Variant in headlines
A new name is a surveillance event. It is not automatically a worse disease.
WHO Greek-letter names and CDC classes (VOC, VOI) were communication tools. They are not a ranking of evil.
This atlas will not teach you to build a variant. It will teach you why names appear on dashboards.
Local notes
Greek letters
Alpha and Delta were public handles. Scientific lineage names (Pango) sit underneath.
Flu comparison
English already had flu strain talk. COVID made the vocabulary louder, not brand new.
Official pages own schedules and treatment. This atlas does not.
More in Change & defence
Antibiotic resistance
A shared drug budget under selection in hospitals, farms and wastewater — stewardship, not a lab manual.
Familiarity 85Vaccines and immunity
Antibodies, memory cells and community arithmetic — conceptual, not a prescription and not an anti-vaccine tract.
Familiarity 94Biofilms
Surface cities of microbes — plaque and catheters explain persistence, without a grow-your-own kit.
Familiarity 38Hygiene and balance
Clean water saves lives; missing old microbial partners is a separate, still-debated immune story.
Familiarity 70Horizontal gene transfer
Sideways DNA traffic — conjugation, transduction, transformation as names and history, not protocols.
Familiarity 45