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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?

#211

Post by mrtnmcc »

timr wrote: post #169
occamrazor wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

This is a perfect example of mixing science and opinion, and we should be scolding "scientists" who do this without clarifying which is which, not lionizing them. The only definitively factual statement he makes is in the first tweet: "One of the key questions about the new variant (B.1.1.7) is whether there is conclusive evidence that it is more transmissible. I don't think we are absolutely certain yet" Everything…

You could spend ten minutes debating whether the growing bright light and rising Doppler sound exactly matches the expected profile of an oncoming train.. or you could just get off the tracks. Here absolute fact is only clear when the effect is so strong it's too late.

Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

#212

Post by m-ee »

deet wrote: post #210
m-ee wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They go on to say that in this case it's probably the opposite, scientists calling up journalists. Which seems relevant given the OP in this thread linking to a scientist making a number of statements based on unproven hypotheses.

Seems as though it would go both ways. Scientists have career-advancing reasons to have their opinions and research--whether confirmed by evidence and peer reviewed or not--distributed by the media. And the media has incentive to amplify concerning or controversial information. What's tragic is that these hypotheses or conjectures are being used to make public policy decisions that affect millions or billions of peop…

Yes I agree completely. The recent TWiV has some great discussion on this between this new variant and that ridiculous "sars-cov-2 is reverse transcribing into the human genome" preprint. The scientific publication process and science journalism has always been somewhat broken it just rarely had serious consequences, now it's another broken system the pandemic is shining a light on.

I think the media has a real problem with reporting uncertainty. What's interesting is that there was a collective effort not to jump to conclusions and be careful when reporting on the presidential election. They showed they're capable of restraint when they think it's warranted, but with the pandemic they can't help but reach for the "Because of [unproven report] [consequence] is very likely" formula.

Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

#213

Post by caeril »

Exmoor wrote: post #197
pmoriarty wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Journalists not understanding

Journalists don't understand anything about the topics on which they write, but they regard themselves as paragons of virtue and arbiters of Truth with a capital T.

Trump is a garbage president but the one thing he got right was identifying the fourth estate as the enemy of the people. They were Enemies in March when they told everyone it was just the Flu, and NOT to wear masks, and they are are Enemies now when they whip the public into hysterics.

Nor is this anything new with Fox News, or CNN, or even with William Randolph Hearst, as some may claim. They have been the Enemy since time immemorial and they always will be.

Rosebud, indeed.

Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

#214

Post by mancerayder »

Exmoor wrote: post #197
pmoriarty wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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.

Not understanding or not wanting to understand? It's become fully mainstream to interpret the most scary or salacious or intriguing angle. I used to love the BBC and NYT but they are right up there with some of the worst, when it comes to the narratives and forced angles.

Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

#215

Post by keypusher »

biotinker wrote: post #203
syntaxing wrote: post #180

Is there anyway to know if the vaccines are effective against the new strains?

As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, this is a variant, not a strain. This variant does not have any genetic differences in the spike protein targeted by the vaccines. It is unlikely the vaccines will be differently effective.

> Table 1 provides details of the B.1.1.7 lineage-specific non-synonymous mutations and deletions. We note that many occur in the virus spike protein.

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

Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

#216

Post by addicted »

zaroth wrote: post #206
Exmoor wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Well we’re about 10 months into this and most news outlets won’t even admit that there’s natural immunity, even though with 10s of millions of cases we have maybe a dozen of cases worldwide of reinfection. I think the fundamental issue is that the public health measures break down once everyone doesn’t have to follow them. So either you refuse to admit that there’s no reason for a recovered COVID patient to wear a ma…

This does not appear to be true at all.

Newspapers are very willing to admit natural immunity. But scientists point out they don't know how effective it is, and/or how long lasting it is.

It's very clear newspapers have been way to casual with admitting natural immunity.

If you want some fairly clear evidence of this, if you were gonna ask a 1000 people whether they were immune if they got the virus and recovered from it, I suspect 999 of them would say yes. And you wouldnt get those numbers if newspapers were stating the opposite.

What the rest of your comment ignores is that we actually don't know whether people who are immune, can nevertheless transmit the disease. Furthermore, false positives do exist.

In fact, even people who are vaccinated will be advised to wear masks, because we do not know whether the vaccine prevents spread, or if it only protects the vaccinated. The Pfizer and Moderna trials did not factor this in their testing at all. I am not sure about the AstraZeneca one, but their trials have had a lot of issues anyways. And no other vaccine's trials have been completed yet.

E.g: A NYTimes article comparing natural immunity vs a vaccine from 2 weeks ago. Note the concept of natural immunity is considered a given, and is not even questioned (and it includes the statement, for example, "Natural immunity from the coronavirus is fortunately quite strong"):

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/05/health/covid-natural-immu...

Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

#217

Post by wonnage »

scarby2 wrote: post #192
wonnage wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The whole point of a strict lockdown would've been to nip the problem in the bud via drastic measures. Based on the experiences of other countries, it should've lasted about 3-4 weeks.

Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

#218

Post by bmitc »

I find it completely disappointing and disheartening that the west has done almost nothing to curb the virus, thus increasing the chance of mutation and continued spread. It's just hard to see the pointing of fingers at China that's happened, especially in hindsight when it's unclear if it even began in China (which doesn't really matter anyway if it was a naturally occurring zoonotic crossover event) and not somewhere else like Italy, but the west has just rolled over to the threat of the virus in its response. Meanwhile, life in China has been basically normal for a while.

It further drives me crazy because I am still disconnected from my family because the U.S. still refuses to allow my fiancée to travel back (she lives and works in the U.S.) from the country best dealing with this to to the worst. It's just sickening there's no support for people like us, and now it looks like it can only get worse in the west.

Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

#219

Post by porknubbins »

bmitc wrote: post #218

I find it completely disappointing and disheartening that the west has done almost nothing to curb the virus, thus increasing the chance of mutation and continued spread. It's just hard to see the pointing of fingers at China that's happened, especially in hindsight when it's unclear if it even began in China (which doesn't really matter anyway if it was a naturally occurring zoonotic crossover event) and not somewhe…

Some of the finger pointing at China may be unfair but clearly they knew a lot about the virus while letting their citizens travel outside. Not that the West would’ve handled it any better necessarily but when you seed the world with virus there is going to be some blowback.

Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

#220

Post by cma »

porknubbins wrote: post #219
bmitc wrote: post #218

I find it completely disappointing and disheartening that the west has done almost nothing to curb the virus, thus increasing the chance of mutation and continued spread. It's just hard to see the pointing of fingers at China that's happened, especially in hindsight when it's unclear if it even began in China (which doesn't really matter anyway if it was a naturally occurring zoonotic crossover event) and not somewhe…

Some of the finger pointing at China may be unfair but clearly they knew a lot about the virus while letting their citizens travel outside. Not that the West would’ve handled it any better necessarily but when you seed the world with virus there is going to be some blowback.

China restricted international flights out of Wuhan on January 23rd. The US didn't restrict flights out even now with much higher incidence.
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