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

japantimes.co.jp

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

#281

Post by hnlmorg »

ethbr0 wrote: post #254
hnlmorg wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Taiwanese people aren’t obedient. You should see how they drive. ... > They wear masks without flaking out about it as slavery or being against their will or whatever nonsense you guys are on about back home in the west. The 2nd part is what the GP was talking about with regards to 'obedience'. In some western countries like the US and UK, even the simple request for individuals to wear a mask is seen by some as an…

> UK and US has also fostered a culture where everyone's voice is deemed equal, even the idiots I've thought about this a lot as the pandemic and reaction unfolded. My feeling is that it's a little more nuanced. From my perspective, it goes like this: (a) politics co-opts science, and (some) scientists become political (for career reasons), (b) political news media puts narrative-supporting "experts" on a pedestal (t…

I think far it's simpler than that: people just generally don't like to have their ideals challenged. Worse still is that politicians and the press back research when it suits their narrative and dismiss it when it contradicts their narrative. Which creates a precedence for "free thinkers" to also accept or reject any evidence that falls outside of their own chosen narrative.

Social media compounds things here because it allows people do get swallowed into this world of like minded people (aka the "echo chamber").

There's a fair amount on Wikipedia about the psychology at play which causes this. There's names for it all, all of which I can't recall because I've hit the Christmas spirits. Hopefully someone sober can be more helpful than I.

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

#282

Post by wyiske »

orblivion wrote: post #130
CWuestefeld wrote: post #96

How is this news at all? The virus has been mutating and throwing off different strains all along. There are entire websites devoted to tracking these, e.g., [1] Perhaps this is just the normal operation of American media to exaggerate the negative side of the situation? [2] [1] https://nextstrain.org/sars-cov-2/ [2] PDF link: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w28110/w281...

It's news if there's anything notable about the strain. More deadly, faster spreading, potentialy resistant to the vaccines. So far UK and South Africa have two strains that are faster spreading (and hopefully that's the only difference). If there's nothing special about the one from Japan, I bet that this is just getting attention because the other two are in the news. Either news orgs jumping on a bandwagon or HN r…

The South African variant is almost certainly not spreading faster because of the variant but because there were super spreader events like recently 1000 people tested positive after going to a night club [1]. Indoor weddings, funerals, and other big events have contributed too. While people wear masks (badly) outdoors and in shops, I think the root cause is bars, clubs, shebeens, etc. The government is also reluctant to introduce a new lockdown for fear of the damage to the economy.

I’ve just come from the UK, and while rules were less strict for a while, and people weren’t wearing masks as much, I’m less certain if people were social distancing. We certainly were in preparation for travel, but I imagine schools, college holidays, etc contributed just as much as any variant.

[1] https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2020-12-08-130...

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

#283

Post by lenkite »

dageshi wrote: post #227
m_mueller wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 on…

4) Nod and smile but disregard everything the CCP says.

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

#284

Post by tailspin2019 »

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 get that Vincent is burned out and has a knee jerk reaction, if I had to deal with all the insanity around the Hydrochloroquine crap I would be too.

Totally agree on this.

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

#285

Post by tailspin2019 »

Ntrails wrote: post #216
tailspin2019 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But which action? In the UK, my view is the action to take was very clearly to dial back the public's expectations of having a 5 day "free for all" period of relaxation of our restrictions over Christmas. This 5 day period, as originally planned, was going to lead to massive cross-country travel, plenty of it being completely unnecessary, with no doubt a lot of risk taking in the spirit of "it's Christmas" and an i…

> This is clearly a tough time for a lot of people, and many families will be spending Christmas apart and will find this very hard for all sorts of reasons. Honestly, I think people are being incredibly relaxed about the fact that lockdown restrictions are incredibly expensive to the mental health of swathes of the population. I am not claiming that letting covid kill more people would be better - but I wish there w…

Good point. It's a really difficult balance to strike.

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

#286

Post by gnusty_gnurc »

SomeoneFromCA wrote: post #94
gnusty_gnurc wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're saying the studies are all wrong based on your a priori reasoning that interventions so far have failed? Make a convincing study to disprove them.

Asymptomatic transmission might be not very high, but presymptomatic transmission is very high. It is well established fact, that people are the most contagious right before onset of the symptoms.Keep in mind that the symptoms might be very mild.

> Asymptomatic transmission might be not very high, but presymptomatic transmission is very high.

Actually if you read the meta-analysis I linked, 0.7% secondary attack rate covers both presymptomatic and asymptomatic.

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

#287

Post by tomxor »

wokwokwok wrote: post #221
tomxor wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I did not suggest doing nothing, please see my original comment.

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

#288

Post by fomine3 »

scarmig wrote: post #100
starkd wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's because it's an island. All the islands are doing better than whole continents. You can't contain it unless you go full bore like the chinese - locking people into their homes.

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…

You can't say that US is virtually island same as South Korea because US isn't on war with Canada or Mexico.

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

#289

Post by randomsearch »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #277
randomsearch wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worth noting that you can’t test a hypothesis from the data you used to formulate it. I haven’t seen any work on this variant that doesn’t fall into that trap.

I would really, really hope that they are using a good cross-validation strategy (as they'll definitely need it).

cross validation won't save you in this situation. it's a subtle point, but you can't say "omg this strain is increasing and it must therefore be more contagious" and then show that it is more contagious by showing it is increasing... this is counter-intuitive even to most scientists, in my experience. I remember when I learnt this during my PhD. I suspect many people high up in academia don't understand this point.

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

#290

Post by randomsearch »

randomsearch wrote: post #289
disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would really, really hope that they are using a good cross-validation strategy (as they'll definitely need it).

cross validation won't save you in this situation. it's a subtle point, but you can't say "omg this strain is increasing and it must therefore be more contagious" and then show that it is more contagious by showing it is increasing... this is counter-intuitive even to most scientists, in my experience. I remember when I learnt this during my PhD. I suspect many people high up in academia don't understand this point.

an observation that may help: as your stats at time t+1 are dependent on stats at time t, you cannot separate your validation set from the set you used to perform exploratory data analysis - they are highly interdependent.
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