One variant supplanting another is not necessarily cause for alarm. This has already happened with covid and there are explanations other than a more infectious strain.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02544-6
In April, Korber, Montefiori and others warned in a preprint posted to the bioRxiv server that “D614G is increasing in frequency at an alarming rate”1 . It had rapidly become the dominant SARS-CoV-2 lineage in Europe and had then taken hold in the United States, Canada and Australia. D614G represented a “more transmissible form of SARS-CoV-2”, the paper declared, one that had emerged as a product of natural selection.
These assertions dismayed many scientists. It wasn’t clear that the D614G viral lineage was more transmissible, or that its rise indicated anything unusual, they said. But alarm spread fast across the media.
They took “alarming” out for the peer reviewed article.