Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high • Hacker News Board

Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high

#221

Post by wokwokwok » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 9:44 AM UTC

tomxor wrote: post #139

wokwokwok wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t you think this reflects a bias in the opposite direction? Systems are dynamic and complex, but that doesn’t make them unknowable . If complex systems were impossible to model science wouldn’t be a thing. Sure, the “new variant” narrative is an easy one to pick up because it’s superficially understandable; but what other complex interactions are resulting in a new strain becoming dominant over an existing one? D…

> Systems are dynamic and complex, but that doesn’t make them unknowable. If complex systems were impossible to model science wouldn’t be a thing. Not quite. It can makes them unpredictable, not unknowable... more specifically it can make them computationally irreducible which means we cannot find a simplified description of their behavior without having to compute every step, even when we understand the underlying r…

There is a logical fallacy referred to as the “red herring”; you do not fool me, or anyone, by using it.

The side points you make are irrelevant to the point at hand; rather than hand waving address the point at hand:

Why is this an excuse to do nothing?

If not, what action do you propose instead?

How do you justify it?

Be specific.

Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high

#222

Post by SomeoneFromCA » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 9:53 AM UTC

InTheArena wrote: post #143

tailspin2019 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> TWIW has kind of painted themselves into the corner by insisting that anything except biological evidence is irrelevant. I definitely don't know enough about this topic to say you're right, but as an avid layman listener of TWIV for 8+ months now, I've recently started thinking along the same lines. With the greatest of respect, Vincent Racaniello, while being clearly a true expert in the field, tends to take a ver…

As a long term listener of TWIV (4 years, IIRC), I think the service they have done for the community is priceless, especially once Daniel Griffin started doing his clinical updates. That said, I remember when COVID first started hitting, and their reaction was initially "meh", then like everyone else, it started to dawn on them how bad this was going to be. So still take their voices with a grain of salt. In the lat…

I used to like TWIV, but once they aggresively and unprofessionally tried to "debunk" the lab origin hypothesis of the pandemic (which is still pretty much viable one) I kinda lost any respect to these people. I'd rather listen to UCSF podcast, way more professional.

Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high

#223

Post by SomeoneFromCA » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 9:58 AM UTC

_cs2017_ wrote: post #200

jsnell wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TWIW has kind of painted themselves into the corner by insisting that anything except biological evidence is irrelevant. The evidence for B.1.1.7 being more transmissive is quite solid, and seems to be getting more so as time goes on. But no matter how strong the statistical data is, it could never be good enough for them. So their policy recommendation ends up as "do nothing at all until there is 100% certain non-ci…

Much as I like TWiV, they often present incorrect viewpoints. What you describe is one such example. TWiV suggests that anything short of convincing proof should be ignored. However, every bit of evidence updates our individual confidence to some extent. It's quite silly to draw an arbitrary line at a certain "quality" of evidence, and treat anything below that line as useless. I suspect that in an effort to debunk u…

They are doing this not the first time. They are extremely aggressive against any hypothesis about the lab origin of the pandemic - and yet it is increasingly becomes acceptable by the mainstream media (BBC News tried independently verify some claims, but had literaly obstacles (physical) on their way,set by Chinese government). Racaniello (?) was big defender of GoF experimentaion on flu during 2012-2015 moratorium on this research; Osterholm AFAIR was against. TWIV are strange people, it turns out. UCSF podcasts are way more professional.

Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high

#224

Post by turing_complete » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 10:18 AM UTC

irq11 wrote: post #150

scarmig wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this argument unconvincing. The UK is an island, and it's doing badly. "But it's highly connected with the rest of the world, so it makes it honorarily a non-island!" Okay, sure. How about South Korea? It isn't an island, and it's doing pretty well. "But it's de facto an island, it's not getting cases from North Korea!" Okay, sure. But by that standard the US is an island: it didn't get its cases from Mexico o…

> How about South Korea? It isn’t an island, and it’s doing pretty well. Cases are at all-time highs, and have pretty much escalated out of control: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2020...

Just compare their numbers to Europe or the US.

Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high

#225

Post by turing_complete » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 10:21 AM UTC

GregarianChild wrote: post #49

sigil wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What could we be doing differently beyond what we already should be doing? Are you referring to things like border closing?

Copy Taiwan. No country has been dealing better with Covid than Taiwan. No lockdown, and > 200 days without new Covid case [1]. Taipei had daily direct flights from Wuhan, and the Diamond Princess mooring near Taipei. They told the world early on [2] how they did it. Summary: Border closure, contract tracing, testing and controlled quarantine for those testing positive . It's worth reading [2] to realise how swiftly,…

It's just insane how incompetent European and American governments have been in this pandemic compared to East-Asian countries. We are lucky to have some functional private institutions that bailed us out -- kept the countries running and developed a highly effective vaccine super fast.

Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high

#226

Post by rndgermandude » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 10:34 AM UTC

howlgarnish wrote: post #155

harimau777 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible that they are all effectively islands? For example, it appears that Vietnam has miles of jungle between its major cities and neighboring countries. The same cannot be said for the US and Europe.

Those miles of jungle are crisscrossed by roads, trains and ferries, just like US and Europe. Vietnam is a country of nearly 100M people with strong trade and transport links to the world, and over in Thailand, Bangkok is the most popular tourist destination in the world.

There is very little tourism right now, ever since this started. But before that, Vietnam (population 97M) had close to 20M international arrivals last year, Germany (population 83M) had 39M, Thailand (population 70M) had 40M.

Vietnam has essentially one train line across the county that only splits up in the very north into two train lines into China. Vietnam has 2,600km of train lines, Germany for comparison has more than 41,000km, for a comparable area size. Vietnam has about 12M train passenger rides a year (pre-Corona of course), Germany has more than 2000M (does not include intra-city light rail rides). Thailand, with an area about 1.5x of either Vietnam or Germany, has 4,400km of train lines and 38M passenger rides.

Vietnam has about 250,000km of roads (50% paved), Germany has 600,000km (mostly paved). Vietnam has about 3M motorized vehicles (31 per 1000 population, but there is probably a significant number of unaccounted motor scooters), Germany has 56M motorized vehicles (701 per 1000), Thailand has 40M motorized vehicles (half being motor scooters/bikes, probably a significant number of unaccounted motor scooters) (571 per 1000).

You said "just like the US or EU", but I disagree given these numbers. The mobility, especially medium and long distance mobility, seem quite different.

Public life - as dictated by climate conditions and of course economic constraints - differs as well. Average temperature in Vietnam is 24°C, Thailand 26°C and Germany 9°C (and Spain/Greece/Italy aka the South of Europe it's 13°C). A lot more public life, incl paid and unpaid work, happens outside in Vietnam and Thailand, compared to Europe. When it was summer in Europe, we had a lot fewer cases and deaths than when it was cold and is now cold again. Colder weather and indoor living/working seems to heavily correlate with Corona, at least in Europe.

This doesn't mean we cannot learn from nations such as Vietnam and Thailand, but it's also not as straight forward as trying to outright mimic what they did and do in response to the pandemic.

Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high

#227

Post by dageshi » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 10:40 AM UTC

m_mueller wrote: post #204

InTheArena wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a long term listener of TWIV (4 years, IIRC), I think the service they have done for the community is priceless, especially once Daniel Griffin started doing his clinical updates. That said, I remember when COVID first started hitting, and their reaction was initially "meh", then like everyone else, it started to dawn on them how bad this was going to be. So still take their voices with a grain of salt. In the lat…

And then there are places like Taiwan that have kept themselves COVID free and report a grand total of 7 deaths on 22M inhabitants, without any lockdown needed and thus experiencing minimal economic impact. And yet no Western country seems to want to learn from that.

What is there to learn?

1) Act immediately and aggressively at the first sign of potential virus.

2) Get your population used to wearing masks when ill with cold like viruses and thus ensure sufficient supplies and willingness to wear masks when the government mandates it.

3) Preferably be an island or have absolute control of your country (China)

There was a period when countries could've done what Taiwan did but once the virus got a hold in continental europe and usa it was over.

Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high

#228

Post by rualca » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 10:42 AM UTC

incrudible wrote: post #157

rualca wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're showing a fundamental misconception and outright ignorance of what research papers are, and more importantly what science is. For example, you're somehow assuming that academic papers about to be subjected to peer review are somehow milestones which write in stone the truth instead of what they actually are and always have been: a way to share data, observations, theories, hypothesis, and even assumptions on r…

> You're showing a fundamental misconception and outright ignorance of what research papers are, and more importantly what science is. For example, you're somehow assuming that academic papers about to be subjected to peer review are somehow milestones which write in stone the truth instead of what they actually are and always have been: a way to share data, observations, theories, hypothesis, and even assumptions on…

> This is an ivory tower view on what research papers should be (....)

It really isn't, and failing to understand what a scientific paper is shows a crass and fundamental misunderstanding of what science is and how it works. You will never arrive at a correct conclusion if all your premises are fundamentally wrong.

I mean, think about it. What do you think "peer review" is supposed to be? Why do you think these papers are accepted and published after being subjected to peer review?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_review

> This is de-facto a lockdown propaganda tool.

It really isn't, and it boggles the mind how easy you come up with conspiracy theories to find alternative explanations to obvious and undisputed facts. Just because you feel a finding is politically inconvenient and incompatible with your feelings and personal beliefs it doesn't mean the world is conspiring against you. In this case it just means you're talking about stuff you clearly know nothing about nor you care to learn, as is demonstrated by your use of the term "ivory tower" to try to attach your fundamental misconception of what a research paper is.

In fact, you should think your assertions through. I mean, you're somehow accusing a scientific paper of being rubber-stamped facts while at the same time complaining it's propaganda? Come on.

Please learn what science is and what is the role of the scientific paper in conducting research, and please stop making conspiracy theories up to fill in your knowledge gaps.

Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high

#229

Post by dageshi » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 10:43 AM UTC

anonymoushn wrote: post #161

GuB-42 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often see "copy this country" but often, it is simply not possible, policies are usually a result of each country specificities more than the other way around. For Taiwan. - It is an island - It has an effective, well centralized surveillance network - It has (presumably) an obedient population, or at least, one that don't think personal freedom includes the right to spread the disease - They were well prepared tha…

Sure, then copy Vietnam or Australia.

How do you copy being an Island?

How do you go back in time and get your population used to wearing masks (and having supply) at the beginning of the pandemic when it really matters?

Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high

#230

Post by thomasz » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 10:45 AM UTC

LeCow wrote: post #214

carlmr wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree we should have closed shops after this didn't work and then schools if that still hadn't worked. But they didn't course correct for 4 weeks where it was obviously not working. But the people I know kept to the private rules as much or as little as during the first lockdown, which seemed to work despite keeping public transport open. Which would enable similar transmissions as shops and schools.

it's barley transmitted in shops, restaurants and bars. if schools are open, it's pointless doing anything else. if schools are closed kids will still go out and play. basically you're screwed if you do and screwed if you don't. and less and less people will listen as time goes on while the virus mutates and selects for contagious variants.

We just do not have the means to detect transmission that happens outside of households and private parties. Data from countries that have working contact tracing procedures suggest that bars restaurants, gyms and so forth are indeed important drivers.