dont get me wrong I got the idea saving people. but isnt this like saving private ryan? to save some people, dies many. complicated. if some doctor die because he tries to save me ( useless some dude ) is this really make sense ? what will happen when so.much people lost their jobs and cannot find anything to eat, for their familiy? is this more healty? like I said I do not understand! and be aware that I do not underestimate the pandemic!
New coronavirus variant: What do we know?
221–230 of 280 posts
Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?
#222Earlier 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…
>Scientists have career-advancing reasons to have their opinions and research--whether confirmed by evidence and peer reviewed or not--distributed by the media.
Couldn't agree with this more. The number of ill-conceived pre-print "studies" I've seen get released this year is disappointing. Tons of studies with either a tiny sample size and questionable methods (medicines given very late in the progression of the disease, control groups whose demographics don't remotely match the test group, etc.). And of course those studies get reported on with no indication they were poorly done.
Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is this also taking out potential confounders out of the equation? I believe the currently available data (as opposed to the SAGE minutes, which has the conclusions) is not sufficient to rule that out.
What confounders would you suggest? Elsewhere in the thread you've been suggesting it's a founder effect. It should be plainly obvious why it's not that, nor something you could attribute to a single super-spreader event.
Reading the latest document out, I can't rule out sampling bias, and the methodology used to gather data is also vulnerable to bias (get samples which are PCR-negative for the S gene, but positive to other genes, which is, by their own admission, a poor proxy).
The confidence intervals shown by PHE on potential increased transmissibility are also very wide (not the ones from the NERVTAG minutes, but the new analyses by PHE).
It needs larger sampling (already doing so, I'm sure) and some biological evidence.
Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
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. Su…
You're talking about death as something abstract. I'm not. I'm saying I would prefer not to die, even if it costs the economy a lot.
Perhaps you'd give up your life, or your child or partner or parent, to save a handful of jobs but that's quite weird in my opinion. Economies can be rebuilt. Dead people can't be brought back.
Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
The confidence intervals go as low as 37% and as high as ~120%. That's a load of uncertainty.
Also the latest document by PHE highlights also the limitations of the current data behind modeling (PCR negative for the S gene, but positive for the others). At this point the good questions haven't been answered yet.
Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
My understanding is as long as the variant has the same spike protein, vaccines "should" remain effective. So while trials haven't been done yet to verfiy the vaccines are still effective, I'm assuming the spike protein has been observed to be the same so there's no reason to suggest vaccines wouldn't be effective. EDIT: Actually, sounds like a couple of the mutations are in the spike protein and there is some eviden…
N501Y is properly neutralized by vaccination (there's a paper in Science with these data, but I don't have a link handy right now). The deletion seems to reduce antibody neutralization, but: - In the preprint where this was shown, only 4 convalescent sera were tested; - The same 4 sera had large variation in neutralization activity per se; - There is no investigation on potential impaired T cell reactivity (cellular…
I realized I made a mistake here but can't correct now: the sera used were 5, not 4.
Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?
#227I 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 don't disagree, but it would be really nice if we could classify lockdowns better. The original lockdown furloughed a LOT of workers, closed schools and closed virtually all shops. Today's "super tier 4+ lockdown" doesn't seem to apply to shops at all (my local shops were all open this morning, is wrapping paper really an "essential"?). Workers are mostly going in. Schools that have remained open unless they alread…
I feel like a lockdown rating system to compare what various countries and states are doing would be helpful to those outside. Something like +1 for closed retail, +1 for closed schools, +3 when outdoor exercise isn't allowed, +0.5 for recommending WFH, etc. So many times you hear on the news that x is in lockdown when they really aren't.
Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
They were also highly restricting travel internally as well, already doing temperature checks on major roads.
Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?
#229Wouldn'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.
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Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?
#230Earlier 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.
According to the Danish Serum Institute, the UK is sequencing about 10% of the positive test results. The UK is considered a leader in this field in Europe including the British Isles. For comparison, the Danish Serum Institute has a sequencing capacity about 5000 positive tests a week, a rate of around 25% of the positives at the current level. Source, in Danish, from the Serum Institute: https://www.ssi.dk/aktuelt/…
New Zealand is achieving over 80% sequencing and more recently has gone over 90%. It's possibly more important when you have less cases so that you can find connections and react to them. It's also a lot easy to do when you have very few cases (https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/checkpoint/audio/2...