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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?

#141

Post by onion2k »

jmnicolas wrote: post #119
LatteLazy wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting that no one seems to give a shit about real freedoms like free speech or democracy, detention without trial or access to lawyers. But when you close the pubs (or the artisnal pasta makers), suddenly we're on a dictatorship.

This is so unjust: you don't know me but you basically reduce me to an angry guy that can't get drunk with his friends. ALL our freedoms are attacked: the social media censorship reached crazy levels lately, and let's not talk about democracy given the disgusting spectacle the US has shown this year (my country doesn't fare any better). When someone is condemned to financial ruin because her shop is not allowed to op…

When someone is condemned to financial ruin because her shop is not allowed to open, this is not a matter of self entitlement, yes I think these are the beginnings of dictatorship.

On the other hand, people are actually dying of Covid. Given the choice I'd take financial ruin over death.

Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

#142

Post by parliament32 »

cyounkins wrote: post #138
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.

That's what I get for just skimming the first half of the article.. thanks.

Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

#143

Post by saberdancer »

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 am not from UK but I think this is an important and critical information. How is the daily deaths chart in Kent and London?

Deaths will be visible later on than infections but by now there should be a visible effect if IFR/CFR is different. If there is no visible difference it's possible that R0 increased while IFR remains steady (which is bad enough).

Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

#144

Post by muxator »

occamrazor wrote: post #21
robhu wrote: post #16

Ewan Birney (deputy directory of EMBL European Molecular Biology Laboratory)'s Twitter is a really good source of first class scientific information on this. You need to scroll back about 2 days to get the latest info (and he refers to the Twitter accounts of others in the field who can give more information). His Twitter profile is @ https://twitter.com/ewanbirney/ (Ewan is awesome - he is also (co)director of EMBL-…

Direct link to the thread where he explains why the evidence, although not conclusive, strongly supports a higher infectivity of the new variant: https://mobile.twitter.com/jcbarret/status/13407169016101724...

Visiting Hacker News with a text-mode browser (Links2, in this case) is so liberating! Twitter says that my browser is not supported (unsurprisingly enough).

Well, I think I'll have to adapt to ditch a website that needs a shit-ton of JS to serve me a few KibiBytes of content.

Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

#145

Post by im3w1l »

LatteLazy wrote: post #99
jmnicolas wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> UK-dwellers' sense of entitlement to 'freedoms' Seriously? We (the West, I'm not from the UK) are losing our freedom at an unimaginable speed even a few years ago and you think freedom is negotiable? I find this appalling how easy we ease into a dictatorship everywhere in Europe.

It's interesting that no one seems to give a shit about real freedoms like free speech or democracy, detention without trial or access to lawyers. But when you close the pubs (or the artisnal pasta makers), suddenly we're on a dictatorship.

To many people democracy is just a means to an end. And the end goal is a simple life with simple pleasures.

Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

#146

Post by saberdancer »

throwaway4good wrote: post #58

My worry is this: If you take a population where a virus is widespread and start vaccinating then the likelihood for a mutation that escapes the vaccination is much higher, had you instead taken a population where the virus not widespread and vaccinated there. Is this correct? UK has a widespread ongoing outbreak and is the first nation to deliver vaccinations at a big scale.

If "normal" variant is more virulent, it should spread faster than other variants and will be dominant. If you vaccinate which eradicates "normal" variant than those less virulent strain which may be vaccine resistant will get opportunity to spread. That is if such variants exist.

Problem is that there is no alternative. You either vaccinate or let it run through your population. With IFR of 0.5-1% that is really hard choice to make.

Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

#147

Post by AntiImperialis2 »

guscost wrote: post #74

Based on the precedent of all other endemic human coronaviruses, there is reason to guess that the winning mutations will be less dangerous. This is also consistent with theory: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4873896/ > By far, the most widely studied trade-off involves transmission and virulence (Anderson and May, 1982; Frank, 1996; Alizon et al. 2009).

The strains being transmitted the most are likely to keep the host the most healthy for the longest time.

However, this is only true in the LONG RUN, when different variants have played out for a while.

In the short term, there could be a highly transimissible strain with a much higher mortality. It will eventually come to a point when the most common strains in a population are milder strains... but one of the reasons that happens is that hosts with immune systems unable to handle the strain die off... and those who survive do so because they can handle it better. So, at a later stage, it looks like the virus got milder, but:

- it doesn't generally apply to all strains

- the strains look mild later because only those for whom it was mild survive

Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

#148

Post by jschwartzi »

onion2k wrote: post #141
jmnicolas wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is so unjust: you don't know me but you basically reduce me to an angry guy that can't get drunk with his friends. ALL our freedoms are attacked: the social media censorship reached crazy levels lately, and let's not talk about democracy given the disgusting spectacle the US has shown this year (my country doesn't fare any better). When someone is condemned to financial ruin because her shop is not allowed to op…

When someone is condemned to financial ruin because her shop is not allowed to open, this is not a matter of self entitlement, yes I think these are the beginnings of dictatorship. On the other hand, people are actually dying of Covid. Given the choice I'd take financial ruin over death.

Why does there have to be a dichotomy here? Another option would be to lock down but also to provide for people who will otherwise be ruined by the lockdown.

That seems to be the most humane option. Make it illegal to evict people, provide them with a reasonable base income that allows them to lead a dignified life through the lockdown, and then shut everything down for a little while.

Suggesting that the lockdown is synonymous with loss of livelihood is exactly the problem here. Surely the same elected officials that have the power to close everything down also have the power to authorize emergency payments to those impacted by the lockdown.

Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

#149

Post by ceejayoz »

Closi wrote: post #139
raphaelj wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Looks like it's probably the opposite.

> The variant can be found across the UK, except Northern Ireland, but it is heavily concentrated in London, the South East and eastern England. Cases elsewhere in the country do not seem to have taken off.

> Data from Nextstrain, which has been monitoring the genetic codes of the viral samples around the world, suggest cases in Denmark and Australia have come from the UK. The Netherlands has also reported cases.

Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

#150

Post by read_if_gay_ »

onion2k wrote: post #141
jmnicolas wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is so unjust: you don't know me but you basically reduce me to an angry guy that can't get drunk with his friends. ALL our freedoms are attacked: the social media censorship reached crazy levels lately, and let's not talk about democracy given the disgusting spectacle the US has shown this year (my country doesn't fare any better). When someone is condemned to financial ruin because her shop is not allowed to op…

When someone is condemned to financial ruin because her shop is not allowed to open, this is not a matter of self entitlement, yes I think these are the beginnings of dictatorship. On the other hand, people are actually dying of Covid. Given the choice I'd take financial ruin over death.

Frankly, people are always dying. Deaths don't automatically outweigh everything. This logic quickly breaks down once you apply it consistently. Traffic accidents are a huge cause of deaths, yet we don't ban all vehicles.

There are massive costs associated with lockdowns, most of which we can probably only judge accurately once everything is over, and certainly there are second order effects which cost lives also. Such as suicides due to depression amplified by social isolation.

Those costs should be factored in. It's not as simple as a blanket "people are dying so everything is justified".

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