Covid-19 variants including Delta are real

A post on Facebook says: “It’s called the “Delta variant” because you have to be completely asleep to believe it” which is accompanied by a diagram of human brainwaves, including the delta brainwave which it labels as “deep sleep”.

It seems to be referring to the Delta variant of Covid-19.

As we have written before, Covid-19 virus variants are real. All viruses mutate over time and SARS-CoV-2, which causes Covid-19, is no exception.

Key variants of SARS-CoV-2 are named after letters of the Greek alphabet, which the World Health Organisation introduced to avoid variants being named after the places they were detected and “to simplify public communications”. 

Different types of brain waves, the oscillating electrical voltages in the brain which appear as waves when measured by an EEG, are also named after letters of the Greek alphabet. Delta waves usually occur when adults are asleep.

The fact that both are named after the Greek letter delta is just a coincidence.

Most virus mutations will make little difference to how a virus behaves but some may cause alterations in features such as transmissibility, severity or ability to evade vaccines. 

It is these variants, such as the Delta variant, that may become known as ‘variants of concern’ or ‘variants of interest’. 

If SARS-CoV-2 is present in a sample, the specific variant can be identified through analysis such as ‘genomic sequencing’ and ‘genotyping’. You can read more about those processes here.

The genetic information of the Delta variant has been sequenced multiple times by various scientists across the world.

We have written many times before about how Covid-19 is real. There’s plenty of evidence, including the multiple times SARS-CoV-2 has been sequenced and isolated, and the number of deaths it has caused.

Image courtesy of Milad Fakurian