoming in about a month 3/2021 per CDC grants and coordination. Any edit wars can hold fire until that time. Meanwhile, people are worried. They need data and models beyond 'realistic possibility'.

Thanks for your work here I appreciate the edit despite my disagreement here. Wiki.12022017 (talk) 21:56, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

@Jmv2009: You were mentioned. —Happy New Year from Biscuit-in-Chief :-) ^{(/tɔːk/ – /ˈkɒntɹɪbs/)} 22:00, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

@Wiki.12022017 and Jmv2009: Just to inform all, the disputed removal of added content, relates to whether or not we should add content from the Vincent Racaniello article from the Virology Blog, into the Wikipedia article's Transmissibility chapter. By the end of January, this chapter featured a "misconception" sub-section, which now has been entirely removed. I will leave it to Jmv2009 and others, to decide whether info on this topic should be included.

Put shortly, I think we all agree "relative transmissibility of the B.1.1.7 Variant compared to wild-type" will be different from country to country, mainly because the wild-type plus other variants that B.1.1.7 competes against will differ from country to country. If the daily growth rate is less in California compared to Florida, it might be due to the competing local variants having a slightly higher transmissibility in California. So far, we have not seen any countries where the relative transmissibility of B.1.1.7 is close/below transmissibility of the local variant, although we expect the local variant in South Africa and Brazil to have an equally high transmissibility.

FYI -here is a list of the relative daily growth rates:

• Portugal (1st period): +9.6% (weekly +90%, in average from week 52-3)
• Switzerland: +8.8% (weekly +80%, in average from week 1-4)
• Ireland: +8.7% (weekly +79%, in average from week 51-3)
• UK: +8.6% (weekly +78%, in average from week 48-53)
• Florida: +7.8% (weekly +69%, in average from week 52-3)
• Netherlands: +7.6% (weekly +67%, in average from week 53-3)
• Denmark: +6.5% (weekly +55%, in average from week 52-5)
• California: +5.3% (weekly +44%, in average from week 52-3)
• Portugal (2nd period): +4.1% (weekly +32%, in average from week 3-5)

Relative daily growth rates were so far observed ranging from +4.1% (2nd period for Portugal) to +9.6% (1st period for Portugal). The rates are very sensitive to which weeks you select for the calculation (as seen for Portugal), and the growth should only be calculated for weeks having a variant share from 2%-60% (above and below those levels growth rates are slower). As noted, the variations can be due to many factors. In example, in Denmark we had travel restrictions (incl. quarentine when returning from travel), a strict lockdown (closed shops and schools) along with intensified contact tracing for B.1.1.7 cases; yet we still observed a high relative daily growth rate.

As far as I know, we have no science/evidence that the relative daily growth rate will depend on the level of restrictions in each country. Most countries redouble their restrictions, not to prevent B.1.1.7 from overtaking their pandemic - which is unavoidable, but to put the brakes on the exponential development of the B.1.1.7 infections for the purpose of bying time until vaccinations can protect the population.

The difference for the relative daily growth rate between Florida vs California vs Denmark is minimal, meaning it could be related solely to statistical uncertainty for the reported figures. Danish Expert (talk) 15:29, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Any reason why the growth rates about 60% are lower? Noticed that too. (inhomogeneity in the population, other variants, ...) And what is happening in Germany? Jmv2009 (talk) 11:32, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

@Jmv2009: I do not have high level expertice in this field as a virolog/epidemiologist, but will now answer your first question based on my mathematical/logical expertice as an engineer. The daily growth of the relative B.1.1.7 variant share will always follow the curve of Logistic growth (see also this Danish article), which per mathematical rule will always: accelerate exponentially in the beginning, be steepest at the midpoint, and then decelerate exponentially in the end.

The reason why we have "logistic growth" for the relative B.1.1.7 variant share, is that the initial exponential daily growth rate (applying from day 1 that the variant arrived) can not be sustained forever, because of the existing upper share limit of 100%. This mean that the daily growth rate for the variant share will only be at its maximum in the beginning, followed by a gradual slow reduction of the growth rate when moving towards 50%, and a rapid reduction of the growth rate (decelerating exponentially) on the rest of its path from 50% towards 100%. This is the reason why, the calculated daily growth rate for relative variant shares (variant/all positives) only apply until the 50% point, or if you want it to be even more accurate only apply until the 25% point.

My introduction of the lower 2% variant share cut-off value for statistical analysis, is due to my observation of incomplete data with too high statistical uncertainty below that level (due to only very few positives being analyzed for the variant, making it kind of random if a single variant suddenly gets detected by the few tests, while it will also be vulnerable to suddenly by coincidence hitting some samples from a local cluster outbrake without statistical representativity for the nation as a whole).

If all coronavirus positives were analyzed for the B.1.1.7 variant, then we would not be bound by my introduced 2%-limit for the analytical calculation. Note also, that the recently introduced variant specific RT-PCR screening tests (i.e SGTF/N501Y), are still not good enough as a proxy for very low B.1.1.7 variant shares, which has been reported by several scientific sources (i.e. this UK report); because those proxy tests will still also detect a high relative amount of other similar variants than B.1.1.7 - for as long as the B.1.1.7 variant share is low. Danish Expert (talk) 17:58, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

@Jmv2009: I need to post this short update to my reply above, to further clarify.

The calculated daily growth rate for the relative B.1.1.7 variant share, is determined by the following formula and normal-scale curve:

Standard logistic sigmoid function i.e. $L=1,k=1,x_{0}=0$

$f(x)={\frac {L}{1+e^{-k(x-x_{0})}}},$

$x$, the number of days after arrival of the variant;

$x_{0}$, the $x$ value equal to the curve's midpoint at 50%;

$L$, the curve's maximum variant share value set to be 100%;

$k$, the logistic growth rate or steepness of the curve.

When we plot the data by a curve on this logarithmic scale (log_e), where the logistic growth rate (k) (the logarithmic slopes) has been denoted in brackets, then the daily percentage growth rate (r) finally can be calculated from the formula: k=ln (1+r) <=> r=(e^k)-1.

In example, this is why a relative daily growth rate of 7.9%, is equal to a graph having the logistic growth rate (logaritmic slope) of: ln(1+0.079)=0.076.

On a side note, I think we should explain this math much better, either direct at this file description page: http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/File:Covid-19_VOC-202012-01_odds_ratio_curves_by_country.png , or somewhere in the wikipedia article.

Perhaps @Hankwang: - or any other editor who have the time and expertice to do it, could help me getting this task solved by taking inspiration from what I have written above (in this 00:53 and the earlier 17:58 reply)? Best regards, Danish Expert (talk) 00:53, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

I am not considering the slowdown after 60% of the fraction of VOC, but considering the slowdown of the log-odds of the VOC at that point. When considering the log-odds, you don't really expect a slowdown / saturation, at least at first sight. The odds should keep growing exponentially. I hope we don't have a confusion here. Jmv2009 (talk) 10:01, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

log-odds for UK region

log-odds for countries

@Jmv2009: Yes, I agree with you on that point. Sorry for replying about West (fraction of VOC), when you asked me about East (log-odds). Which specific country/region did you find mysthical data for after 60%? I think the log-odds curves plotted by @Hankwang:, so far confirm continued exponential growth of log-odds after 60%. I will leave it to him to answer your question, and check if he find any slowdowns. :-) Best regards, Danish Expert (talk) 17:43, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

I was pinged about this discussion. I'm not sure that I understand all the viewpoints in the discussion above. However, I can point out that the odds ratio is given by

$OR={\frac {f}{1-f}}=e^{k(x-x_{0})}$

with the notation as in the logistic formula in the 0:53 comment. So, indeed, the bracketed numbers in my graphs are the k parameters (in units of d^-1). Plotting OR values rather than f on a semilog scale makes this much more clear.

I'm not sure whether this is what you're talking about, but I do see slowdowns in the log(OR) growth, in particular in countries (Portugal and UK/England regions) that use SGTF to detect the VOC and in particular for $OR>1$. I suspect that SGTF has a false-negative rate for VOC that starts to play a role at high ORs, but this is speculation.

BTW, I also have a plot for Swiss cities Zurich and Geneva; is it worth the trouble to put them on Commons? The data source states that it's from PCR on N501Y, which I interpret as a different test than SGTF. Is that correct?

I'm not sure what Danish Expert is asking of me. I think an earlier version of this article had an extensive discussion of the math in E. Volz's publications (22 Dec and ca. 1 Jan). It was a bit hard to read, maybe that's why it was deleted. It seems that you're asking to restore that analysis in a cleaned-up form.

Han-Kwang (t) 20:15, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

@Hankwang: Thanks for your informative reply, and sorry for my delayed response. I got cought up in the meantime by other extensive work. I only started contributing to the article Jan.27, so I was not aware of the Jan.1 math section, that got removed Jan.2. Indeed, part of this is exactly what was on my mind, but it can be cooked down and explained in laymans terms much better. I support a resurection and complete reformulation of this section.

In the "math section", I also recommend we use these following two Swiss sources:

• Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 variants in Switzerland (model chapter)
• Wissenschaftliches Update, 26.Jan.2021
  • Quote 1: The relative proportion of infections caused by B.1.1.7 is increasing in Switzerland. Until week 3/2021, the percentage of B.1.1.7 among all infections has doubled about once a week.
  • Quote 2: If the absolute number of infections with B.1.1.7 continues to increase (even in an epidemiological situation with a decline of the overall number of SARS-CoV-2 positive cases), there is a risk of a trend reversal in the epidemiological situation: As soon as B.1.1.7 becomes the dominant SARS-CoV-2 strain, the number of infections will increase with constant containment measures - and later hospitalizations and deaths - continuously. It is important that not only the number of all confirmed cases decreases, but that the absolute number of infections with B.1.1.7 also decreases. A strong restriction of contacts and mobility, together with a consistent implementation of protective measures, reduces the infection with all SARS-CoV-2 variants. Lower case numbers can also be achieved through implementation of broad testing, extensive testing and effective contact tracing.
• Quote 3: Because of the higher transmission rate of B.1.1.7 compared to the other SARS-CoV-2 variants, a steady increase in the relative frequency is expected (assuming that no other variants with higher transmission rates occur in Switzerland). As long as B.1.1.7 is rare, this increase is almost exponential. The increase flattens out with increasing frequency, since the frequency cannot exceed 100%. The expected increase is therefore S-shaped (logistical growth; see Figure 1, data for Great Britain, and Figure 2A). This S-shaped or logistic growth in the relative frequency is generally expected, regardless of whether the total number of cases increases or decreases. Intensive testing and targeted contact tracing of B.1.1.7 can, however, slow down the relative increase. This also includes isolation and quarantine if an infection with B.1.1.7 is suspected. Such targeted measures have a very good cost-benefit ratio, so this extra effort in contact tracing is worthwhile. In addition, the additional entry of B.1.1.7, 501.V2 and 501.V3 can be reduced by taking measures at the border. Due to the already widespread prevalence of B.1.1.7 in Switzerland, we assume that it will not be possible to prevent B.1.1.7 from becoming dominant in Switzerland.
• Quote 4: Figure 2: Simple numerical example to illustrate the change in the relative frequency and the absolute number of a variant with increased transmission. Two variants are shown in all four panels, an old variant (green) and a new variant (blue) with a 50% higher transmission rate. (2A) Change in the relative frequency of the new variant over time. The change in the relative frequency is the same for all of the scenarios below, regardless of whether the number of cases increases or decreases overall. (2B) Absolute number of infections with both variants per day (old variant in green, new variant in blue) in a situation in which the R value for the old variant is 0.6. This is a situation in which effective measures and good implementation can quickly reduce infections. (2C) Absolute number of infections with both variants per day (old variant in green, new variant in blue) in a situation in which the R value for the old variant is 0.8. D) Absolute number of infections with both variants per day (old variant in green, new variant in blue) in a situation in which the R value for the old variant is 0.9. This example assumes that the entire population is still susceptible to get infected by the virus and does not consider immunization by vaccination or recent infection.

log-odds for UK region

log-odds for countries

My proposal is to merge the factual points from the above 4 quotes (after cooking them down) with the math from the model section of the other Swiss source and the previous math secion of our Wikipedia article, and then also include your great data curves as part of that section. If you have time, please feel free to give at a shot. :-)

About slowdowns in the log(OR) growth (Portugal and UK/England regions) for OR>1, this is mainly due to the fact that the RT-PCR SGTF test overestimates the growth in the start. When the relative B.1.1.7 variant rate is less than 10%, then genome sequencing only finds less than 10% of SGTF's are represented by B.1.1.7. For OR=1 (variant rate at 50%), it will however be above 90% in comparison. I also found existence of poor sample seize data quality for the UK/England SGTF dateseries that you plotted (all related to the UK infection survey), and for your OR curve plot this statistical data uncertainty problem will be more and more problematic for the higher relative B.1.1.7 frequencies above 60% (e.g. a relative B.1.1.7 frequency measured at 60% most likely only have a +-10% accuracy, and at the high end of the Odds-Ratio curve you will need to have prescence of a much higher data accuracy if you want to continue doing an accurate calculation for the growth rate).

Finally, as mentioned by Jmv2009, we indeed see that growth rates in many countries (in particular large geographic countries with small population density, e.g. observed by studying the great regional variation of B.1.1.7 frequencies for Italy, France, Germany and Spain) often slow down after the B.1.1.7 variant share reached 60%. This slowing of the growth, is mainly due to inhomogeneity in the population (with large regional variation), but can also be caused by prevalence of other transmissible competing variants (e.g. we currently have the South African variant at a 16% rate in Luxemburg and 5% rate in France, slowing down the B.1.1.7 relative frequency growth). A closer study of the data reveals, that we in most countries also observe that their first rapid B.1.1.7 relative growth occured for the most densily populated capital regions (first reaching dominance), and then less densily populated regions of the country later followed. For the simple calculated average of national B.1.1.7 data, this observed regional inhomogeneity will it and by itself typically lead to an apparent growth rate slow down after 60% (because inhomogeneity starts to become a slowdown problem around that point).

For Denmark, we have high data quality (with all SARS-COV-2 positive tests with enough virus load being genome sequenced since week 2), low inhomogeneity (due to a small geographic area with high population density) and basically no other highly transmissible competing VOCs (B.1.1.7 represents more than 99.9% of all highly transmissible VOCs in Denmark); and this is why we did not find any growth rate slowdown after 60% for Denmark. Eventually, I however still expect also to see a B.1.1.7 growth rate slowdown to occure for Denmark, but it will most likely only take place after B.1.1.7 reaches 90% for Denmark, because we have less problem with data quality, competing variants and inhomogeneity.

A plot for the Swiss cities Zurich and Geneva, is not worth the trouble to create for Commons. RT-PCR (N501Y) data is indeed different from RT-PCR SGTF. N501Y is an overall proxy test including the overall sum of all circulating Brazilian P1 cases, South African variant cases and B.1.1.7 variant cases. Many of the recently introduced RT-PCR proxy tests, can however often deliver more accurate results compared to genome sequencing, because many countries have limited sample seizes for genome sequencing (not big enough to ensure statistical representativity) while in comparison they have access to analyze a bigger RT-PCR proxy test sample seize with a better statistical representativity.

From the updated data table of the article, I can recommend that you plot OR growth curves for the following green countries:

• UK (seq., week 43-4): Low/Moderate quality due to small sample seize.
• England (SGTF*Seq.%, week 43-8): High quality.
• Ireland (SGTF, week 51-5): Low quality due to small sample seize.
• Denmark (seq., week 50-now): High quality.
• Netherlands (seq., week 52-now): Low quality due to small sample seize.
• Switzerland (seq., week 52-now): Moderate quality (great randominazation, but limited sample seize).
• Germany (PCR proxy and Seq., week 52-now): Moderate quality.
• United States (SGTF*Seq.%, week 52-now): Moderate quality.

I strongly recommend, not to plot any SGTF data from the UK infection survey (England/Scotland/Wales/NI/English regions), as they have a too low data quality attached, and moreover its scientifically incorrect to do a plot of modelled data - we should only plot unprocessed rawdata. The new high quality data curve for England (SGTF*Seq.% based on PHE technical briefing source), should therefor be plotted instead. I also removed Portugal from the plot, as their latest genome sequence survey found B.1.1.7 dominance in week 6 while their SGTF survey (besides of finding SGTFL slowdown after week 3) only found B.1.1.7 dominance in week 8; a disagreement indicating that their SGTF survey is of too low data quality and not accurate enough. If you prefer to add some of the low data quality countries not in green above for geographical comparison, then I wont object, but will then suggest you add a * to indicate that these data may be of a lower quality compared to the green countries.

Thanks for your great work. Best regards, Danish Expert (talk) 18:24, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Table of fiected cases

Wouldn't it be easier to the eye to present the first detected cases for each country in a table, as it is done in COVID-19 pandemic by country and territory? ProbablyNovarian (talk) 10:08, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Origin

Interesting article in Wired today which posits that "B.1.1.7" as they refer to it likely originated in a single chronically infected individual somewhere in Kent. I don't think that this should be included unless this hypothesis is mentioned by other reliable sources as Wired is not a WP:MEDRS, but interesting nonetheless. Hemiauchenia (talk) 20:23, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

This is discussed in the last sentence of "Detection". —Happy New Year from Biscuit-in-Chief :-) ^{(/tɔːk/ – /ˈkɒntɹɪbs/)} 22:02, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 12 February 2021

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Variant of Concern 202012/01 → UK coronavirus variant – WP:COMMONNAME is absolutely a thing, and using technical names such as this is unhelpful. The variant is largely referred to in news and other commonly available media (which is what non-expert readers will be basing searches on) as the "UK variant" or something close to that, so we shouldn't be going in this direction solely for the purposes of technical accuracy.RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 01:30, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose The current name is better for me. While "UK variant", "British variant" or "UK coronavirus variant" are common names used by most media, it should not name variant after the country that originated in order to avoid stigma, same as true for 501.V2 variant, which commonly known as "South African variant" or Lineage P.1 which commonly known as "Brazilian variant". 36.68.187.181 (talk) 09:58, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

This has nothing to do with "stigma" or even technical accuracy, but rather the article title criteria; on which this should be based (if the media use "UK variant" or "South African variant" or ... without difficulty, I don't see why we'd suddenly need to be afraid of nonexistent ghosts). Ignoring conciseness (since there's no real difference in this case), "UK coronavirus variant" is the clear winner on all remaining ones (except maybe consistency, because this wrong consistency appears to have been followed across other covid variant articles) RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 13:29, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Policies are supposed to be implemented with our best judgement and while keeping the full context in mind. After a year of US politicians using "Wuhan virus" as a xenophobic insult, and now that most educated people have learned that there's nothing "Spanish" about the "Spanish flu", I don't really have much appetite for calling any variant by a geographical name right now. If these discovery-based names continue to be used (i.e., for multiple years), then I'd certainly be willing to consider a name change at that time. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:46, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose: See previous discussions in this talk page, many about the same subject, and what consensus(?) which conclusions were reached. You may also be interested on why these names should be avoided; here's a short article about it [4]. ACLNM (talk) 16:53, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Another interesting article regarding the naming of variants, and the cultural stigma of using geographic names, this time by Nature: [5] ACLNM (talk) 17:00, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

The only discussions I can find are a previous RM about the abbreviation or not of the technical name; and one about mentioning the WP:COMMONNAME in the lead. As for hidden ghosts about stereotypes or stigma, such hypotheticals do not magically make go away our policies about article titles, and "UK variant" is far from being offensive enough to justify avoiding it like the plague (anyway, if we wanted to mock the British, there's a far more embarrassing thing than a COVID variant). A quick google search reveals that as far as those are concerned, "Variant of Concern 202012/01" (about 220k hits where I am) is not even a footnote compared to "UK covid variant" (631 million). If there's an objection to geographic names, then it is still ill-judged to replace it with something so obscure and technical that it's usage is less prevalent by about 3 orders of magnitude... Wikipedia doesn't set trends, it follows, them and for the time being, for better or for worse, the name that appears to have caught on, per multiple worldwide news sources, is "UK coronavirus variant" (or close variants of that string). RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 20:30, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Support: Not many people will know about these alternative names. Also, I agree with User:RandomCanadian. AnotherEditor144 ^{talk contribs} 17:46, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

References

• Weak oppose what naming conventions? As noted 501.V2 variant isn't at South African coronavirus variant also I'd note that its just called "the new variant" (or more recently the "Kent variant") by the BBC though that's a UK based source. However I'm not convinced that the proposed title is formal enough to be the title rather than just a nickname. As noted above I have no problem with this name being listed in the article though, I'm just not sure its appropriate for the title. Crouch, Swale (talk) 20:40, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

"What naming convention" i.e. for "coronavirus" instead of "COVID", i.e. article about the virus = Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2; since this is about a genetic variant of the virus -> "coronavirus" not "COVID". I'll remove that since it's obviously confusing. As for South Africa, seems to be the same "problem" about common usage as here, per Talk:South African COVID variant... RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 20:47, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose. I note that there is already a redirect to the article from UK variant, and the article currently begins: 'Variant of Concern 202012/01, abbreviated VOC-202012/01 (also known as 20I/501Y.V1, lineage B.1.1.7, or commonly as the UK variant or British variant; see § Names),...' -the status quo would seem to cover all that's needed. Yadsalohcin (talk) 15:45, 13 February 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose. It seems the WHO have called for the naming of the new variants to avoid making reference to country's names, as it propagates stigma. See: [6] SpookiePuppy (talk) 01:16, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
• 'Oppose. Naming it "UK coronavirus variant" is like naming the Anchorsholme article "suburb in the UK" since, scientifically, it could be any variant of any virus in the subfamily Orthocoronavirinae. —Happy New Year from Biscuit-in-Chief :-) ^{(/tɔːk/ – /ˈkɒntɹɪbs/)} 01:19, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

  That is probably irrelevant. This variant originated in the UK. Similar reasoning for any other variant of SARS-CoV-2. AnotherEditor144 ^{talk contribs} 10:37, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

That's a strawman if I've ever seen a clearer one: there's not 10000 things this could refer to; the name is precise, unique and immediately recognisable; the variant originated (or the first detected case was) in south-eastern England (Kent); and that is the WP:COMMONNAME as evidenced by use in the media. There's nothing in our policies about article titles regarding "scientific accuracy" (for example, to take an example from WP:TITLE, we have, as an article title, Polio (not: poliomyelitis, which is only a redirect)) or "avoiding stigma" (with the common sense provision for offensive or patently wrong options considered, which this is not a case of)... RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 03:48, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

• Support nobody knows what "Variant of Concern 202012/01" means LICA98 (talk) 16:47, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
• Support Dr Salvus (talk) 22:15, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
• Strong oppose. There's absolutely no point of moving this page to UK coronavirus variant. Many people here are saying nobody knows what Variant of Concern 202012/01 means, but all the other pages about variants of COVID-19 are named by their official variant name, such as the South African variant. Their page is officially named 501.V2 variant, and NOT "South African variant". The Brazilian variant page is also named by their official variant name Lineage P.1. UK coronavirus variant is already a redirect page, so this page should not be renamed to that. I strongly oppose to this move. Edl-irishboy (talk) 19:25, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

  That's WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS applied to article titles. AFAICS, that could just mean these other articles should be renamed too, especially since the only relevant criteria these names seem to match is consistency, because all the others are not met. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 22:08, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

• Strong oppose While the virus variant is known collequially as "British variant", "UK variant", etc, we tend to refer all variants by Ita official name. For example, we named South African variant as "501.V2 variant", not "South African variant", Brazilian one as "Lineage P.1", not just their collequial name. 116.206.35.26 (talk) 22:44, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Frequency of names

While the term "Variant of Concern 202012/01" seemed to be common earlier on, now "B.1.1.7" seems to be a more common term from the variant. I don't think a move proposal is quite on the cards yet while the above one is still going on, but I would like to test the waters about changing the name to "B.1.1.7 lineage" or similar. Hemiauchenia (talk) 02:52, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

You need to see Current Events page, while it is known as Variant of Concern 202012/01, it is referred more commonly as B.1.1.7 variant. You need to discuss it at RM section. 36.65.38.154 (talk) 02:59, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 19 February 2021

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Variant of Concern 202012/01 → Lineage B.1.1.7 – It's clear that the term "Variant of Concern 202012/01" has fallen out of use and that "B.1.1.7" and related terms are now the common name for the lineage used by most sources, including the British Government [7] [8], as such I propose a move to a "B.1.1.7" related name.Hemiauchenia (talk) 00:18, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

• Option 1: B.1.1.7
• Option 2: Lineage B.1.1.7
• Option 3: B.1.1.7 variant
• Option 4: Variant B.1.1.7
• Option 5: Variant of Concern B.1.1.7

Responses

• Option 2 or 3 In line with our other articles on variants. Hemiauchenia (talk) 03:12, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
• Option 2. Option 1 doesn't provide a lot of context. I'm quite sure "variant" isn't the same as "lineage" (@AineToole: could you confirm?), so options 3, 4, and 5 are, from what I've understood, invalid, and option 5 is just a weird mix of nomenclatures that isn't used by any RS. —Biscuit-in-Chief :-) ^{(/tɔːk/ – /ˈkɒntɹɪbs/)} 15:39, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
• Option 2 (but with a capital "L"). Lineage B.1.1.7 is in keeping with PANGO Lineages [9]. SpookiePuppy (talk) 19:09, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
• Comment to get more traction with this it may be worth using {{Requested move}}. ArcMachaon (talk) 00:00, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
• Option 2 I weakly support a move to Lineage B.1.1.7 for the reasons outlined above. ArcMachaon (talk) 00:00, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
• Option 2 I support a move to Lineage B.1.1.7 for the reasons outlined above. Yadsalohcin (talk) 00:22, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
• Option 2 – Keep standardizing the variant pages, others strains of SARS-CoV-2 start as lineage, so I prefer equality. Carlosguitar ^{(Yes Executor?)} 00:47, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
• Support —Legoless (talk) 10:21, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

You needs to choose option above. 110.137.166.20 (talk) 10:27, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

• Option 2 I support a move to Lineage B.1.1.7 for the reasons outlined above. Edl-irishboy (talk) 14:40, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

• Option 2, it's clear that this is now the most common, and most standard name. JackFromReedsburg (talk | contribs) 21:16, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Variant of Concern 202102/02 (VOC-202102/02)

@Biscuit-in-Chief: Hi, I noticed you reverted my edit:

which they dubbed Variant of Concern 202102/02 (VOC-202102/02)

with this edit summary:

VOC-202012/02 is the same as lineage B.1.351, and not B.1.1.7, so and PHE specifically state that they found "B.1.1.7 VOC-202012/01 genomes" with E484K

I know that these numbers are a little tricky to follow but VOC-202102/02 is NOT the same as VOC-202012/02. It might help to think of them broken down. The former is Variant of Concern February 2021 number 2 (B.1.1.7 with E484K) and the latter is Variant of Concern December 2020 number 2 (B.1.351). You'll also have seen that I cited the Public Health England report, which might have been worth a look before you reverted which clearly stated that VOC-202102/02 is "B.1.1.7 with E484K". I understand that these might be a little awkward to get used to, especially as a layperson, but please do double check each time! I will shortly reinsert the name if without objection. Hope this helps. ArcMachaon (talk) 23:32, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

OOPS! My bad. I do know the nomenclature, but at this point I've been so used to seeing "VOC-202012/01" since December that all the numbers look the same to me—really horrid nomenclature if you ask me. But thanks for resolving so well. —Biscuit-in-Chief :-) ^{(/tɔːk/ – /ˈkɒntɹɪbs/)} 00:09, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

Also, thank you both, because that helped me, too. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:20, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

Glad it was of some use! ArcMachaon (talk) 19:29, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

They seemed to have heeded your advice and changed their nomenclature system slightly to make it more useable. Thank goodness! ArcMachaon (talk) 19:27, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

Search for country specific variant shares

The variant share is now reported by many states. I have searched and found weekly data for most European countries, and those without weekly data still reported a date specific B117 variant share or some sort of B117 status.

But unfortunately I am now out of time to continue searching for variant shares reported by the remaining European countries, and other countries with a high case number. So I hereby invite all of you to help me do this task. :-) Danish Expert (talk) 16:47, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

List of other EU+EEA countries (yet to be searched):

• Estonia
• Lithuania
• Latvia (83 cases)
• Hungary
• Czech Republic
• Greece
• Slovenia (87 cases)
• Croatia (121 cases)
• Romania (76 cases)
• Cyprus

List of other countries with a high case number (yet to be searched):

• Turkey (486 cases)
• Canada (317 cases)
• Australia (140 cases)
• Nigeria (113 cases)
• South Korea (90 cases)
• Japan (86 cases)
• India (81 cases)
• Ghana (67 cases)
• Singapore (66 cases)
• New Zealand (63 cases)
• North Macedonia (53 cases)
• Brazil (53 cases)

Scrollable table

I just reverted this request to make the Development of the B.1.1.7 lineage data table auto-collapsed. Because the proposed auto-collapsed solution in order to make it fit small screens, will hide away too much of the data table's valuable content.

However, I agree the seize of the table indeed now is too wide to fit the small screens, and also agree that we need to implement a solution for this.

The most simple solution (coding-wise) would be to create a data table for each quarter, where we make the table of the previous 4th quarter 2020 auto-collapsed and only the latest Q1-2021 quarter fully visible. This "quarter solution", would limit the table width by 50%.

The preferable solution (in my opinion), would however be that some of us in the nearest future, implement some more complex table-coding, that will enable the data table to autofit the width of small screens along with the introduction of a scrollable feature. The scrollable coding must respect the Wikipedia policy for table scrolling (meaning that we probably need to move all data from the article-space over into a special created data template), and then I will propose that we implement a scrollable solution where:

1. The first row with week numbers is made sticky for scrolling downwards (see this example).
2. The first "country column" is also made sticky for scrolling the table sideways (see this example).

Implementing this coding is a bit difficult, and will take some time. Hence, I can only promise to do it on March 28. If others will jump in and help me to do it straight away, then you are absolutely welcome. Danish Expert (talk) 11:56, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

New Nature paper accepted; COI declaration.

This paper on B.1.1.7 variant transmissibility is now accepted by Nature. It hasn't undergone revisions yet, but this should probably be used to replace/enhance earlier, pre-print/report versions of the same work since this is more reliable. However I wanted to post here to declare COI because my spouse is an author of the paper. If no one has objections I can do some of this work; I don't personally think it's particularly controversial/problematic since the same work is already talked about here, but just in pre-print version! Mvolz (talk) 09:34, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

Volz, Erik; Mishra, Swapnil; Chand, Meera; Barrett, Jeffrey C.; Johnson, Robert; Geidelberg, Lily; Hinsley, Wes R.; Laydon, Daniel J.; Dabrera, Gavin; O’Toole, Áine; Amato, Roberto (2021-03-25). "Assessing transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2 lineage B.1.1.7 in England". Nature: 1–17. doi:10.1038/s41586-021-03470-x. ISSN 1476-4687.

Rename to "Alpha COVID-19 variant" or similar

The WHO's new designation of a consistent nomenclature - Tracking SARS-CoV-2 variants (who.int)

It's a more memorable name than B.1.1.7 and is likely to become an emerging term within the media (per WP:NAMECHANGES)

JMonkey2006 (talk) 06:32, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

Oh I just did it with all of them, I think its not controversial. Feel free to move back and discuss if anyone objects. --Almaty (talk) 23:41, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

I think this needs a little time to settle. Although the WHO have specified the new easy-to-pronounce and non-stigmatising labels for VOIs and VOCs, I noticed that GISAID [10] are already using the format "VOC Alpha". I don't think this will be a clear-cut uncontroversial move as there are a number of ways that the new Greek letter names could be incorporated. SpookiePuppy (talk) 02:01, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

I've reverted the moves pending further discussion. Also, COVID-19 has no variants—SARS-CoV-2 does. COVID-19 is the disease, not the virus. Fvasconcellos (t·c) 04:25, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

I think B.1.1.7 is probably more common. It's what I see in news sources too. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 09:56, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

It's controversial, but I agree. It may take a while for the media to pick it up though. --Fernando Trebien (talk) 13:22, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

As per @Fvasconcellos: these are variants of the virus, not the disease, and so the logical move once these names become more accepted would be SARS-CoV-2 Alpha variant or SARS-CoV-2 variant Alpha. I tend to agree that it seems a little early to judge how this will be picked up and used by news/academic publications so worth waiting a little while yet. |→ Spaully ^~talk~  14:42, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

Right, SARS-CoV-2 Alpha variant is more correct. The most common names in the news are still the stigmatized ones with nationalities. Second most common is the PANGO lineage, third most common is already the WHO scheme. Some have adopted the WHO name as the main one, others are still referring to the old names first and then follow them by the WHO name. It seems the only notable thing thing out there that follows the "[greek letter name] variant" syntax is the SARS-CoV-2 variants, suggesting that "Alpha variant" would be an acceptable name, even if it seems nonspecific. --Fernando Trebien (talk) 00:19, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

• Support SARS-CoV-2 Alpha variant: accurate (does not confuse virus with disease), non-stigmatising, WHO-official, unambiguous, easy-to-remember and rapidly becoming common. Boud (talk) 01:10, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
• Support SARS-CoV-2 Alpha variant, is the official designation by WHO and they are asking the media to use that name RedBlocks (talk)
• Support the move to SARS-CoV-2 Alpha variant, although I can see this page needing to be moved again in the future. I am not entirely convinced that the "SARS-CoV-2" prefix is necessary. I would like to a see a source specifying this precise combination, as opposed to the main source WHO tracking page which only presents the variants in a fragmented way, where the Greek letter names are disassociated from the virus name SARS-CoV-2. I also think the way this section was titled is one of the reasons we are using the SARS-CoV-2 as a prefix, in order to clarify that we are not confusing the variants with the disease COVID-19. But would we be doing this (including SARS-CoV-2) but for the mistake in the this section title? SpookiePuppy (talk) 20:50, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

• Question to Ftrebien The discussion is still ongoing, why did you move all of the pages without waiting for the final decision? —hueman1 (talk • contributions) 14:41, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

WP:BOLD but do you want me to undo it? We haven't had opinions against that change for a while and the discussion has started quite a while ago. --Fernando Trebien (talk) 14:44, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

@Ftrebien: You could've waited for (or asked) someone that wasn't involved here to close it first before doing anything else. —hueman1 (talk • contributions) 14:52, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

WP:WHENCLOSE When the discussion is stable I understand we're already there. But, as I said, if you disagree, I can undo it. --Fernando Trebien (talk) 14:57, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

I don't necessarily agree nor disagree with the current consensus. As long as it follows naming conventions and stuff, I'm good with it. —hueman1 (talk • contributions) 15:04, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

Well. I think it's safe to say from the discussion that most agree with the idea of ​​switching to the WHO label ("alpha variant") and the need to specify what this variant is (SARS-CoV-2, COVID - considered incorrect). Initially, there were some doubts about the syntax: [virus] alpha variant, [virus] variant alpha. But it looks like we've come to a consensus on that too. I have noticed a growing adoption of the WHO label by various news sources day by day. So if someone searches for "Alpha variant" on Google, it will now point to a Wikipedia article with the same name, which I think is more intuitive. Still, people can search for several other names. The lineage, which was the former name of the article, was commonly known among researchers and medical professionals, but not so much by most ordinary people. It is very likely that researchers and medical professionals are aware of the WHO label. So I think the change benefits everyone. Should the discussion be closed? Maybe it should be kept open for a little while. Maybe removing "SARS-CoV-2" from the name is interesting, maybe not, but currently it doesn't seem like it should be done. If a consensus emerges that it should be dropped, then we rename it again without a problem. --Fernando Trebien (talk) 15:21, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

 Done --Fernando Trebien (talk) 11:26, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

Confirmed_cases_by_countries

The graph y-axis only goes to 60k when the data for countries with 100,000 or more is selected. I couldn't figure out how to fix the graph so leaving a comment here in case someone else can.

finland figures updated

https://thl.fi/en/web/infectious-diseases-and-vaccinations/what-s-new/coronavirus-covid-19-latest-updates/situation-update-on-coronavirus

A total of 12,281 cases caused by the coronavirus variants have been identified in Finland:

Alfa-variant: 7,953 Beta-variant: 1,445 Gamma-variant: 7 Delta-variant: 2,876 The numbers of variant strains are based on the data reported to the National Infectious Diseases Register. The information was updated on Wednesday, 11th August.

Alfa is the Finnish way of spelling alpha

 Done, the latest figure for Finland has been updated in the statistics table of the Alpha variant. Thankyou for the suggestion. SpookiePuppy (talk) 20:14, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

Name

Is this the british mutation? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.185.46.186 (talk) 11:09, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

SARS-CoV-2_Alpha_variant#Names. —Biscuit-in-Chief :-) ^{(/tɔːk/ – /ˈkɒntɹɪbs/)} 23:57, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

Formatting of see also/ external links

Apologies, I’m in mobile and I made see also a parent of external links; they need to be separated Kitty4777 (talk) 14:09, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

UK currently

It would be interesting to know how many cases there currently are still in the UK? As of a few months ago according to The Guardian (which is no longer shown) 100% of cases were delta however presumably out of the hundreds of thousands of cases per week maybe 30 or 40 or so may be? I've tried to find out myself but such numbers would be interesting to include in the article especially since its tagged as needing updating anyway. The tests apparently have a thing that alpha and omicron have but not delta. Crouch, Swale (talk) 17:54, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

will look--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 21:12, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

"Wild-type"

I think we should consider replacing "wild-type" with "D614G". As you can see from this article the term "wild-type" is used for the original strain in Wuhan. Otherwise the term could be used with comparing Delta with Alpha and Omicron to Detla. Crouch, Swale (talk) 11:39, 22 February 2022 (UTC)