There are two issues with the English variant, as it is now referred. One issue is "what it could do" and the other issue is "what it could represent". They are both important and we know just enough to make hyphoteses that can drive to experiments. I'll try and explain 1/

Let's start with the latter: what does it represent? Mutations happen all the time and variants have been recorded in the thousands. The website below shows several 1000s different variants recorded in different countries. Why is this SO special?

The most special aspect of this variant is that the number of changes it shows is a large disconnect from its parental line as if this lineage made a big sudden jump rather than the usual slow progress to which we are used. 3/

There are a few (certainly not many) scenarios that are compatible with this jump and one of them is the one in which the virus has tried to escape its way out from an organism that had a static and relatively weak immune response.

4/

Such an organism is an immunosuppressed patient who tries to fight the infection with injections of donated plasma from a recovered patient. Someone who cannot produce antibodies and can be helped with plasmapheresis from a donor who could. 5/