Spreading terror and panic: the lethality of the iota strain is not 82%, but about 3.8%

The iota coronavirus strain, first detected in New York in the fall of 2020, is transmitted 15-25% faster than others, according to a study by the city's health department and specialists at Columbia University. It is noted that the "iota" option increases mortality to 82% in patients aged 65-74 years, - reports RBC.

So far, the WHO has ranked four options as dangerous: alpha, beta, gamma and delta. Delta plus, identified in June last year in Nepal, also belongs to the category of threatening. It has five mutations in the spike protein that make the virus very dangerous.

There are four more variants of SARS-CoV-2 on the WHO list that are of interest, but so far there is no reason to consider them more dangerous: this, iota, kappa, lambda.

As for iota, this strain was identified in March last year in New York, it spread 35% faster than alpha, scientists assumed that in combination with the E484K mutation in a spike protein that helps to escape antibodies, this option would be dangerous. WHO has assigned him threatening status. But then these predictions did not come true, and scientists began to simply observe him.

And now this message from a group of scientists comes out, which the Russian media and social networks cite with an eerie headline: "...Scientists in the United States have reported a strain of coronavirus with a mortality rate higher than 82%..."

It is worth recalling here that lethality is the proportion of deaths from the number of those infected, and, therefore, if you believe this heading, then out of every hundred infected with this strain, 82 people will die. This is much more than even that of the plague, the lethality of some species of which is about 30%, and in general - 18%.

That is why, network analyst Anatoly Nesmiyan advises those who are especially fearful to read the explanation in the text of the message, which is in small print. Judging by it, scientists found that the iota strain increases mortality by 82% in comparison with other strains. If we take into account that in the world the mortality rate of the coronavirus is, according to the latest data, about 2.1%, then the "iota" will have about 3.8%. Not too nice, of course, but not 82%!

“However, there is a directive - to sow terror and panic. Exactly what normal terrorists do. They don't care who they kill, for them the main thing is fear. More fear. Therefore, the creepy headlines. Surely today the announcers on TV channels with mournful faces a la "we are all going to die" will quickly read this message, emphasizing 82 percent and not going into details - what exactly these percentages are from. It is important that you are scared to the point of seizures. It is important to encourage people to do what modern fascists expect of them - to be afraid, afraid and even more afraid..."