Originally Posted by fransknorge

This is a year that scientist warn to be wary of the transmission in the south of the African continent. There is a high proportion of the population infected by HIV, meaning a virus can infect such a person for a long time (several months), with a large amount of replication. Probabilties and evolution being what they are, this means a much higher chance of several viable mutations happening within one body. This is how several previous variants are believed to appear and there are already strong suspicion this is the same for this one too.
Virologist proposed that vaccination were equally shared with those countries and licenses lifted in order to maximize vaccination in this part of the world. This would have led to decrease in tranmssion, which would have led to decrease in random mutations, which led to a decrease of some of them being viable (because for the one saying "virus mutates": when was the last time you heard about a mutation of the plague, which is an endemic virus ?).They were not listen and rich countries acted against that, lobbied by drug companies. This was predicted, there are text from February 2021 describing that exact situation we are in now. Now we need to wait for the results of the research by the ZA team (several weeks) and refine our knowledge. Hopefully it turns out to be "nothing". But if it is something, the West reap what they sow.