Introduction
In December 2019, an outbreak of pneumonia, which was later deduced to
be due to a coronavirus, was reported in the Wuhan, Hubei Province by
Chinese health officials. On January 11, 2020, the genetic sequence of
SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes disease, which was named
COVID-19, was published. The first outbreak in the United States of
America (USA) was in Washington state on the USA West Coast and was
attributed to Chinese origin of the virus, while recent studies have
determined that the most intense outbreak in New York state on the USA
East Coast is from SARS-CoV-2 viruses of European origin. The only
dominant variation in the SARS-CoV-2 viral envelope spike protein, which
executes viral glycoprotein-mediated binding to host cells and
subsequent fusion of virus and host cell membranes, is mutation of an
aspartate (D) at position 614 found in nearly all Chinese strains to a
glycine (G) enriched in European strains. To form a better view of the
global distribution and CFRs of SARS-CoV-2 variants, we calculated a
linear regression of global, country-by-country CFR vs
country-by-country D614 percentage and analyzed structural differences
of the D to G mutation using published cryo-electron microscopy 3D
structures of the SARS-CoV-2 viral spike.