Here's some food for tin foil hat thought...
Everybody seems to be forgetting that viruses change and mutate, essentially becoming "new variants" all the time. By April there were at least 30 variants of COVID-19 already identified. Why is this new variant making all the news? I think it's because people are starting to disregard public health rules so we need something to get people back in line. A "more contagious new variant" might do that.
If you want to put any faith in actual science, this virus (whatever variant you like) is already around 5x easier to catch now than it was in the summer because of the drop in relative humidity (RH). There are other studies like this one out there, humidity is a real factor in transmission, but this isn't being talked about.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/release...0818094028.htm
Why is information like this being ignored? If you take relative humidity into account for a climate like Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba... "continental" climate, you can see why we had an easy summer and are now struggling with "case counts". The air itself has made the virus easier to catch, and it goes hand in hand with how other cold and flu viruses work when things get cool and dry.
Viruses have worked to become more efficient at what they do since the dawn of life on the planet, a "new variant" is not news. This virus came from an animal originally, it makes total evolutionary sense that it would become more efficient at infecting humans after successfully making the initial jump. The knee jerk response to "curb the spread of the new variant" is ridiculous.
