I have read a lot about it because I have stressed a lot about it, I’m also naturally very skeptical so I dig down a lot.

This particular variant is the Andes strain of the virus which have been show to transmit human.

It’s a virus that had existed for long time. And has already caused local epidemics. The most famous the Chilean Argentinian epidemic of 2019 where something like a dozen people died out of thirty infected.

Mortality is high (around 30% of infected, once you develop lung symptoms around 50%) but R0 number is low. Usually the studied R0 number has been below 1. This mean that each person rarely spread it to more than one other person. For comparison covid R0 was something between 2 and 4. This is the main reason to think it won’t spread a lot.

This virus has been around a lot, but it’s true that it has maybe never been in a situation like now with worries about quick international spread via airlines.

Currently most worries are about how easy is to actually spread human to human. There was a case of a flight attendant who was tested after a short contact with an infected but apparently has tested negative. So for now we must watch out if the people who were in flights with some of the infected have also been infected. If there are none or very few infected of those airplane passengers we could, most likely, breath safe, as the danger would be low. If we start to see infections after short contact then we should worry. As of this morning I start to believe that we are on the former scenario, as there has currently not been any positive test after a short contact.