Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 432 posts

Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

#61

Post by threatripper »

bingohbangoh wrote: post #2

Does anybody think these variants will ever stop? I hate, __hate__ this constant fear of a lockdown. Hell, a good part of europe is in lockdown right now. I get that the lockdown is being haphazardly enforce for those countries who've decided on it but I dislike these even being rules on the books. Leave me the hell alone! If we couldn't overcome it after a year of lockdowns, why is this gonna be the time it changes?…

> Does anybody think these variants will ever stop?

No but they tend to become less severe for the surviving population. Either because susceptible individuals don't make it or the immune system is learning and the virus runs out of good mutations. So far it seems that higher transmissibility was the driving factor. We still have a large percentage of the population waiting for their first infection. Next we will see more immune escape variants and then probably come the variants that diversify but they will probably run out of useful mutations and our trained immune systems are better at preventing severe infection. It could take some more years and some more severe waves (and some calm years in between) until we arrive there.

The new Joker we have are mRNA vaccines with which we might quickly sharpen our immune response before the main wave of a new variant arrives.

Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

#62

Post by aledalgrande »

oliv__ wrote: post #29
lokl wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the Johns Hopkins COVID-19 Dashboard, as of now, Sweden has had 15,145 deaths; Norway has had 1,050 deaths; Denmark 2,863; Finland 1,309. With populations from Wikipedia (10,402,070 for Sweden; 5,402,171 for Norway; 5,850,189 for Denmark; 5,536,146 for Finland), this yields deaths per 1,000 people of: Sweden 1.456 Norway 0.194 Denmark 0.489 Finland 0.236 Saying Sweden has "just survived" doesn't capture…

So Sweden had proportionately 5 times more deaths for not locking down with a death / population ratio of 0.00145? I don't think it's ridiculous to consider not locking down with those stats. Locking down has tremendous costs whether mental or economic, you just can't compute and make a nice graph of it.

Strikes me how such a heartless comment comes from someone running a "community" business. Really sad.

Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

#63

Post by jljljl »

bingohbangoh wrote: post #2

Does anybody think these variants will ever stop? I hate, __hate__ this constant fear of a lockdown. Hell, a good part of europe is in lockdown right now. I get that the lockdown is being haphazardly enforce for those countries who've decided on it but I dislike these even being rules on the books. Leave me the hell alone! If we couldn't overcome it after a year of lockdowns, why is this gonna be the time it changes?…

I don’t understand the recent celebrating of Florida’s COVID performance — in September, after vaccinations and treatment options were widely available, Florida was losing more than 300 people per day to COVID. They went from ~25th in the nation for COVID Deaths per capita to 8th worst since the pandemic started.

That “just surviving” came at a huge cost of lives.

Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

#65

Post by Mountain_Skies »

bingohbangoh wrote: post #12
Denvercoder9 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Leave me the hell alone! As long as that makes essential things such as grocery shopping more dangerous for others, such as myself, no.

Ok, then when does this end? I'm all ears!

Violence. It gives people a lot of perspective very quickly. Sooner or later, it's where we're going to end up.

Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

#66

Post by titzer »

lokl wrote: post #6
bingohbangoh wrote: post #2

Does anybody think these variants will ever stop? I hate, __hate__ this constant fear of a lockdown. Hell, a good part of europe is in lockdown right now. I get that the lockdown is being haphazardly enforce for those countries who've decided on it but I dislike these even being rules on the books. Leave me the hell alone! If we couldn't overcome it after a year of lockdowns, why is this gonna be the time it changes?…

According to the Johns Hopkins COVID-19 Dashboard, as of now, Sweden has had 15,145 deaths; Norway has had 1,050 deaths; Denmark 2,863; Finland 1,309. With populations from Wikipedia (10,402,070 for Sweden; 5,402,171 for Norway; 5,850,189 for Denmark; 5,536,146 for Finland), this yields deaths per 1,000 people of: Sweden 1.456 Norway 0.194 Denmark 0.489 Finland 0.236 Saying Sweden has "just survived" doesn't capture…

> Saying Sweden has "just survived"

Europe "just survived" the black plague (1/3rd of Europe died). Life on Earth "just survived" the Chicxulub impactor (the Dinosaurs and 90% of species on Earth died). People who say flippant things like this are unserious and frankly, dangerous.

Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

#67

Post by kaba0 »

bingohbangoh wrote: post #12
Denvercoder9 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Leave me the hell alone! As long as that makes essential things such as grocery shopping more dangerous for others, such as myself, no.

Ok, then when does this end? I'm all ears!

As far as I know the current view is that it won’t end, but it will become a regular the same way the flu is. There may even be yearly shots combined with flu shots for all the new variants that may evolve.

I truly hate that guy, but “facts don’t care about your feelings”.

Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

#68

Post by ahdh8f4hf4h8 »

kylehotchkiss wrote: post #26
gfodor wrote: post #3

> Travel bans are not evidence-based: It may seem like travel bans for individual countries are a necessary step, but I cannot stress enough that they do not work. This one point compromised the article for me. The standard for “working”, like all measures, is to slow down the spread. We all know travel bans got a bad name because you-know-who proposed them. But all countries imposed travel bans and we ought to be co…

These travel bans serve to slow down the spread, but at the expense of keeping thousands of families separated and harming diplomacy between countries. Even air cargo has taken a big hit. And aviation has barely opened up, now to be put on hold again. The long term consequences of slowing a virus from entering a country for make a week or two are not being considered.

Right now we don't know the severity or impact of this variant, and several signs point in a bad direction. Maybe in 2 weeks we won't be worried about this variant, but right now being being proactive may slow down or even stop the spread of this variant. If China had instituted a travel ban in the early weeks instead of covering it up we may have never had a global pandemic - contact tracing and quarantines may have been enough to contain it in the early days.

Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

#69

Post by nsxwolf »

actually_a_dog wrote: post #14
gfodor wrote: post #3

> Travel bans are not evidence-based: It may seem like travel bans for individual countries are a necessary step, but I cannot stress enough that they do not work. This one point compromised the article for me. The standard for “working”, like all measures, is to slow down the spread. We all know travel bans got a bad name because you-know-who proposed them. But all countries imposed travel bans and we ought to be co…

I agree with about 95% of this, but, I don't think "travel bans got a bad name because you-know-who proposed them." I think they got a bad name because you-know-who proposed them previously, targeting countries with you-know-what religion, for a political reason. Had it been just "we're going to reduce air traffic into the country to slow the spread of the virus," I don't think that would have been terribly controver…

Please just say "Trump" and "Muslims" and don't do the Voldemort / Macbeth thing.

Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

#70

Post by [deleted] »

titzer wrote: post #57
ahdh8f4hf4h8 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I think the article missed the point on this one - travel bans aren't a panacea, but they definitely slow the spread and can buy valuable time at the start of an outbreak. There's been too much binary thinking by the media and politicians - for example masks aren't 100% effective, but they do reduce the viral load by 30-50% which could be the difference between getting mildly sick and getting a fatal exposure.…

> but they do reduce the viral load by 30-50% I think the effect is much larger than that, but yes, absolutely. This is an important point that is constantly lost in the public discourse. We realize there's a big difference in dosage with poisons and radiation, but it's the same with viral infections; viruses do take time to replicate, so having a low initial exposure can give the immune system to ramp up sooner, bef…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN