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New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

bbc.com

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Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

#131

Post by jtbayly »

carlmr wrote: post #108
LatteLazy wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're exactly correct. It drives me nuts when people talk about freedom, they have no actual idea what freedom is or takes and their actions undermine it. Freedom doesn't mean "I can do whatever I like with no consequences", but that's what people really want. Freedom is just a better sounding word than selfishness these days :(

>Freedom doesn't mean "I can do whatever I like with no consequences" Depends on your definition of freedom. The issue with this kind of freedom is that your freedom encroaches on other people's freedoms, so most societies agreed that we should have less freedom in favor of fairness. Exactly where the trade-off is to be made is subjective and cannot be derived from facts alone. We have a lot of freedoms that encroach…

Your sugar example is no good. Sugar doesn’t take people’s freedoms away. It has no agency and doesn’t enforce anything. Like any action, eating sugar may have consequences good or bad for the individual, but that has nothing to do with freedoms unless the government starts telling people they may not eat more than x grams per day or something like that.

Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

#132

Post by gns24 »

hnarn wrote: post #111
gns24 wrote: post #43

I think most people seem to be underestimating just how bad this is. During the recent 4-week lockdown it was already clear that something odd was going on in Kent; whilst case counts were dropping in the rest of the country, they continued to rise significantly there. Something was clearly different. Now high case counts are spreading from the South East into the rest of the country. We don't know whether we can eve…

This comment should be flagged, it’s extremely sensationalist and below what I expect from HN. 1. On what basis do you say that people are underestimating the seriousness? Are you a doctor? An epidemiologist? Do you have any medical education? 2. Do you have any supporting evidence for your claim that it’s obvious that something was “off” about Kent and that there is a spread attributable to this? Or are you just dra…

1. No, I don't have any relevant qualifications. But it's not the epidemiologists who I think are underestimating the seriousness - what's surprising me is that everyone else is largely ignoring this. I think people think 70% is not a big amount, rather than the difference between slight decrease and rapid exponential growth. Clearly a lot of foreign governments do think it's serious given the travel plans they have put in place.

2. I spend an unhealthy amount of time looking at data. Before this incident there were always random peaks which got explained by outbreaks at abattoirs or freshers' week, and national movements, but this change stood out. Week after week it kept behaving differently. My partner and I had already speculated about the change possibly being down to a mutation, since although that seemed incredibly unlikely nothing else explained what we were seeing, but dismissed that idea since obviously the authorities would have noticed. It turned out they had noticed, they just hadn't announced it.

3. A quick calculation: recent infection surveys suggest about 1% of people in the UK have the virus. The new strain makes up about 10%, so 1 in 1000 people have the new strain. In November 2020 from Heathrow alone, 240k people travelled to the EU, 68k to other European countries, 63k to Africa and 82k to North America.

If I remember correctly cases have already been found in Denmark and Australia. Denmark does more sequencing than most countries (I don't have a good source for that, but there by-country filters here imply it: https://nextstrain.org/groups/neherlab/ncov/united-kingdom?c... )

Based on this I'd argue that it's more likely than not to already be in tens of other countries. I'd certainly be interested to hear arguments to the contrary. But I don't believe it's sensationalist to suggest this - at this point I'd consider it a miracle if it hasn't spread too far. I hope I'm wrong.

Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

#133

Post by gns24 »

lbeltrame wrote: post #103
gns24 wrote: post #43

I think most people seem to be underestimating just how bad this is. During the recent 4-week lockdown it was already clear that something odd was going on in Kent; whilst case counts were dropping in the rest of the country, they continued to rise significantly there. Something was clearly different. Now high case counts are spreading from the South East into the rest of the country. We don't know whether we can eve…

> I think most people seem to be underestimating just how bad this is. No, there is no reason to panic yet. Concern, perhaps, but not panic. There are a truckload of confounding factors in the middle, including potential "founder effects" (when a variant becomes dominant because it is the first to take hold, and just outruns the others out of larger starting numbers). There is not yet solid proof of "70% more transmi…

Founder effects don't explain why this new strain took over as the dominant strain in London.

Even if we suppose the chance of it being as bad as suggested is only 50%, we should panic now, rather than waiting until we have solid proof and risk having a public health disaster.

Personally I suspect the UK didn't panic in its announcement and that this situation had been under surveillance for some weeks.

Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

#134

Post by mchusma »

The best reaction to this would be to pressure the NIH to lift the ban on the Astrazeneca vaccine. There is enough stockpiled supply to vaccinate most of the UK quickly and they would have a first mover advantage to getting a bunch of that vaccine. Evidence suggests this varient still has the same spike protein and seems like it would be still prevented by most if not all the vaccines.

Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

#135

Post by anonunivgrad »

thatguy0900 wrote: post #122
jmnicolas wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I almost stopped commenting about it on HN, it feels like a wall of downvotes if you don't agree with the mainstream opinion.

We will have some very interesting textbooks about the mainstream public response to this in 50 years, I'm sure.

Doubtful. The victors write the history. The Church of “If It Saves Even One Life” and “Anti-Lockdown and Anti-Maskers are Murderers” are clearly the victors in this timeline. Your children and grandchildren will be taught about the backwards racists who were willing to sacrifice old people in the name of money, but how the fascist Donald Trump was finally defeated by the forces of democracy and justice and health was restored.

Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

#136

Post by thatguy0900 »

anonunivgrad wrote: post #135
thatguy0900 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We will have some very interesting textbooks about the mainstream public response to this in 50 years, I'm sure.

Doubtful. The victors write the history. The Church of “If It Saves Even One Life” and “Anti-Lockdown and Anti-Maskers are Murderers” are clearly the victors in this timeline. Your children and grandchildren will be taught about the backwards racists who were willing to sacrifice old people in the name of money, but how the fascist Donald Trump was finally defeated by the forces of democracy and justice and health wa…

Well, I agree with you on trump but I feel like the people who have to live with the economic reality of all the mom and pop stores never reopening in favor of big international companies wont be very happy with us

Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

#137

Post by Closi »

imeron wrote: post #27
makomk wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems the answer is that we don't know if it's spread yet. To quote the ECDC's briefing, "However, most EU/EEA countries sequence much smaller proportions of virus isolates than the UK, so ongoing circulation of this variant outside of the UK cannot be excluded". https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/sites/default/files/documents/SAR... Basically, the UK is just better set up to detect variants like this than a lot of other…

https://twitter.com/The_Soup_Dragon/status/13403496399466291... If this chart is true EU countries announcing the closing borders the last couple of days is waaay to late to prevent the spread of the new strain in Europe.

Being a little more cynical, the strain probably started somewhere else in Europe and came across the border.

It's probably not a coincidence that this strain was first detected as spreading right next to the Dover crossing.

Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

#138

Post by cyounkins »

parliament32 wrote: post #128

The question I'm most curious about: Does the vaccine(s) we've hustled to get developed, produced, and distributed over the last few months basically get invalidated because of the new strain?

No. There is a section in the article about that.

Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

#139

Post by Closi »

raphaelj wrote: post #7
Tycho wrote: post #2

Wouldn't there be an element of cherry picking to this whole variant story? Like, don't viruses mutate constantly, we just don't analyze them in a disciplined manner most of the time, so if you start doing that you're bound to find something like this, but so would anyone else conducting a similar analysis anywhere else and at any other point in the pandemic?

Also, the UK seems to do way more sequencing of the virus than any other country, so one would expect such cherry picking to actually happen in the UK.

Also the UK detected this new strain right next to the Dover Crossing - Isn't it pretty likely it came from mainland Europe and was detected at our port rather than we coincidentally had a mutation right on the border?

Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

#140

Post by mrfusion »

Tycho wrote: post #2

Wouldn't there be an element of cherry picking to this whole variant story? Like, don't viruses mutate constantly, we just don't analyze them in a disciplined manner most of the time, so if you start doing that you're bound to find something like this, but so would anyone else conducting a similar analysis anywhere else and at any other point in the pandemic?

Just in time for Christmas too.
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