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The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

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Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#341

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

christophilus wrote: post #336
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The vaccines are/were a path out of a pandemic.

That's something to strive for, but extremely different from "elimination"

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#342

Post by sumedh »

ipsum2 wrote: post #282
nostromo wrote: post #237

I don't see why we should care about number of cases in countries with freely available vaccines. Disease (as reflected by hospital admissions) and death are what we care about. And those numbers are continuing to trend in the right direction. The US media is just addicted to fear at this point. With a more boring/traditional president in the office and the covid panic waning, there is a news vacuum. And the media is…

Hospitalizations are spiking in Florida right now, and infections are reaching all-time highs: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/florida-covid-ca... I don't disagree that the media is fear-mongering for clicks (see inaccurate reporting of CDC report) but in this scenario, there's something actually happening here.

> there's something actually happening here.

because those people dont want to take the vaccines?

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#343

Post by moistly »

newacct583 wrote: post #267
adventured wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Given the enormous US Covid outbreak, the US is likely not far away. We're at 70% adult vaccination and had a minimum of 100 million prior Covid infections. Also throw in tens of millions of people that likely have natural immunity to Covid. The biggest question with Delta is going to be…

> 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…

IMO users who push flat-out lies like that should be banned. HN should not be a source of disinformation.

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#344

Post by crowbahr »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #156
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…

“ Instead of 60% vaccination, you'd need 90%, and will likely overshoot that.” 60% (Vaccinated + Previously Infected)

Delta variant can reinfect.

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#345

Post by stadium »

nostrademons wrote: post #134
arbuge wrote: post #90

Most news articles I see focus solely on the number of vaccinated people when estimating how far away countries are from herd immunity, which seems odd to me. Left out in the discussion seem to be the unvaccinated but already infected. As far as I know, prior infection confers at least some degree of immunity. It may also be the case that those inclined to be skeptical of vaccines were also the ones who exposed thems…

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…

Add to that, the more it multiplies and spreads, the more chance of mutations leading to more variants. Needing updated vaccines, booster shots of existing, and/or higher rates needed to reach herd immunity.

Didn't the UK have another lockdown for this wave too?

Herd-masking seemed like a no-brainer from the beginning. It will be really hard to go back to that in the US after the CDC giving the all clear to go maskless.

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#346

Post by stadium »

bhickey wrote: post #333
robbiep wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 compens…

> What frightens me are polymerase mutations.

What are these in layman's terms?

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#347

Post by newacct583 »

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.

To be clear, I meant "elimination of the outbreak" in the sense of an endemic virus that produces a steady case rate. Clearly no, no one expected this disease to be eradicated.

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#348

Post by arwhatever »

crowbahr wrote: post #344
mensetmanusman wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“ Instead of 60% vaccination, you'd need 90%, and will likely overshoot that.” 60% (Vaccinated + Previously Infected)

Delta variant can reinfect.

It's not a binary consideration, but you have expressed it as such.

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#349

Post by nradov »

fortuna86 wrote: post #167
gpt5 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not impossible to estimate for COVID. Re-infections in COVID are exceedingly rare.

There's no way of knowing this, considering the amount of asymptomatic cases that are never tested or recorded.

The UK is running human challenge trials to determine that.

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/new-uk-challenge-trial-stud...

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#350

Post by timr »

ericb wrote: post #330
timr wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Did you actually read the study I linked? Yes. It makes the general argument (not specific to Covid) that is known to any evolutionary biologist: partial selective pressure causes an organism to evolve away from that pressure. It's why we tell people to take their entire course of antibiotics. It in no way implies that the organism will evolve to do anything else . You wrote this: > Additionally, we know that leaky…

I provided source evidence documenting an example of the mechanism and result of what I'm saying. Get back to me when you can provide a source example case of a virus evolving legs and doing a little dance and then we can consider the probabilities equivalent. Until then, we both know they're not.

You provided a source showing that a chicken virus escaped selective pressure, in chickens, grown in a lab. Let's not overstate the relevance of your "evidence" to SARS-CoV2 amongst the human population.

But as I said, there's nothing terribly surprising about the idea that pathogens mutate to escape selective pressure. It's right out of biology 101. It would be tremendously surprising if those pathogens became more virulent, which is what you're trying to claim.

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