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The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

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Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#331

Post by timr »

anyonecancode wrote: post #139
timr wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a perfect illustration of the point. In the face of ample documented evidence of the actual risk, your response is to speculate wildly about future events that are completely inconsistent with what we know.

First, I'll note that my initial comment was in the context of "when do we get on with our lives", which I took as a different question from "when _should_ we get on with our lives." What I think we _should_ do is not the same as what I think we _will_ do. Plenty of debate to be had around the "should" question of course, but it is a different question. That noted, and since I did engage in your comment on the risk t…

> As I understand it, we don't actually know why children have been less susceptible to illness so far, do we?

Well, everything is a theory, but the most plausible one I've seen is that ACE2 expression is age-dependent. Young kids don't have much of the receptor the virus needs.

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#332

Post by anyonecancode »

timr wrote: post #209
ericb wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From delta, we clearly have evidence that on a short timeframe a version with _wildly_ enhanced transmissibility has evolved. So speculating that changes will continue is reasonable. Additionally, we know that leaky vaccines and continued spread may cause greater pathogenicity. > https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jou... So that's not wild speculation, it's a well-educated concern.

> we clearly have evidence that on a short timeframe a version with _wildly_ enhanced transmissibility has evolved. So speculating that changes will continue is reasonable. So let's be clear: the claim is that the virus can mutate, therefore, any particular outcome is equally likely? If I speculate that the virus will mutate into a hemorrhagic fever, like marburg or ebola, is that reasonable? If I speculate that the…

I'd find it helpful if you provided some thoughts on determining what's reasonable and what's not reasonable to expect from future variants. As I understand it, a virus dramatically changing its mode of transmission -- say going from respiratory to a hemorrhagic fever -- doesn't really happen. But we also have a decent understanding of how covid gets transmitted now, so have some way to anchor expectations. You're saying it's not reasonable for covid to evolve to become more likely to cause illness in children. If that's true that's great news, but I really have no way to evaluate such a claim. Why is that unreasonable? Wouldn't we need more insight into why children are currently less affected to speculate on how reasonable it would be for that to change?

I notice your profile you have a biology background. I don't, and am guessing most people here don't either, so I'd find it helpful to get an explanation of why you find a change that puts children at more risk unlikely (and I bet others would too).

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#333

Post by bhickey »

robbiep wrote: post #317
dTal wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>at least unless we get a vaccine-resistant strain. ...which will happen promptly. The selection pressures are perfect. You already have a variant with vaccine breakthrough, circulating in a partially vaccinated population.

I don’t know if you can make that bet - evolution of the virus needs to conserve the current mode of cellular entry and attachment and fitness of spike appears to be the main driver at present - and then spike mutation has driven drift from the original vaccine target leading to a degree of immunity ‘escape’. So the question is, is the virus now in a local minima where it is highly adapted for spread (ie big increase…

I'll echo that this is a reasonable assessment. In evolutionary hill climbing, the fitter a protein the fewer paths there are to climb higher [0]. Art Poon has some interesting work that effectively maps viral phenotype space by looking at compensatory mutations [1]. He induces deleterious mutations in page phage, grows them until they recover fitness and then assesses if they regained fitness by reversion or compensation. The worse a deleterious mutation, the more likely a compensatory mutation is to arise.

The more optimized the covid spike becomes, the harder it is to get better. What frightens me are polymerase mutations.

[0] Darwinian Evolution Can Follow Only Very Few Mutational Paths to Fitter Proteins https://science.sciencemag.org/content/312/5770/111

[1] The rate of compensatory mutation in the DNA bacteriophage phiX174https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15911582/

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#334

Post by refurb »

munificent wrote: post #153
neither_color wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since when is Texas a pejorative? By itself it would be a world top-15 economy, and its pandemic performance was not an outlier or exceptional. If anything it, along with Florida, demonstrated that extremely strict lockdowns don't correlate to better outcomes. Nothing like Alberta.

The death rate in Florida is 180/100k [1]. That's pretty close to the national average. If the entire US had gone like Florida, then instead of 613k deaths, we'd have 590k. So, yes, Florida was better than average despite not having a severe lockdown. But Florida also has fairly separated populations: a lot of old people very likely to get vaccinated, and a lot of young people very likely to survive. For comparison,…

Is anyone adjusting for demographics?

I’d assume FL has way more older folks than Oregon.

It’s like a preschool not locking down, having zero deaths then patting themselves on the back for it.

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#335

Post by refurb »

dcolkitt wrote: post #217
nradov wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Florida also has a lot more residents in the vulnerable 65+ age group. So all else being equal we would expect Florida to have a much higher death rate.

On the flip side, Florida has year round warm weather and sunshine. Not only does that sanitize viral particles, but it makes it easier to move socialization outdoors.

Yeah, no. India has proven that theory false.

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#336

Post by christophilus »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #307
newacct583 wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The great lie still [...] is that Covid is going to go away courtesy of vaccinations. The authorities have pitched that to the public from the early days of the vaccines That is (1) outrageously hyperbolized and (2) completely wrong. Delta wasn't known to have this level of transmissibility until the last three weeks . People, experts, doctors, "authorities", whatever, you want to label them 100% believed sincerely…

The relevant experts - virologists, epidemiologists, etc. - neither believed nor claimed that we were on a path to the elimination of the outbreak. They've consistently stated that the virus will be around for at least years, probably decades, possibly forever.

Yeah. This has been my impression, too. I’m not aware of anyone who thought vaccines were a path to total elimination. But then, my only news source is HN and some science YouTube channels.

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#337

Post by spideymans »

neither_color wrote: post #68
michaelt wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who said Texas was a pejorative?

The derisive comparison to Alberta implies that Alberta is making a terrible mistake that somehow Texas made.

Both Alberta and Texas are very conservative, have a lot of anti-vaxxers, produce oil, and are home to cowboys. That’s the extent of the analogy.

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#338

Post by bialpio »

avhon1 wrote: post #316
arbuge wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I could believe 70% with at least one shot but haven't seen any statistics to that effect Good guess. As of today, that's the exact number: https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2021-08-02/...

Just for clarity, that's "70% of American adults". 18% of Americans are 15 or younger [1], below the youngest approved vaccine age (the Pfizer vaccine is approved for teenagers as young as 16), so that's (0.18 + (1-0.18) * (1-0.7) = ) ~42% of Americans who haven't even received 1 shot, and 58% who have. (There may be some error in that, if far more or far less than 70% of non-adult vaccine-eligible people (teenagers…

Need to redo some numbers, Pfizer has been approved for ages 12 & up for a couple of months now [1]. Our World In Data lists that ~50% of American population is already fully vaccinated.

[1] https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavi...

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#339

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

adventured wrote: post #219
sokoloff wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the forever-COVID reality for 95+% of the population is "you really, really ought to get that annual booster shot" (instead of "get the flu shot iff it's convenient"), that's not actually so terrible. If it becomes century-long endemic in the population, kids are exposed to it, likely creating a productive exposure-related immune reaction until they're old enough to get an mRNA vaccine.

Definitely. I don't think it's terrible at all given the alternative is tens or hundreds of thousands of additional people dying from Covid per year in the US. I guess we'll soon see the extent to which the public can be convinced to get booster shots every year. The governments of the world will have their jobs cut out for them, there will be a lot of resistance to forever Covid vaccinations as time goes on (and ver…

From a public health perspective, the total number of deaths in a pandemic is less important than the timing of the case load. Too many cases in too short a period of time causes havoc in the health care system, and then helps lead to deaths from conditions unrelated to the pandemic (because hospital care is unavailable).

It may sound callous, but in terms of first priorities, reducing the total number of deaths from COVID19 has never been our #1 priority (to the extent that we've had any clearly formulated priorities at all). The implicit goal, as we were all saying in the spring of 2020, was/is "flatten the curve".

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#340

Post by [deleted] »

dTal wrote: post #312
nostrademons wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The herd immunity threshold changed with Delta, which I've heard has an R0 of 8-10 (compare 3.5-4.5 for the UK Alpha variant, and about 2.5 for the original strain). Instead of 60% vaccination, you'd need 90%, and will likely overshoot that. It wouldn't surprise me if the UK's cases are now dropping because they reached that threshold, but I doubt the US is there now. Probably Delta will blow through literally all th…

>at least unless we get a vaccine-resistant strain. ...which will happen promptly. The selection pressures are perfect. You already have a variant with vaccine breakthrough, circulating in a partially vaccinated population.

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