The coronavirus has mutated and appears to be more contagious now

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And I read another story that says the virus had mutated and is weakening.

So who are you supposed to believe?

We will be getting conflicting information for many months.
 
7_Sorrows said:
And I read another story that says the virus had mutated and is weakening.

So who are you supposed to believe?
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These are not mutually exclusive possibilities. You can end up with variations for which people have stronger or weaker responses. It is not as if instances of the viruses stay in sync and mutate in the same way.

Some of the concerns about the mutation include re-infection of people that have had a variation before and yet another obstacle to achieving herd immunity (if that is even possible for this virus).

Emphasis on the word possibility as this is something still being researched.
A team at the Los Alamos National Laboratory theorises that the new strain appeared in Europe in February before migrating to the US East Coast, according to the 33-page report. The strain “rapidly” has become the dominant form of the virus since mid-March, the report says.

The report warns that the mutant strain spreads much faster than its previous iteration and within weeks had infected far more people than strains that were first reported in Wuhan, China. It then was the only discoverable strain in some parts of the world, the report says.

Scientists discovered that the mutation affects the exterior spikes of the virus, which enable it to travel respiratory cells.

The report is preliminary and has not yet been been peer-reviewed, meaning that it is not yet established information, but authors argued for an “urgent need for an early warning” as nations begin to develop vaccines and other drugs to combat the virus.
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Well, the university where the study was done is 10 minutes from where I live.

@RidgeSprinter
 
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" All viruses mutate, and the coronavirus is no exception. But there is no compelling evidence yet that it is evolving in a way that has made it more contagious or more deadly.

A preprint study — posted online, but not published in a scientific journal and not yet peer-reviewed — has set the internet afire by suggesting otherwise.

On April 30, a report by a team led by Bette Korber, a biologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, claimed to have found a mutation in the coronavirus that arose in Europe in February and then rapidly spread, becoming dominant as the virus was introduced into new countries.

The mutation, they wrote, “is of urgent concern,” because it made the coronavirus more transmissible. Following media coverage, the prospect of a turbocharged strain hopscotching around the world has
But experts in viral evolution are far from convinced. For one thing, there is no new strain: Unlike the flu, the coronavirus so far has not split into clearly distinct forms.

It does mutate, but that’s what viruses do. Just because a mutation becomes more common isn’t proof that it is altering how the virus functions."

 
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