SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)
- Thread starter Don't Kill Bill
- Start date
Nope. 100% scientifically inaccurate. There have been literally thousands of mutations spread out across dozens of countries. We don't blame the flu virus for mutating every year on bad management, we just assess it and adapt to it because it's a biological inevitability.
Here is just one of the strains in Australia, by the way. It is also not bad luck but an inevitability. The type of mutation is just random.
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Getting to the stage that I actually hate this man for his lies, corruption and utter incompetence.
see 3rd tweet: Seems like he is finally under internal party pressure now
see 3rd tweet: Seems like he is finally under internal party pressure now
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Seems like pretty clear instruction.
Yet few will actually blame the populace for its selfishness & stupidity.
Its crystal clear, but I find it impossible to believe they couldn't have predicted the earlier, given the new variant was discovered on 20th September. Opening up London in early December was so crudely cynical.
Hang on. Surely the more chance a virus has to spread the greater the chance of it mutating in a significant way.
I’d love to know if @starkie has changed his opinion now about mixing in pubs with his neighbours for carvery dinners
More transmission means more mutation but it is absolutely not the case that "mutations are only really possible in areas of poor response". That's not a question of interpretation but a question of basic scientific facts. It's mistating the facts to advance an agenda.
Here is an article talking about the mutations at the end of the last month. Here's a quick snapshot just to establisht the very simple point that mutations have happened in areas of strong responses and poor responses.
a Maximum likelihood phylogeny for complete SARS-CoV-2 genomes. Tips are coloured by the continental region of sampling. D614G haplotype status is annotated by the presence/absence coloured columns (positions 241, 3037, 14,408 and 23,403, respectively). b Viral assemblies available from 99 countries displayed on a world map. c Within-continent pairwise genetic distance on a random subsample of 300 assemblies from each continental region. Colours in all three panels represent continents where isolates were collected. Magenta: Africa; Turquoise: Asia; Blue: Europe; Purple: North America; Yellow: Oceania; Dark Orange: South America according to metadata annotations available on GISAID (https://www.gisaid.org) and provided in Supplementary Data 1. The map in Fig. 1b was created using the R package rworldmap using the public domain Natural Earth data set.
There are 1,384 "strains" of the virus in Australia noted in the GISAID. You can download the data by clicking the "1" just above.
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That’s an every day occurrence at my sons school. Totally brazen. The school has practically begged people to mask up after 3 outbreaks in 14 days
It’s not as though the populace wasn’t aware of the dangers of this virus in September. Even a cursory glance online tells one that.
The continual absolving of people causing this virus to continue to spread & kill is childishly embarrassing.
Ah sorry. I didn’t read they were saying that.
One thing that’s not being picked up yet is how hard vaccinating the population in an area is when the cases are so high. Putting aside the obvious logistical challenges of staff sickness I know three people who had their first dose who have now tested positive for COVID in the days afterwards. The current guidance is you can’t have the vaccine within 28 days of a COVID positive test which means their second dose schedule is totally messed up.
What do you mean?
It was herd thinking that left the West defenceless against Covid
As of today, Taiwan’s death toll is 7, compared with almost 70,000 in the UK.
Successful models for tackling the pandemic were in plain sight but we couldn’t bring ourselves to go Asian
Matthew Syed
thetimes.co.uk
It was herd thinking that left the West defenceless against Covid
Matthew Syed
6-8 minutes
Well, who saw that coming, except most of us? New, tighter restrictions have been imposed on London and the southeast, because of a new strain of the virus. The kind of Christmas many had hoped for has effectively been cancelled. What is certain is that the latest about-turn will be pounced on by critics as yet more evidence of a chronically incompetent government.
But it might be worth pausing for a moment and taking a fresh look at this tumultuous year. For when you plot the graphs of daily infections in the period since January, you cannot help being struck by the similarity of outcomes between the UK, Italy, France and, to a lesser extent, Germany. It is as if western countries have been looking at what “peer” nations are doing and then dancing to the same tune.
This was true in March, when the UK felt it could no longer go it alone in allowing the virus to spread after Italy, France and Germany had locked down earlier in the month. It was true in early summer, when one western nation opening up put pressure on others to follow suit. It is also the pattern today, with European nations loosening up for Christmas after America had done so for Thanksgiving — with the UK only belatedly changing course.
The point is that the similarity of the graphs across the G7 subset of western nations has less to do with the properties of the pathogen than the psychology of staying close to the herd. It is easier, politically speaking, to fit in with one’s peers.
But this raises a question that will, I think, baffle future historians. Why did western nations largely follow one another when there were vastly better role models? Taiwan has endured few deaths from Covid, and its economy has barely been affected, growing this year by more than 2.5%. By controlling the virus with precision techniques such as tech-enabled contract tracing, it didn’t need to resort to crude lockdowns or cancel national celebrations. And it didn’t have to turn cancer and other patients away from hospitals, because there was always spare capacity to deal with them.
If nothing else, doesn’t this example show that the “trade-offs” that have dominated debate in the West are largely imaginary? With competent governance, there is no trade-off between lives and livelihoods any more than there is between Covid and non-Covid deaths. By controlling transmission, it is possible to keep the economy open, hospitals open and hospitality open, too. The economy and public health are not in conflict; they are synergistic.
The western debate on civil liberties also seems absurd in this context. I mean, would you rather cede a small amount of personal data to help public health authorities identify super-spreaders, as the Taiwanese have done, enabling you to send your children to school, go to work and live your life, or withhold this data and refuse to wear masks, allowing faster spread of the virus, leading to the mass incarceration known as lockdown?
So why didn’t we put every effort into following the success stories in east Asia? I can’t help wondering if it was not for scientific reasons but cultural ones. When I have raised the east Asian experience since March, a common response has been: they are not like us! They are automata who do what they are told! It could never work here! We are individualists!
This is, at best, misleading. Western populations were highly compliant at the start of the pandemic (albeit with a huge drop-off in the UK after the Barnard Castle incident).
Moreover, it is not as if Taiwan is a collectivist paradise. The nation is a vibrant capitalist democracy of 24 million, with a proud tradition of dissent. As the tech magazine Wired put it: “The democracy activists who risked their lives during the martial law era were not renowned for their willingness to accept government orders or preach Confucian social harmony.”
It is true that pre-existing differences played a role in the varying outcomes. East Asia may have benefited from a slightly different genetic strain of the virus striking particular areas, and citizens may have superior natural resistance. They had also had the “benefit” of Sars, which provided the impetus to make better preparations.
But doesn’t this reinforce the point? If Sars had hit America or France, we would have become infinitely more alert to these blasted pathogens. We would have provided acres of coverage. We would have gained a deeper understanding of exponentiality, rather than mocking Asian nations for “overreacting” to a handful of cases. In other words, the reason we didn’t learn from Asia back then is, I suspect, the same as why we failed to learn now.
Indeed, the more I look at the international comparisons, the more I glimpse the influence of psychology. When you look at the similarity of the waves in western nations, you can’t help seeing herd mentality (perhaps “transnational groupthink” is a better phrase) at work. The rate of deaths per million population in France, Italy, Spain, the UK and America is almost identical. But superimpose east Asian nations and you will see a family of graphs utterly different from the West’s — and almost identical with one another.
This explanation carries even more weight when you look at our historical inability to look beyond our cultural horizons. Isn’t the entire postwar history of the West a succession of misadventures based on a catastrophic ignorance of the places in which we were intervening? Think of Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, to name but three. The academic Amy Chua has described these as “group-blind mistakes of colossal proportions”.
As of today, Taiwan’s death toll is seven, compared with almost 70,000 in the UK. If such a success had occurred in France, there would have been discussion about nothing else. Every meeting in No 10, the Treasury, the Department of Health and Sage would have been about reproducing the success of tech-enhanced tracing, isolating and sophisticated border control. Instead, we have been obsessed with, well, Sweden, the one western nation to have done it a bit differently, but with precious little to teach.
When the full history of Covid is written, other factors will doubtless prove significant in explaining the gulf in outcomes, not least luck. We should also note that western nations led the way on vaccines, thank goodness. But when it comes to containing Covid, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that many of the wealthiest nations failed not because of insufficient capacity but because of narrow horizons. That, at least, is my reading of an otherwise baffling year.
@MatthewSyed
It was herd thinking that left the West defenceless against Covid
Matthew Syed
6-8 minutes
Well, who saw that coming, except most of us? New, tighter restrictions have been imposed on London and the southeast, because of a new strain of the virus. The kind of Christmas many had hoped for has effectively been cancelled. What is certain is that the latest about-turn will be pounced on by critics as yet more evidence of a chronically incompetent government.
But it might be worth pausing for a moment and taking a fresh look at this tumultuous year. For when you plot the graphs of daily infections in the period since January, you cannot help being struck by the similarity of outcomes between the UK, Italy, France and, to a lesser extent, Germany. It is as if western countries have been looking at what “peer” nations are doing and then dancing to the same tune.
This was true in March, when the UK felt it could no longer go it alone in allowing the virus to spread after Italy, France and Germany had locked down earlier in the month. It was true in early summer, when one western nation opening up put pressure on others to follow suit. It is also the pattern today, with European nations loosening up for Christmas after America had done so for Thanksgiving — with the UK only belatedly changing course.
The point is that the similarity of the graphs across the G7 subset of western nations has less to do with the properties of the pathogen than the psychology of staying close to the herd. It is easier, politically speaking, to fit in with one’s peers.
But this raises a question that will, I think, baffle future historians. Why did western nations largely follow one another when there were vastly better role models? Taiwan has endured few deaths from Covid, and its economy has barely been affected, growing this year by more than 2.5%. By controlling the virus with precision techniques such as tech-enabled contract tracing, it didn’t need to resort to crude lockdowns or cancel national celebrations. And it didn’t have to turn cancer and other patients away from hospitals, because there was always spare capacity to deal with them.
If nothing else, doesn’t this example show that the “trade-offs” that have dominated debate in the West are largely imaginary? With competent governance, there is no trade-off between lives and livelihoods any more than there is between Covid and non-Covid deaths. By controlling transmission, it is possible to keep the economy open, hospitals open and hospitality open, too. The economy and public health are not in conflict; they are synergistic.
The western debate on civil liberties also seems absurd in this context. I mean, would you rather cede a small amount of personal data to help public health authorities identify super-spreaders, as the Taiwanese have done, enabling you to send your children to school, go to work and live your life, or withhold this data and refuse to wear masks, allowing faster spread of the virus, leading to the mass incarceration known as lockdown?
So why didn’t we put every effort into following the success stories in east Asia? I can’t help wondering if it was not for scientific reasons but cultural ones. When I have raised the east Asian experience since March, a common response has been: they are not like us! They are automata who do what they are told! It could never work here! We are individualists!
This is, at best, misleading. Western populations were highly compliant at the start of the pandemic (albeit with a huge drop-off in the UK after the Barnard Castle incident).
Moreover, it is not as if Taiwan is a collectivist paradise. The nation is a vibrant capitalist democracy of 24 million, with a proud tradition of dissent. As the tech magazine Wired put it: “The democracy activists who risked their lives during the martial law era were not renowned for their willingness to accept government orders or preach Confucian social harmony.”
It is true that pre-existing differences played a role in the varying outcomes. East Asia may have benefited from a slightly different genetic strain of the virus striking particular areas, and citizens may have superior natural resistance. They had also had the “benefit” of Sars, which provided the impetus to make better preparations.
But doesn’t this reinforce the point? If Sars had hit America or France, we would have become infinitely more alert to these blasted pathogens. We would have provided acres of coverage. We would have gained a deeper understanding of exponentiality, rather than mocking Asian nations for “overreacting” to a handful of cases. In other words, the reason we didn’t learn from Asia back then is, I suspect, the same as why we failed to learn now.
Indeed, the more I look at the international comparisons, the more I glimpse the influence of psychology. When you look at the similarity of the waves in western nations, you can’t help seeing herd mentality (perhaps “transnational groupthink” is a better phrase) at work. The rate of deaths per million population in France, Italy, Spain, the UK and America is almost identical. But superimpose east Asian nations and you will see a family of graphs utterly different from the West’s — and almost identical with one another.
This explanation carries even more weight when you look at our historical inability to look beyond our cultural horizons. Isn’t the entire postwar history of the West a succession of misadventures based on a catastrophic ignorance of the places in which we were intervening? Think of Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, to name but three. The academic Amy Chua has described these as “group-blind mistakes of colossal proportions”.
As of today, Taiwan’s death toll is seven, compared with almost 70,000 in the UK. If such a success had occurred in France, there would have been discussion about nothing else. Every meeting in No 10, the Treasury, the Department of Health and Sage would have been about reproducing the success of tech-enhanced tracing, isolating and sophisticated border control. Instead, we have been obsessed with, well, Sweden, the one western nation to have done it a bit differently, but with precious little to teach.
When the full history of Covid is written, other factors will doubtless prove significant in explaining the gulf in outcomes, not least luck. We should also note that western nations led the way on vaccines, thank goodness. But when it comes to containing Covid, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that many of the wealthiest nations failed not because of insufficient capacity but because of narrow horizons. That, at least, is my reading of an otherwise baffling year.
@MatthewSyed
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If you read this journal on the D614G mutation you'll get a better understanding of why things don't work as quickly as you'd like them to. There has been over 17,000 strains in the UK that were sent for genomic sequencing.
I don't think it's about absolving people, I think it's about the role messaging has in encouraging people to behave correctly. We've had months of government ministers talking as if the problems of Manchester and other northern towns were somehow because Andy Burnham was talking too much.
It's telling that in December we've seen reports like the ones talking about Kay Burley with a table of her friends at a restaurant in London, and Matt Hancock doing the same (though doubtless his mates and his business contacts are the same people - so he probably expensed that one). That was happening in Tier 2 - no indoor household mixing - London. And happened despite Hancock knowing that London should be in Tier 3 - no restaurants at all.
Gambling and over-optimism at the top, blame placing in the public statements, complacency as the end product. If Burley and Hancock thought it was a good time to have a meal with their mates, they were just behaving like their friends/family and lots of other people swam along with it.
Finally some travel bans coming into play. The half arsed nature of how the West has handled this whole thing is a shambles. Will be seen as such a huge failure in the future.
interesting read. Thanks for sharing
Not sure how effective that will be with the border still open, mind. People could just go from Britain > NI > ROI. Though I suppose the added friction and limited number of flights into Belfast would have *some* impact.
I honestly cannot speak to the specifics of the UK struggle with the virus as I am an American. This thread is very UK focused, no worries about that, but I just don’t know all the players over there nor do I know all the minutiae. Much of the reason for my comments like these stems from the absurdity found in the minds of large swaths of people in my country who operate in a state of selfishness & hubris although they know the dangers of this virus yet often don’t employ even a modicum of care when around others.
My criticisms of the populace aren’t specifically geared towards UK residents. My criticisms of those who are trying to absolve the populace & perhaps themselves by trying to blame the government for the shape in which we currently find ourselves focus on those who somehow think that if the government, any government, was spot on in its handling of the virus, made correct decisions at every turn, that this pandemic would be far less impactful & perhaps somewhat over. It’s this insistence on blaming government yet not blaming ourselves or each other that is so incredibly short sighted & naive that it borders in childish. So many on here blame poor governmental communication for the state of the virus when very little of us credibly assimilate news from our governments in the best of times & do what they ask of us, that we are beholden to governments for news & that we don’t get our news from other sources, that we wouldn’t or don’t know how dangerous this virus is to our ways of life if our respective governments weren’t honest with us. Do we actually expect our governments to be honest with us at all times? Claiming ‘woe is us’ that they obviously are not vis à vis to the pandemic is puerile & two faced.
I wonder which is a better government right now in handling this, the US or the UK? It might be a better comparison to evaluate specific states v. the UK due to population & size especially how the Us federal government has abdicated covid responsibility to the states, but, we are basically wide open as a country right now with a few exceptions although we know exactly what will befall us here in a matter of days or weeks.
Way too late on travel bans & way too late on banning silly end of year rituals, especially over here.
The defence of government makes no sense, we as individuals can all blame the public because we don't have an influence but the government does. They told people x,y,z were illegal and then announced x,y,z was now legal. What exactly did they expect to happen? Those who don't follow in detail will have assumed their behaviours if no longer banned were now safe.
Until i see some data that shows me an infection trend that doesn't fit loosening behaviours then I'm blaming the government. You only have to look at google mobility reports to see the uptick matches travel especially to retail.
Can someone tell me how the rest of the world is reacting to this new virus strain in the South East?
Obviously, I can see that countries are closing their borders - but - what's the general consensus.
Is that strain just here (SE UK) at the moment? Or has it already spread? Did it start here? Is the 75% more infectious considered correct?
Obviously, I can see that countries are closing their borders - but - what's the general consensus.
Is that strain just here (SE UK) at the moment? Or has it already spread? Did it start here? Is the 75% more infectious considered correct?
Norwegian papers said some days ago it is the same strain as earlier found in Denmark (not the one from minks) and other countries.
According to this and this, it's in most parts of the UK but at much lower levels, is definitely in the Netherlands, Denmark and Australia, is most likely in multiple other European countries, might have spread as far as South Africa, and so far evidence points back to it originating in the UK. More testing needed to actually understand the effect on transmission.
Thanks @Brwned and @BootsyCollins
So, if the 75% more infectious is correct, in all probability it will take over as the dominant strain of COVID all over Europe and probably elsewhere over the new few months.
If it's 75% more infectious, we need to lock down harder. until vaccines
I'm feeling really depressed about this. Everyone I know in Tier 1 areas is feeling really depressed.
So, if the 75% more infectious is correct, in all probability it will take over as the dominant strain of COVID all over Europe and probably elsewhere over the new few months.
If it's 75% more infectious, we need to lock down harder. until vaccines
I'm feeling really depressed about this. Everyone I know in Tier 1 areas is feeling really depressed.
You’ve literally made my point in your opening line, then added a shower of noise.
More transmission = More mutation.
Poor response = More transmission.
I said very clearly, had an area that had responded well, encountered an unhelpful mutation, sympathy would be easy to find. it could be written off to bad luck.
You can’t have among the worst global responses, then say “Oh no, who could have possibly predicted doing it this badly would raise our chances of encountering this exact problem”.
That is quite a grim way to put it but certainly plausible. I think the European countries might handle their borders differently if they identify the spread and come to the conclusion it is much more transmissible, and so for some of the countries in e.g. the Nordics, it isn't inevitable that it will become the dominant strain. But that obviously brings a lot of implications with it.
I would prefer to take the optimistic viewpoint that if people are sufficiently convinced this new strain is that much more easily spread, people will self-regulate better without the need for more draconian interventions. We'll look at is a new and present danger as in March, rather than this thing that's just always there that we just have to get on with. People will take it more seriously, get back to washing their hands more vigorously, make more of an effort to brave the winter and go for walks rather than chill out in other homes, etc.. Difficult to maintain that optimistic viewpoint after being kept up all night by a bunch of people my age having a house party in an Airbnb while I'm on day 9 of self-isolation post-travel and the hospitals in our area are overflowing, but hope is all we've got...
I wish I could share your optimistic view but I cant. Sadly there are a portion of all populations who wont react to a problem until it is hurting them first hand, its sort of like antivaccers, the absence of fear issue. Even if they end up being a relatively small number with this virus and new strain its still going to be too many. Its going to take clear rules and empathetic but firm policing of those rules to get a hold of this. That and the vaccine.
Girl in work tested positive. Was in contact with her Tuesday and Wednesday.
Luckily I took a test yesterday, so hopefully that gives me the all clear, but right now not looking likely.
Luckily I took a test yesterday, so hopefully that gives me the all clear, but right now not looking likely.
I admire your optimism for humans doing the right thing but I can’t share it. We’ve tried everything apart from Asian style lockdowns and completely locking the borders down - no doubt I’ll get replies about how we can’t lock the borders but uk and ireland are islands, they can lock their borders down to everything apart from food coming & medical supplies coming in. It’s time to take a harder look at it imho before January gets away from us
Good luck fella
Various people have come out that this mutation in particular, has been known about since Sept and Oct and the transmissibility of it was known then as well.
So you're incorrect.
Some of the early posts in this thread haven’t aged well
It’s a strange bug. I was positive. My wife and son negative. They definitely came into contact with me more than your colleague I’m guessing!
It depends what you mean by personal judgement. There is a difference between someone wanting to go to a party for example, and wanting to see their loved ones at Christmas becuase they are worried about how they will cope otherwise. If someone self isolates for 2 weeks, then sees another household who have self isolated for 2 weeks, the risk is literally zero. The problem is that if you let everyone make that judegment, a lot of people would just skip out the self isolating bit. I don't think it's a good idea at all for everyonto just be making their own mind up, but I just don't think you can judge people particularly harshly for coming to their own conclusions at this point. With the exception of the just obviously ignorant ones, and even then, who knows what they are going through.
If the rules were clear, and the message was consistent, and the relevant science was made available to back it up, I think then you can judge people or expect them to stick to guidelines. But for example, if I went and saw my family in Derby, I have no idea if I even would be breaking the rules, because the rules are all over the fecking place. Technically I could say I have formed a support bubble with them, then go up there and infect them all with covid, and not be breaking the rules. I'm still expected to go into people's homes as part of my job but am told it's ok to then go and see my dad...but I can't see my less vulnerable brother or sister, and they also can't see my dad, even though they pose significantly less of a risk to him than I do. I'd be legally obliged to send my kids into school at a time when infection is spreading mostly among school aged people, and a time of year when minimal actual learning in school occurs, even if a vulnerable person was living with them at home...but then they get told 4 days before christmas that christmas is cancelled and they can't see anyone, because we have to do everything we can to stop people transmitting the virus.. When the rules are that idiotic it's hard to pin infection rises on people ignoring them. For a start its impossible to even prove who is and isn't ignoring them. It also becomes harder to stop people making personal ill judgements, because the last thing anyone wants to do in a crisis is follow the advice of an idiot, and unfortunately the scientists are relying on Boris to relay messages for them, which is a bit like Homer Simpson telling you how to avert a nuclear meltdown.
I mean at the start of all this I'd assumed it would drag on for quite a long time but I also assumed our government would get better at handling it. They actually seem to be making more and more of a mess of it. Cancelling Christmas this late is going to have such a limited effect of damage limitation that it will more than likely be outweighed by the damage that decision will cause through people panicking, ignoring it, or being hit mentally or financially. I don't see how this "we only found out on Friday" excuse washes at all. If the new strain was 70% more transmittable the data would have been quite clearly showing that for some considerable time now...and you suspect it probably has and that Boris and co have just chosen to ignore it and hope it goes away.
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Only because they allowed the BLM marches or it would have all kicked off pretty majorly then. They've passed laws since to ban protesting so you can guess what will happen the next time people decide to protest about something...and I suspect cancelling Christmas 4 days before Christmas will stir up emotions in a lot of the anti lockdown brigade. There's also the brexit fun very close on the horizon, so I think it's on more of a knife edge than it may appear.
If you look you can find some pretty interesting videos of the last anti lockdown protest. That was only a few hundred more angry people away from being a trigger point.
Sorry if this has been covered but I haven't been in this thread lately.
Do we know if the mutated strain is any weaker symptoms-wise or is it just as bad and more infectious?