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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?

#261

Post by bmitc »

cwhiz wrote: post #250
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…

The US is a free country. China is an authoritarian dictatorship. The most alarming thing to me is the public appetite for authoritarian policies.

You totally underestimate the amount of influence and propaganda enacted by corporations and the government in the U.S.

Secondly, why is this an excuse to totally fail at handling the pandemic and to let the economy fail?

Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

#262

Post by jnxx »

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.

It is more likely that this is noted first in the UK. This means that there is some likelihood that it already exists in other countries, but was not notices yet.

However, this does not explains away that it appears to have much higher transmission.

Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

#263

Post by jnxx »

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 strain has probably already spread to tens of other countries. Every country which is just about holding things together, whatever their strategy, is going to struggle with a significantly more transmissible variant of the virus.

Yes. If the new variant is duplicating every week even under medium lock-down measures, as it appears, it will be very difficult to contain it, and impossible with the current set of measures. It would require a very strict lock-down at least. And the vaccinenes would not yet help - they will help later but probably not before late Summer, while the new variant will very likely be all over Europe until March.

Thinking about what we know, what appears very likely, and the conclusions of it, the first half of the year will be far away from normal, even catastrophic.

Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

#264

Post by jnxx »

gorgoiler wrote: post #153
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…

Am I right in saying that the goal of any lockdown is not to completely stop the spread of the virus, but to instead merely keep hospitals from filling up? The health of the population, in general, is not the primary concern. We just need to stop the hospitals from collapsing. We live with all manner of sickness and disease every day of the year without trying to eradicate them. Covid is only different from heart dis…

> Am I right in saying that the goal of any lockdown is not to completely stop the spread of the virus, but to instead merely keep hospitals from filling up?

The lockdown in New Zealand had that goal to stop it completely, and achieved it.

Also, it is in general not impossible to eradicate a contagion and suppress it completely. For example, this was done with smallpox, which is about as transmissible SARS-COV2. Smallpox has been eradicated world-wide, for a quite modest price.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox#Eradication

Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

#265

Post by jnxx »

cwhiz wrote: post #250
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…

The US is a free country. China is an authoritarian dictatorship. The most alarming thing to me is the public appetite for authoritarian policies.

And Taiwan?

Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

#266

Post by cwhiz »

bmitc wrote: post #261
cwhiz wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is a free country. China is an authoritarian dictatorship. The most alarming thing to me is the public appetite for authoritarian policies.

You totally underestimate the amount of influence and propaganda enacted by corporations and the government in the U.S. Secondly, why is this an excuse to totally fail at handling the pandemic and to let the economy fail?

Always err on the side of freedom and individual liberty, always.

Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

#267

Post by jnxx »

sradman wrote: post #45

VUI – 202012/01 on Wikipedia [1]: > The first Variant Under Investigation in December 2020 (VUI – 202012/01), also known as lineage B.1.1.7, is a variant of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The variant was first detected in the United Kingdom in October 2020 from a sample taken the previous month, and it quickly began to spread by mid-December. It is correlated with a significant increase in the rate of CO…

> Correlation does not equal causation.

Yeah but if somebody is shot and you are found with a smoking gun right around the corner, you need to have a pretty good, and also testable explanation.

Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

#268

Post by graeme »

tibbydudeza wrote: post #255
graeme wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lockdown had a variety of goals but the current situation can generally be classed as a policy failure. Hospital collapse is the worst case scenario but isn’t the only goal. Other important goals include: * keeping schools open (mostly a success) * avoiding economic disruption (mixed, tending towards failure) * avoiding unnecessary deaths and long run health issues (failure) * Avoiding a second lockdown and the relat…

It is way easier to leave the UK than it is to leave Australia/NZ - there are only the airways and no roads or ferries.

Ireland was interested in doing covid zero, but the uk wasn’t, other than scotland.

So once you exclude ireland, you have the channel tunnel, and a handful of ferries to france/belgium. All of which arrive at terminals and where you can do tests or register people for isolation requirements.

Australia and nz aren’t the only successes. You also have taiwan and vietnam. Very close to china, and vietnam has land borders. The biggest difference is these countries tried.

Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

#269

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

konjin wrote: post #249
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you haven't yet started thinking in moral ways, but also your nihilistic desire has stopped you from seeing the logical truth: There are countries that both have the COVID virus under control and also have their economy back on track; and there are countries that have achieved neither. There is no "one or the other". It is "control the virus and benefit economically, or get neither benefit".

Morality is a sound people make when they have nothing to defend their position with.

I hear your sound loud and clear. It is noise.

Re: New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

#270

Post by jnxx »

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...

There is also this comment by Eric Feigl-Ding:

https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1340913688992165888

> "14) “In the lab, Gupta’s group found that virus carrying the two mutations was less susceptible to convalescent plasma from several donors than the wildtype (common strain) virus. That suggests it can evade antibodies targeting the wildtype virus”!!"

Could that mean that the "herd immunity strategy" by letting relatively healthy people being infected by the virus might fail utterly because the immunity they acquire does not help very much against the new variant?

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