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Good morning. A simple chart shows why the new coronavirus variants are so worrisome.
This simple chart shows why the new variants of the coronavirus — first detected in Britain and South Africa — are so worrisome:
The chart compares the spread of the virus in each of those two countries with the spread in a group of nearby countries. As you can see, cases have surged in Britain and South Africa since the variants first surfaced — while holding fairly steady in the rest of western Europe and southern Africa.
The new variants may not be the only reason. Britain and South Africa differ from their neighbors in other ways, as well. But there is no obvious explanation for the contrast besides the virus’s mutations.
This suggests the rest of the world may now be at risk of a new Covid-19 surge.
The variants already seem to have spread around much of the world. More than 30 other countries, including the U.S., have diagnosed cases with the variant first detected in Britain, which is known as B.1.1.7. Scientists say that it could soon become the dominant form of the virus.
The B.1.1.7 variant appears to be between 10 percent and 60 percent more transmissible than the original version. One possible reason: It may increase the amount of the virus that infected people carry in their noses and throats, which in turn would raise the likelihood that they infect others through breathing, talking, sneezing, coughing and so on.
As I’ve explained before, the biggest factor that will determine how many more people die from the virus isn’t likely to be the precise effectiveness of the vaccines or even the speed of their rollout. The biggest factor is instead likely to be how much we reduce the spread of the virus over the next few months, through a combination of mask wearing, social distancing and expanded testing. Those efforts can cut caseloads — and, by extension, deaths — more rapidly than a mass vaccination campaign can.
But the U.S. was struggling to hold down new infections even before the variants appeared, and they will probably make the job more difficult. “I dismissed the news initially because viruses mutate all the time and there have been too many baseless ‘mutant-ninja virus’ doomsaying headlines this year,” Zeynep Tufekci wrote in The Atlantic last week. “However, as data on the new variant roll in, there is cause for real concern.”
My colleague Apoorva Mandavilli, in a piece explaining what scientists do and don’t know about the variants, writes that they may end up “exacerbating an unrelenting rise in deaths and overwhelming the already strained health care system.”
In recent days, the number of Americans hospitalized with Covid-19 symptoms has risen to more than 123,000, up from about 95,000 a month ago and 50,000 two months ago. The virus is still winning.
THE LATEST NEWS
The Election
From Opinion: “I’m a miracle. I will make it. I have to make it.” Toby Levy, a Holocaust survivor, reflects on living through the pandemic.
Lives Lived: Brian Urquhart joined the United Nations at its creation in 1945. He spent the next four decades directing peacekeeping operations, leading U.N. forces into war zones including Congo, Kashmir and Cyprus. Urquhart died at 101.
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ARTS AND IDEAS
Results from the Great 2020 News Quiz
Several hundred thousand readers took our year-end news quiz, and we wanted to report back with some results. As we wrote at the end of the quiz, it wasn’t meant to be easy. Anyone who finished it — regardless of score — should feel good. (If you haven’t taken it yet, we encourage you to do so.)
The median score was 15, or exactly half of the quiz’s 30 questions. So if you got more than half right, you did better than most Times readers. Only 0.4 percent — or about one person in 250 — got every question right.
The single hardest question turned out to be the one that asked you to name the countries that bordered Armenia or Azerbaijan. Only 8.5 percent of respondents got it right.
The other more difficult questions were the ones about the author who had the most Times best sellers this year (9.4 percent correct); the Covid-19 death toll in Sweden (10.8 percent); the Black-white wage gap (11.2 percent); and the identity of a speaker during Trump’s impeachment trial (15.3 percent).
The easiest question was the one that asked you to identify a man whose 250th birthday was celebrated in 2020 (96 percent correct). After that came questions about the identity of a woman in Louisville (89.1 percent); the coronavirus advice that experts have since retracted (84.4 percent); the identity of a boy band (82.7 percent correct); and a protest in China (74.8 percent).
Thanks to everyone who took the time to play. We’ll be publishing more quizzes in 2021.
PLAY, WATCH, EAT
What to Cook
Leeks, parsnips and a few spices make this simple soup.
Stream
It started as a TikTok meme and became “Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical.” And it could have lessons for Broadway, our reviewer writes. The show is streaming until 7 p.m. Eastern tonight.
The Year Ahead
Nicolas Cage hosts the history of swearing. Lorde writes a book and Julie Mehretu takes over the Whitney. Here are some things Times critics are looking forward to in the first half of 2021.
