California’s coronavirus strain looks increasingly dangerous
sandiegouniontribune.com
sandiegouniontribune.com
https://twitter.com/BallouxFrancois/status/13643786462371102...
Prof Francois Balloux, director of UCL Genetics institute
Edit: analysis of article by Jeffrey Barrett of the Sanger institute
https://twitter.com/jcbarret/status/1364294846853308432?s=19
[L452R has been seen] over 150 times in the UK between October and now: 7 are B.1.427 or B.1.429, with the rest spanning 19 different lineages. This is a boring picture that shows we have seen this mutation several times but it has not grown ... It may be that something about the combination of mutations in B.1.427 and B.1.429 have different properties, and it may be that the upcoming pre-print has compelling data, but I don't think any conclusions can be drawn at present about this lineage based on press reports. 10/10
How would that even work? This is an RNA virus: is there a meiosis-like mechanism for two different RNA viruses infecting the same cell to exchange genes?
Maybe this strain explains the high prevalence of the disease in California despite relatively restrictive and early lockdown measures. Ive seen that cited several times here, relative to Florida, to argue that lockdowns don't make any difference.
CA's Covid measures were disastrous, adding economic misery on top of health misery for zero benefit. Don't let people distract us from that fact.
They eased lockdowns and the daily case and death count on the day they implemented the regional stay at home order was higher than on the day they revoked it, which was about a month ago, and since then the downward trend has continued.
What exactly are the more effective lockdown discipline?
Maybe it is allowing filming to go on without any hindrance, allowing outdoor kartering for films, but shutting down outdoor dining at the exact same location for regular folks who do not have multi million dollar budgets and political connections so they can loose everything they ever worked for?
The advice has never been about protecting you or anyone else in particular, it is about reducing the transmission in the general population. With that goal in mind, small benefits can have a major impact overall.
That we are still having this question raised after a year of the pandemic is embarrassing for humanity as a species.
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/m20-6817
The Howard review is, in general, of extremely low quality. The top-line conclusions of some of the cited articles are completely mis-interpreted, and the citations within are sloppy and misleading -- bold assertions are made without evidence, and the reader is led to assume that a leading/trailing citation provides support for the claim, when it does not. There are far better reviews of the available literature. Here is one:
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/masking-lack-of-evidence-with-...
The meta-study commissioned by the WHO is another:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
You'll note that they found a small positive effect for masks in the community, only when including and aggregating a large number of low-quality studies. They admit that the evidence base is weak.
In general, there's a great deal of uncertainty around the effectiveness of masks in the hands of the general public. There may be a small positive effect, but we simply don't know. One of the biggest mistakes of this pandemic has been the political weaponization of this issue, and the exaggeration of certainty -- on both sides of the debate.
I'm really surprised that masks turned out to be such a cause for drama. At the worst they caused discomfort, especially for people with big beards/prescription glasses, but if it turns out wearing masks helped just by a margin, isn't that already worth it, in the grand scheme of things? Isn't 1 live saved out of a 1000 already with the negatives?
It just baffles me.
I do think that of all of the things we have done in this pandemic, the act of forcing someone to wear something -- and on the face, no less -- is fairly obviously a politically fraught act. I'm not terribly surprised that the symbolism of the act became the story.
In smarter countries, people wear masks whenever they are sick as a thoughtful courtesy to protect those around them. I'd like to see that attitude worldwide.
I know you're being cheeky here, but just to be serious for a moment: there's a HUGE literature on the subject of condom use and public-health messaging from the 80s and the HIV crisis. Condoms are...not exactly popular, of course (the TL;DR is that shaming doesn't work very well. Honesty and education >> scolding and shaming when it comes to behavioral change that is intimate and unpleasant).
It's continually astounding to me how many lessons from that pandemic seem to have been forgotten.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02801-8
As for "politically fraught" - people are forced to wear things called clothes literally every day. Some are forced to wear business suits and other eccentric, uncomfortable, and context-specific attire.
People are also forced to wear seatbelts and act in other ways which show responsibility for public health - for example by not smoking in public areas.
The political point here is that masks - which have now been proven to be helpful - are only considered a 'politically fraught act' by people who want to politicise the Covid response.
For people who are rational about this, there is no issue.
For people who are hostile to public rationality, there is.
Statements like this help no one. "The science" is not a noun. It is not "in". There is a great deal of uncertainty in what we actually know about masks. The article you're claiming is definitive proof admits as much:
"being more definitive about how well they work or when to use them gets complicated. There are many types of mask, worn in a variety of environments. There are questions about people’s willingness to wear them, or wear them properly. Even the question of what kinds of study would provide definitive proof that they work is hard to answer."
Again, please read the Lancet, CEBM and DANMASK links I linked above. You will see that there is a great deal of uncertainty.
People said "Will masks protect us?" and scientifically, the answer is no. No mask will 100% protect you
Unfortunately people take that and run with it to mean masks are useless and do nothing at all. If this has taught us anything, is that you can't give the layperson scientific information because they don't really understand the impact.
If the message from the start had always been "No it won't completely protect you, but wearing any kind of mask will drastically slow the spread" then maybe people would've been more receptive (And maybe the US wouldn't have politicised mask wearing)
Again to echo the person you’re replying to, the fact we still have to have this conversation is embarrassing.
A scientist.
There are a great many things that we did during this pandemic that had no evidence whatsoever, and turned out to be wrong. Some turned out to be harmful (over-ventilation, for example). Are mask mandates one of these things? I have no idea. Neither do you.
It isn't wrong to admit that we don't know, because that's the first step to finding the answer.
Medical understanding of Covid has made huge strides over the last year, precisely because doctors and researchers never claimed to be omniscient about the virus.
Meanwhile the deniers are still claiming the virus is "just a bad case of flu" and "masks don't do anything" and "lockdowns don't work" in spite of the accumulated mountain of evidence that those statements are nonsense.
You have now commented twice in response to me, and in one post you cited an editorial in Nature as definitive proof of "the science" on masks, and now you are making black and white claims that would seem to group together people who question masks with "anti-vaxers" and other negative charicatures.
To the extent that I am making a claim here, it is that we need to be more circumspect in our discussions of science. I am advocating for less certainty, and more humility.
You seem to be making claims with a great deal of certainty.
> The one thing that defines fervent anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers, the "let's open for business while people are still dying" crowd, and others with bizarre beliefs is that they make their statements with absolute certainty, and with no admission that they might ever be wrong.
> Meanwhile the deniers are still claiming the virus is "just a bad case of flu" and "masks don't do anything" and "lockdowns don't work"
> There is no "uncertain marginal effect." The science is in, and it's clear.
> The political point here is that masks - which have now been proven to be helpful - are only considered a 'politically fraught act' by people who want to politicise the Covid response.
> For people who are rational about this, there is no issue. For people who are hostile to public rationality, there is.
All of these are examples of black/white thinking, straw-man and red-herring logical fallacies.
Prove it. So many assertions...so little actual evidence.
And for the record, I'm not talking about silly stuff like "wearing a mask raises my CO2 level". There's a very serious debate to be had about risk compensation -- because of the over-the-top messaging about masks, a large number of people think they're personally protected when wearing them. That can make people do risky things. Howard's review skims over the issue and pretends it is settled. It is not.
It's not clear at all that masks -- and in particular, mask mandates -- have a positive net effect. The RCTs on the subject certainly do not support strong claims of effectiveness.
You've made up your mind and all you're doing is hurting people. This is pointless and I'm not going to be fodder for more of your bullying.
If we cannot ask questions and discuss them rationally without being accused of "hurting people", science is dead. This is a fundamentally anti-intellectual reaction, it is a way of villainizing people who question your opinions, and pointing it out is not unkind.
Masks either don’t work in a meaningful way, or this pandemic is not meaningfully stopped by masks.
Our inability to stop exponential growth is not embarrassing. It is frightening how little the average human truly understands about exponential growth.
In a downpour, a car's windshield wipers may not be able to move fast enough to provide clear vision. This doesn't mean that they don't work or aren't making a significant improvement.
All masks have some improvement over the absence of a mask.
High-end masks have been mandatory in Berlin supermarkets for a while now.
tl:dr: Some indicators point to masks being useful but the data isn't conclusive and a lot of other factors might impact the data (such as other covid-19 related measures that help in keeping infection rates low) but these two quotes should be sufficient reason to wear them:
“There’s a lot more we would like to know,” says Vos, who contributed to the analysis. “But given that it is such a simple, low-cost intervention with potentially such a large impact, who would not want to use it?”
It’s not the only solution, says Gandhi, “but I think it is a profoundly important pillar of pandemic control”. As Digard puts it: “Masks work, but they are not infallible. And, therefore, keep your distance.”
Have them stand across the room from you, without wearing a mask, and have them cough at you. Then have them move a step closer and do it again. Note where you can first feel the cough.
Then repeat but with them wearing a mask. You should find that they have to get much closer.
Second experiment. Having them at the place they ended up after the first experiment, have them cough at you without their mask on. Not subjectively how much cough seems to have reached you. Now have them put on their mask, and repeatedly cough at you until you feel the same total amount of cough has reached you. You should find that it takes many more coughs on their part.
For a virus that is expelled when you expel air and then sinks rather than lingering indefinitely anything that reduces the horizontal range of someone's expulsions, such as the above experiments demonstrate masks do, must decrease the number of viruses you will get from someone who is spreading it when you pass by them.
The only legitimate reasons are associated with anxiety issues, which aren't medically exempt.
The CDC does recognize intellectual and developmental disabilities as legitimate medical exemptions, which I believe is the most common case we are seeing the US.
Policy must account for people not all doing the correct thing; for people who think it’s overblown or a conspiracy; etc.
Not just because jail is a health risk all by itself, but because compliance with the law depends on people collectively agreeing that the law is just, and excessive punishment does the opposite (or so I hear).
(of course "the" media and "the" government don't actually exist, but just for the sake of simplicity)
The problem with Covid-19 (the original strain and also most of its variants) is that it is not THAT deadly, which results in hosts remaining alive, and transmitting on the disease.
Yes, what I am saying above sounds counter-intuitive and even harsh, but this is the case.
Long term, I see the more deadly variants dying off, and the less deadly variants remaining with us forever.
This would be true if it killed people quickly. But if it kills people slowly, then it is not necessarily true. AFAIK, there is no indication that it kills people more quickly than the other variants.
Irresponsible.
Those new mutations all have a much higher transmissibility rate because they cause much less severe harm, have a much higher asymptotic rate, ie go undetected, same as with kids spreading around the flu.
The original variant can be compared to the common cold, but just with an IFR of 20%, whilst the common cold has an IFR of 8% against the target groups. (Elderly over 75, plus broken immunity system)
The mutations go now against the common cold variants, the problem is really the extreme high R rate, naturally at around 3.5. You cannot stop that with lockdowns, only by protecting the target groups. We saw that this winter that the virus escapes all strict measures. Of course 3.5 is uncontrollable that way. That's what all experts said for a year.
Vaccination helps a lot, protecting the elderly helps most, and less severe mutations (gradual degration) also help a lot reaching herd immunity.
Eventually it goes to the common cold, just much more problematic for the old and ill. The 8% natural death rate for those with the common cold is big enough, the expected 10-15% even more, but no cause for hysteria. Cancer, heart deaths and traffic accidents are still far more problematic, more than by factor 10.
All statistical measurements in areas with a high rate of mutations show that it's much less severe. In percent and in absolute numbers. Hospitalization goes down.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2095096/
Severity of the latest mutations: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.28.21250680v...
It's like Hollywood writers are writing our timeline now for dramatic effect.
Maybe they need to upgrade it from covid-19 to covid-2021.
At which point does a variant get a new version number?
Curing the Flu is a solution. The public wants this, not a flu shot, no matter how impossible the task is. A flu shot every year is just band-aiding the problem, and redelivering said problem every year.
But, we’d also need to rout out all the reservoirs of flu virus in agriculture and nature that have the potential to jump species back to humans. That’s a lot of ducks, chickens, pigs, whales, horses, seals, etc to vaccinate or cull.
For example, the 2009 “swine flu” pandemic virus is called H1N1-pdm-09 (or just H1N1/09) in literature.
> Chiu also cautioned that this increased risk of death may not be a sign that the variant is inherently more lethal. Rather, it might simply be a reflection that its greater transmissibility caused hospitals to become so overwhelmed and healthcare resources to be stretched so thin that more deaths were the result — especially in Southern California.
from https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2021-02-23/california-...