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London put in emergency lockdown as U.K. fights new strain

bloomberg.com

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Re: London put in emergency lockdown as U.K. fights new strain

#131

Post by EMM_386 »

jpxw wrote: post #19
rwmj wrote: post #12

British Medical Journal (BMJ) page about the new variant: https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4857 It has 17 mutated bases (is that a lot? or typical?) Of particular concern is the mutated spike protein which "may, in theory, result in the virus becoming more infectious and spreading more easily between people."

> Mutated spike protein Hm. Let’s hope the vaccine still works.

It seems, so far, the vaccine is still relevant.

> Over time, as more mutations occur, the vaccine may need to be altered. This happens with seasonal flu, which mutates every year, and the vaccine is adjusted accordingly. The SARS-CoV-2 virus doesn’t mutate as quickly as the flu virus, and the vaccines that have so far proved effective in trials are types that can easily be tweaked if necessary.

Re: London put in emergency lockdown as U.K. fights new strain

#132

Post by randomsearch »

codeulike wrote: post #111

A lot of you missing the context of what's been going on here in recent days - they've seen an unexpected spike in infections and it seems to correlate with a strain with an unusually high number of mutations. So they're not totally sure the new strain is responsible but it looks serious enough to get extra cautious. By tracking the growth of that strain then reckon it's 70% more easily spread. That could be statisti…

They’ve seen a spike in infections in a densely populated mega city in the busiest shopping weeks of the year, when (anecdotally) people are not taking precautions and social distancing. In what way is that unexpected?

Re: London put in emergency lockdown as U.K. fights new strain

#133

Post by EMM_386 »

leke wrote: post #69

“When the virus changes its method of attack we must change our method of defense,” What did I miss? How is this mutation attacking differently?

It's not. There are genetic changes, including to the spike protein that it uses to attack.

> The new variant has mutations to the spike protein that the three leading vaccines are targeting. However, vaccines produce antibodies against many regions in the spike protein, so it’s unlikely that a single change would make the vaccine less effective.

Re: London put in emergency lockdown as U.K. fights new strain

#134

Post by edh649 »

For those (like me) who are looking for some more details of this new strain, I found 2 papers from the `COVID-19 Genomics Consortium UK (CoG-UK)` of great interest. It seems like the prime reasons for concern are increased frequency of mutations, increased proportion of cases, and possible change in immune response

> Several aspects of this cluster are noteworthy for epidemiological and biological reasons and we report preliminary findings below. In summary: The B.1.1.7 lineage accounts for an increasing proportion of cases in parts of England. The number of B.1.1.7 cases, and the number of regions reporting B.1.1.7 infections, are growing. B.1.1.7 has an unusually large number of genetic changes, particularly in the spike protein. Three of these mutations have potential biological effects that have been described previously to varying extents:

> - Mutation N501Y is one of six key contact residues within the receptor-binding domain (RBD) and has been identified as increasing binding affinity to human and murine ACE2.

> - The spike deletion 69-70del has been described in the context of evasion to the human immune response but has also occurred a number of times in association with other RBD changes.

> - Mutation P681H is immediately adjacent to the furin cleavage site, a known location of biological significance.

> The rapid growth of this lineage indicates the need for enhanced genomic and epidemiological surveillance worldwide and laboratory investigations of antigenicity and infectivity.

https://www.cogconsortium.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Repo...

https://virological.org/t/preliminary-genomic-characterisati...

Re: London put in emergency lockdown as U.K. fights new strain

#135

Post by leg100 »

vmception wrote: post #121
leg100 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Authoritative collectivist monocultures"...That sounds like you're insulting them three times over :) You could call them sensible, mature, selfless societies. Either way one cuts it, the UK is neither.

That requires a lot of assumptions Authoritative: I don't consider less-inclusive political systems worse. They have best, average and worse cases, where the problem is that they get worst case many times over. A benevolent dictatorship is capable of getting the best case results, the predictable threat is that their replacement will not be capable of stewarding resources the same way. Whereas more inclusive politica…

> I don't consider collectivist to be a pejorative term and don't know of any context where it is. You picked a synonym, selfless.

Oh I don't know, socialism scares republican voters shitless, I wouldn't be surprised if collectivism did too.

Re: London put in emergency lockdown as U.K. fights new strain

#136

Post by randomsearch »

sideshowb wrote: post #34

One has to wonder to what extent the new strain is really responsible for this, versus being a convenient excuse for the government's failure to manage the normal variant.

It is definitely being used as an excuse. The whole country’s restrictions have been changed whilst the “new strain” is focused in London.

Regardless of the recent uptick in London, the rules needed to be changed, everyone knew it, Boris didn’t do it, and then to mask another U turn they seized on this.

Chris Witty said today the idea that the new strain is more contagious is “just a theory”.

Re: London put in emergency lockdown as U.K. fights new strain

#137

Post by codeulike »

randomsearch wrote: post #132
codeulike wrote: post #111

A lot of you missing the context of what's been going on here in recent days - they've seen an unexpected spike in infections and it seems to correlate with a strain with an unusually high number of mutations. So they're not totally sure the new strain is responsible but it looks serious enough to get extra cautious. By tracking the growth of that strain then reckon it's 70% more easily spread. That could be statisti…

They’ve seen a spike in infections in a densely populated mega city in the busiest shopping weeks of the year, when (anecdotally) people are not taking precautions and social distancing. In what way is that unexpected?

True, and that's what I thought a few days ago. But they've also been tracking growth of the new strain at the same time. New strain has been responsible for a growing proportion of positive tests. May be coincidence, but they are being cautious.

E.g. see graph here

https://twitter.com/The_Soup_Dragon/status/13403496399466291...

Edit: complete conjecture but if new strain is more infectious but less dangerous it might actually be helpful in the long run as it might displace other strains. Fingers crossed

Re: London put in emergency lockdown as U.K. fights new strain

#138

Post by LatteLazy »

randomsearch wrote: post #128
LatteLazy wrote: post #59

I live in London. The core issue here is that the government hasn't really taken any action. There are "rules" but they are full of loopholes and totally unenforced. 2 cases in particular stand out to me: Compliance with mask wearing on TFL is less than 50%. "Covid enforcement" officers walk around about one train in 50, and despite it being 8 months since this started, "I don't have one" is an acceptable answer to w…

This is mostly hugely speculative. Australia is in summer, so it would make more sense to compare it to the UK’s summer, if you insist on comparing two countries with very different population densities (a key factor in the spread of COVID-19).

I'd say that counts against the UK: The UK failed to control this DESPITE lovely weather meaning people don't mind meeting outside and schools being shut anyway. Australia battled this through their winter and won despite the outdoors being basicly shut...

Re: London put in emergency lockdown as U.K. fights new strain

#139

Post by randomsearch »

lefrenchy wrote: post #53
gnusty_gnurc wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is always said “if only we were more competent/oppressive/empathetic people - we’d have done fine” instead of perhaps wondering whether much of the mitigation efforts and their implementation are a fraught and possibly even net-negative exercise.

It’s not like no nation in the world has succeeded at containing this virus. Thailand, Vietnam, South Korea, New Zealand. We have the solutions, we just refuse to do what it takes to solve it. Western nations are taking half measures with poor enforcement, and blaming individuals for failures that should be attributed to institutions.

These comparisons are so lax. NZ is in summer right now, and is a remote island on the other side of the planet from Italy where the virus first really went crazy.

The U.K. government is beyond contempt, but these comparisons don’t help.

NZ is not an international flight hub. Heathrow was the busiest airport in Europe prior to COVID (it is not anymore).

Re: London put in emergency lockdown as U.K. fights new strain

#140

Post by robocat »

gnusty_gnurc wrote: post #73
andylynch wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aussie and I think most impressively China too.

Australia is an island with a population almost half California. China welds people in their houses and forcibly enters homes and drags family to some location. I have no desire to emulate them.

I’m tired of hearing excuses. 20% of New Zealand export income[1] came from tourism, yet we closed the doors on February 1st, cancelling tourists while the season was still high.

If you want to get rid of the virus, you can, but you have to suck up the costs: shut down your borders and do whatever it takes. Close down internal travel: domestic flights were virtually shutdown in NZ; Ozzie’s had other overland travel restrictions between states etcetera. Stay at home: fuck the economy for a while, but then you all can relax.

NZ is about the same size and population as Oregon, so a single state could choose to do it, if they were willing to face up to the implications of the choice.

There is still time to do it now, to give yourselves enough time to vaccinate people that would be network nodes in the transmission graph, and health workers, and the at-risk population.

Or be honest like Sweden and decide that some deaths and chronic repercussions are acceptable costs (versus the alternative economic and human damage.)

But don’t give lame just-right excuses like “Australia is an island with a population almost half California.” Oz has a higher population than every other state except Texas, so....

[1] https://tia.org.nz/about-the-industry/quick-facts-and-figure...

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