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@HenryPenn
How do we know that lockdowns aren't just causing certain mutations to win out over others because of the measures we are taking? For example, the UK, SA and Brazil strains all seem to be more infectious- do we know conclusively that has not happened because those particular mutations happened to be able to overcome lockdown measures (masks, social distancing, handwashing, etc)?

Dear Martin,
Your are quite right - lockdown changes the ecosystem the virus inhabits.
If we all went to covid parties, other acquired mutations might provide more survival benefit to the virus (such as higher infectivity over a shorter distance, or higher infectivity with a shorter survival time outside the host), and the virus might be different. That said, without lockdown measures we were heading for hundreds of thousands of deaths.
To look at it another way though, there will be no 'new variants' in New Zealand as they seem to have eradicated the disease, which seems altogether the more sensible approach.