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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

#401

Post by animal531 »

It's not just in the UK. The new (currently termed) 501.V2 strain is rampant here in South Africa as well. So far it is spreading really fast, and especially among younger people (with no co-morbidities) who are becoming critically sick.

We've had a pretty authoritarian year of lockdowns and tough regulations, so now compliance is way down all over the board.

Some parts of the coastline has been totally closed, but since it's now our major vacation people are just swarming malls and other locations.

I'm expecting a pretty big outbreak again, possibly either matching or eclipsing our previous growth that we had at the start of June.

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

#402

Post by CodeGlitch »

School-Cotton wrote: post #348
CodeGlitch wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that's completely fair. Countries vary so much that putting it down to "the government" ignores all the other factors. You're examples are all on the southern hemisphere, with mostly nice weather where people spend more time outside. General population health also has a massive effect. Here in the UK we are a nation of overweight old people, but fat-shaming is a thing so that's only going to get worse.

Agree with you in principle, except that Japan and Korea are at temperate latitudes in the northern hemisphere.

Not sure why you are all focusing on my example with the weather. Like I said there are many factors involved here, with the weather being one of them.

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

#403

Post by goatinaboat »

dehrmann wrote: post #274
standardUser wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"so "just wear a mask in public" isn't enough." Did someone claim it was? The name of the game is and has always been suppressing the transmission rate of the virus. Masks are a low impact way to help a little bit towards that goal, nothing more.

I was responding to someone in London saying they don't see most people wearing masks in public places. They didn't explicitly say it was enough, but since that was their main criticism of how London is responding, it read like that. Here's what Biden said: > The first day I'm inaugurated to say I'm going to ask the public for 100 days to mask. Just 100 days to mask, not forever. One hundred days. Again, he didn't sa…

Just 100 days to mask, not forever. One hundred days

It started as just two weeks to flatten the curve, remember.

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

#404

Post by dzhiurgis »

babyscully wrote: post #356
jdhn wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it impossible to get a cold twice in one season? If so, why is catching covid twice a bad thing, especially if the second time is a lot milder than the first time, even for people who experience mild symptoms the first time?

Do you not understand that this means you can spread it twice?

Seemingly not at same rate tho. I guess some specialist can explain it better, but afaik there are some viruses and vaccines where you can spread and some you don’t.

For covid there’s no data yet, but my hunch says it reduces spread only slightly.

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

#405

Post by dzhiurgis »

edh649 wrote: post #230
dillondoyle wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone have insight on how much / specific changes in the spike protein would be needed to render the mRNA vaccines - which to my understanding create only those spikes - would be render less effective or not effective? Is that a concern here?

Page 8 of https://www.cogconsortium.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Repo... hints towards this. The short answer is that 'The extent to which SARS-CoV-2 may evolve to escape immunity induced by infection or vaccination is not currently known'. However analysis has been carried out to work out how far from the receptor-binding site the mutations are, and how 'antibody-accessible' these are, with a few such as . No concl…

Wasn’t Moderna’s vaccine started in January - like a few days after first genome sequence was published...

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

#406

Post by joshuamorton »

timr wrote: post #294
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is also a lot of reason to believe they are not nearly as effective as was sold to people in the early summer. Mayeb you can post some (preferably peer-reviewed) literature links that show "a lot of reason" to believe this.

The only peer-reviewed RCT ever conducted for Covid-19 and masks found no statistically significant protective effect: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817

For what it's worth, this doesn't mean anything (by this I mean that literally, you have gained zero bits of information from this result, and should be exactly as confident as you were before the study)

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

#407

Post by raarts »

shash7 wrote: post #265
raarts wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But numbers seem to be up again, this article is speaking of another lockdown: https://t.co/2S9b4HfUhg

For context, that's in another state and the number has rose from 0 > 35 so its still manageable. You can't even remotely compare that to UK.

I don't think I was, but every journey starts with the first step ;-). I think the Australian confidence of 'having eradicated covid' is misplaced. You can only eradicate a virus if you do that worldwide, and given viruses' capability of mutating, I think that's an unattainable goal.

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

#408

Post by morlockabove »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #323
morlockabove wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go and gather in groups where all are below 50 with no underlying conditions, instead.

Some of you will still get Long Covid, which may leave you with permanent breathing issues and other health problems. The biggest lie is that if you're under 30 you're immune. You're not - not even slightly. You're far less likely to die than someone who is 85 and obese with diabetes and high blood pressure. But no one knows what the long term health implications are for younger people who make a partial recovery. An…

Given the rates, though, it basically seems worth the risk if the alternative is to lose a year of say, your 20's. You have to weigh up the expectation costs in quality-adjusted life years, with associated error bars.

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

#409

Post by morlockabove »

throwaway2245 wrote: post #358
morlockabove wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I say there's gold buried at certain coordinates, that's also true independent of whether I prove it. The point is that the quote is a heuristic that works because most of the by the time you hear that claim, most of the statistical work has been done, hidden in the premise in a way that skips your intuitions a bit (the kolgomoroff comolexity of my phrase is a lot higher than yours, even though they're of about th…

>that's also true independent of whether I prove it. This is so different from my point that I'm not sure how it relates. I am confident there is literal treasure near to where I live, because I've seen very convincing evidence of dredging from multiple sources. In my mind, it is proven. But, I'm not acting on that because I don't find it worthwhile. On the other hand, if a stranger told me there was a police traffic…

You're acting based on your priors and new evidence. You have a high prior for police stops existing in general, and a low one for people randomly lying about it, so a stranger saying there's one that way is compelling evidence to you. You have a high prior on the existence of treausure nearvy, but a low one of the existence of treasure worth the effort of finding, so me telling you you could get rich quick isn't compelling evidence to you.

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

#410

Post by morlockabove »

pjc50 wrote: post #321
morlockabove wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are operating on instincts that amount to something like 'the choices are the 80-year olds die im five years instead of now, or we all ruin years of our lives and hand over more power to the petty little tyrants who thrive under lockdowns. Sorry, grandma, but you were on your way out, anyway'. Of course, that's not acceptable to say. Hence all the normal people say whatever they have to to get along and do oth…

There's a lot of under 80s who are now experiencing "long covid" semi-disabling symptoms weeks or months after infection. I know a few personally. Getting the measures right gets rid of covid and lets people get back to normal. Bad measures give the worst of both worlds, prolonging the problem.

'Getting the measures right' would require some mix of unity (which doesn't exist in modern multicultural countries) and/or a strong authoritarian government. If, for some reason, you like not having indigenous racial minorities sent to re-education camps while you're not looking, then those options aren't really available.

If there were a country with the nerve to have no 'measures' at all, they would have herd immunity, a pile of corpses, some long-term health conditions from covid (that we will have, too- everyone's getting this thing), no long-term health conditions from everyone being locked in their homes for a year, no year+ fucking of the economy, less consolidation of wealth into the hands of a few, less of an immediate risk of an increase in authoritarianism via increasing the power of the local government...

For some size of 'a discrepancy in the pile of corpses (from this year)', I would, if I could push a button and switch to the world where people were left to do as they may, push it. A lot of people would, too, it's just too callous and inhuman to admit that yeah, sorry, if you're 85 and going to die in 3 years from the flu anyway your continued life might not be worth the price of greatly inconveniencing a 25-year-old for a year.

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