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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?

#191

Post by nradov »

jschwartzi wrote: post #151
jtbayly wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In the case of masks and lockdowns the "freedom" in question is more analogous to drunk driving. This is in the sense that exercising the freedom could cause the people around you some severe life-altering problems, and you're imposing that risk without their consent or knowledge.

That's always been the case. Thousands of people die every year from influenza spread by asymptomatic carriers. COVID-19 is more deadly, but that's just a difference in degree. Where do we draw the line?

Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

#192

Post by scarby2 »

wonnage wrote: post #165
read_if_gay_ wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Su…

How many of those suicides are from people who are broke for pandemic-related reasons, and could've been prevented had we controlled the pandemic early (i.e, with a strict lockdown)?

Devils advocate: how many of those suicides are caused directly by the restrictions and not the pandemic, how many extra would have lost their sanity due to a stricter lockdown?

Truth is we're not taking much time to measure the non-covid, non economic outcomes

Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

#193

Post by dehrmann »

shalmanese wrote: post #118
detritus wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On my walk to work this morning, I detoured down a local main street, curious to see what shops were considering themselves 'essential' and remaining open. Apparently this time around, travel agents and jewellery sellers have added themselves to the list, with a few barbers clearly operating illicitly behind half-drawn shutters. I was bemused by the very chi-chi local middle class deli near my home insisting they'd b…

> I was bemused by the very chi-chi local middle class deli near my home insisting they'd be staying open when I enquired on Saturday evening. I mean, sure they sell food, but really - I'm unsure how vital to survival artisanal cheese and pasta is! Let's not repeat the mistakes of the first lockdown. If you close down too many places, all that causes is everyone cramming into the same few places still open, causing s…

The way things were announced in the UK, they just set up for what India did: a no-notice lockdown that causes people to disperse on crowded trains. Oops.

Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

#195

Post by gerdesj »

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.

"first nation to deliver vaccinations at a big scale"

Yes, we are getting into it but something like 300K first jabs for a two jab vacc in two weeks is not going to set the world on fire. The logistics behind delivering the jab are absolutely breathtaking.

Here in the UK we are rich and have the science etc. We are a small, comparatively, densely populated place. We have a country funded health service and a fairly well funded military with experience and gear and man power. I think the UK represents one of the best possible case studies for mass vaccination.

60M people at 300K per week is 200 weeks or nearly four years - this is a very artificial example and only an illustration. To get 60M people jabbed, twice, in a few months is going to need a few resources!

Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

#196

Post by Guthur »

pmoriarty wrote: post #174
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-…

In the latest episode of This Week in Virology [1] five virologists discuss this issue. Some points they made: "It's a variant. It's not a strain. A strain is a virus with a new biological property. There have been no new properties ascribed to this isolate other than sequence differences, which is not enough to make a strain.. nor have we seen any other new strains of SARS-CoV-2 that anybody's demonstrated to be bio…

I hope we look back critically at mainstream media role in all aspects of covid analyse and reactions.

Commercial news media is so far from critical analysis that it's dangerous that we allow it anywhere near our decision making processes.

Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

#197

Post by Exmoor »

pmoriarty wrote: post #174
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-…

In the latest episode of This Week in Virology [1] five virologists discuss this issue. Some points they made: "It's a variant. It's not a strain. A strain is a virus with a new biological property. There have been no new properties ascribed to this isolate other than sequence differences, which is not enough to make a strain.. nor have we seen any other new strains of SARS-CoV-2 that anybody's demonstrated to be bio…

>Yet when a journalist calls up a scientist and say "What do you think?" and the scientist says "These could have an effect on virulence or transmission or antibody neutralization," somehow that gets translated in to "It's making the virus more virulent"

This has been an incredibly large issue for almost a year now and it's ridiculous. Journalists not understanding the way scientists speak was vaguely understandable ten months ago, but after a year straight of science being the number one news maker in the world it's obvious that the media is just use it as an excuse to scare-monger and increase their clicks.

Literally every day in the last few weeks I've had to explain to someone that vaccines will almost certainly have a profound impact on if people can transmit the virus because the news articles keep taking the "We don't have data yet on how it impacts transmission" and reporting that as the worst case scenario, when in all likelihood it will profoundly diminish people's ability to transmit the virus.

Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

#198

Post by djur »

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…

So far the outcome of the "disgusting spectacle" in the US has provided evidence against the risk of incipient dictatorship, not for it. States mobilized to various degrees of success to enable voting despite the pandemic, and the result was the highest turnout since 1900.

And you should really familiarize yourself with the actual government response in the UK and US during World War II. The censorship regime was extensive, far more so than anything we've seen in recent memory:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Censorship

Furthermore, rationing of food, fuel, and other commodities was extensive. In the UK, this included substantial control of the operating hours, prices, and even the menus of restaurants.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationing_in_the_United_Kingdo...

Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

#200

Post by konjin »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #109
LatteLazy wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to be careful I don't wander into conspiracy theories but... I'm fed up because so many people flout the rules with no consequences. I suspect that the lack of consequences is intentional. If everyone flours the rules, the economic hit will be smaller and Bojo can claim he did something and its not his fault no one listened. The government have created a situation where the only logical action for normal peopl…

> If everyone flours the rules, the economic hit will be smaller Only assuming that there's no economic hit to a rampant pandemic spreading death, hospitalisation and illness. Which is a barking mad assumption. It never was "illness vs economy" you either have both good, or you have neither good. They can't be separated.

The people dying from the virus are the old, sick and fat. Not a population that adds much to the economy.

Depending on long term health effects if covid runs wild you can see as many benefits to average people at the end of it as you did after the black death.

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