While the debate above is important, its fairly academic. What is missing is discussion about the use of “aggressive”, which is not a standard epidemiological term. Any work on the subject of COVID-19 is going to draw attention, so we all need to be very mindful about the public health messaging. The way that I assume that you are using “aggressive” is to imply transmission rate or fitness, as you are only looking at the frequencies of the lineages. Many in the public, however, see “aggressive” and think severity or virulence. It’s this part that is drawing the most attention to your paper and in-sighting unnecessary fear. The press loves this as articles about fear generate more clicks. Now there are common threads all over twitter that suggest if you are infected with the “L” strain, you will be more likely to have severe disease and die. We now have to spend considerable energy undoing this misinformation. Much of the damage, however, is already done. Please think about the messaging around future papers to avoid confusion and unnecessary panic.
Please also address this in your response. It will be very important to have clarification from the authors.
Sorry for the tone, I do not intend any direct offense to you or your co-authors. This is a learning experience for all of us.
Best,
Nate