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    AFAIK COVID evolves relatively slowly. But there are so many infections that it has enough opportunities to evolve anyway. Commented Jul 15, 2021 at 9:44
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    "Quickly" and "Slowly" are relative, not technical terms. COVID evolves slowly compared to some other viruses, but at a face-meltingly fast speed when compared to macro organisms, which is the context most people are used to using the word 'evolve.' Commented Jul 15, 2021 at 13:41
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    Do you mean "not totally unexpected"? The rate of mutations seems more or less commensurate with what scientists were saying a year ago. Commented Jul 15, 2021 at 15:55
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    @AzorAhai-him- No, I don't. Hard to look up now, with all the covid-generated coverage and analysis in the media, but IIRC coronaviruses were judged to be slow mutators, as both comments before have alluded to. What's driving the velocity is the very large number of people infected along with the very quick turnover speed of infection cycles. HIV for example is reportedly a fast mutator but its infection cycles take months, possibly years and it took decades to snowball to its current 37M infected and 36 M death estimates. Covid's reportedly at 188M cases now, probably way more. Commented Jul 15, 2021 at 16:45
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    The main reason the U.K. has an infection associated with it (Alpha / Kent) was because the U.K. was performing more than half the COVID genome sequencing of the entire world. Commented Jul 16, 2021 at 22:36