[gns24]

1. No, I don't have any relevant qualifications. But it's not the epidemiologists who I think are underestimating the seriousness - what's surprising me is that everyone else is largely ignoring this. I think people think 70% is not a big amount, rather than the difference between slight decrease and rapid exponential growth. Clearly a lot of foreign governments do think it's serious given the travel plans they have put in place.

2. I spend an unhealthy amount of time looking at data. Before this incident there were always random peaks which got explained by outbreaks at abattoirs or freshers' week, and national movements, but this change stood out. Week after week it kept behaving differently. My partner and I had already speculated about the change possibly being down to a mutation, since although that seemed incredibly unlikely nothing else explained what we were seeing, but dismissed that idea since obviously the authorities would have noticed. It turned out they had noticed, they just hadn't announced it.

3. A quick calculation: recent infection surveys suggest about 1% of people in the UK have the virus. The new strain makes up about 10%, so 1 in 1000 people have the new strain. In November 2020 from Heathrow alone, 240k people travelled to the EU, 68k to other European countries, 63k to Africa and 82k to North America.

If I remember correctly cases have already been found in Denmark and Australia. Denmark does more sequencing than most countries (I don't have a good source for that, but there by-country filters here imply it: https://nextstrain.org/groups/neherlab/ncov/united-kingdom?c... )

Based on this I'd argue that it's more likely than not to already be in tens of other countries. I'd certainly be interested to hear arguments to the contrary. But I don't believe it's sensationalist to suggest this - at this point I'd consider it a miracle if it hasn't spread too far. I hope I'm wrong.