The coronavirus is mutating — does it matter?

Springer Nature speculates in a long News Feature about possible mutations of the SARS-Cov-2 virus and its dangers! Lot's of conjecture and fearmongering!
However, these mutations seem to be very small and limited (e.g. single nucleotide) and not very frequent given its "29,903-letter RNA code". No reason for alarmism!

In fact, this article discusses at extraordinary length only one single nucleotide mutation (i.e. D614G). This one is apparently harmless.

"Compared with HIV, SARS-CoV-2 is changing much more slowly as it spreads. ... Analysing hospitalization data from Sheffield, UK, the team found no evidence that viruses carrying the mutation [D614G] made people any sicker. ... Despite the virus’s sluggish mutation rate, researchers have catalogued more than 12,000 mutations in SARS-CoV-2 genomes. But scientists can spot mutations faster than they can make sense of them. Many mutations will have no consequence for the virus’s ability to spread or cause disease, because they do not alter the shape of a protein, whereas those mutations that do change proteins are more likely to harm the virus than improve it ..."
How many of those hastily cataloged mutations are artifacts? Yes, keep that in mind that many of these mutations are harmful to the virus!

The coronavirus is mutating — does it matter? Different SARS-CoV-2 strains haven’t yet had a major impact on the course of the pandemic, but they might in future.