It’s not that you can look at a viral genome and say “Ah yes, that one’s better at spreading.” And if you notice that a particular variant is spreading faster, that may be because the variant is better at spreading, or it may just be, for instance, that it happens to be prevalent in an area where there’s a lot of transmission. There’s a lot of regional variation in what strains are where; if a new strain happens to arise in a place where, say, fewer people can work from home, then it will look like it’s good at transmission when in fact it’s just lucky. That happened early on, says Birney: the D614G mutation became the dominant one in Europe after it arose in May. It may have had a slight growth advantage, he says, although “the jury is very much still out” on that; “it’s hard to work out if it was just random chance that got it to the top or not”.
In this case, though, there are reasons to think that it probably is more effective at spreading. The New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (NERVTAG) looked at four strands of evidence and they all centred on the B.1.1.7 strain being around 70% more effective at transmission, although there is a lot of uncertainty around that figure.
There is a theoretical reason to think it’s more transmissible, as well. The new strain had 17 “non-synonymous” mutations when it was first detected — that is, mutations which actually affect its output (there are a further six “synonymous” ones, which don’t). It’s not clear, by the way, how B.1.1.7 ended up with so many mutations. But often, multiple mutations are seen when a virus infects someone with a compromised immune system. In those patients, the virus can stay in the system for weeks and months, rather than a few days; they are often then treated with convalescent plasma. The preprint speculates that something like that may have happened here.
Birney, and Babak Javid, an immunology lab director at the University of California San Francisco, all think that is plausible, although there is no direct evidence for it. Adam Kucharski, a mathematical epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, draws an analogy with antibiotic resistance: if you nuke a microbe with a full course of antibiotics, it will just die, so it won’t mutate into a resistant form. If you don’t give it antibiotics at all, it will have no pressure to mutate. But when you use antibiotics for a bit, those microbes which are a bit more resistant will tend to survive, and resistance will emerge. It’s where there are half-measures, weak selection pressures over a long time, that pathogens mutate into new forms: a virus that lives for a while in someone with a weak immune system and treated with partially effective treatments will throw out new, experimental mutations. It’s well documented.
Suggested readingHow dangerous is the Covid mutation?
By David Engelthaler
Whether or not that’s exactly what happened, B.1.1.7 definitely has several mutations, and the most notable one is a deletion: two RNA “letters” found in the main SARS-Cov2 strain have been removed.
That same mutation, 69-70del, has cropped up in a few other places. One was the Danish mink outbreak that was reported a few weeks ago; it has also been spotted in Lyon. But they are different lineages: the same mutation has happened independently. That is, says Javid, reason to think that the mutation is making the virus more transmissible. “I was sceptical,” he says, “but the same mutation has arisen in several places. If it’s random mutation it’d be less likely to keep appearing, so that’s strong evidence.” Another mutation found in B.1.17 has also cropped up in another new variant seen in South Africa.
Javid’s suspicion, and it’s only a suspicion, is that the mutations make the virus a bit harder for your immune system to kill, so it survives a little longer in the bloodstream. If you have the virus for 10% longer, then, all else being equal, you’ll be 10% more likely to pass it on. “My gut instinct is that this increases the contagious window by six hours, or 24 hours, or something,” he says. “I’m trying to think of biological ways this might result in more contagiousness, and my working hypothesis is if it’s very slightly more resistant to neutralisation by antibodies.”
It’s worth talking about testing, which is where we got a bit lucky. Testing for whether someone has a virus, using a PCR test, is usually just Y or N: the test finds the viral RNA or it doesn’t. Meanwhile, to track the spread of different variants of that virus, you have to get samples and sequence their genome, which is a longer and more involved process.
But PCR tests work by looking for a few short lengths of the viral RNA, not the whole thing. And by lucky chance, the standard PCR test looks at three different chunks, one of which happened to include the two areas removed by 69-70del mutation.
This doesn’t mean that the PCR tests don’t work. The tests look at three sites “precisely to have belt and braces” when hunting the virus, says Birney. So PCR tests which return positive results on two of the sites, but are negative on the 69-70 site, are probably telling us that the patient has B.1.1.7, not the original SARS-Cov2 strain. This means it’s been much easier to keep track of the virus. That’s why, says Birney, Patrick Vallance was able to give so much detail in his presentation of where it has spread in the UK. It’s also part of why we can make any sort of estimate about the increase in R. If we were relying on genome sequencing, even though the UK has genuinely world-leading genomic surveillance, we’d have much less info.
(The PCR tests will have to be redesigned, because the whole point is to have redundancy against mutations, and now they’ve lost some of that redundancy. But it’s been useful, nonetheless.)
So the question is: what does this mean? For our tier system, for the vaccine, for our getting back to normal? And is this strain more deadly as well as more transmissible?
For one thing, says Birney, it explains a few things about why the virus kept spreading in Kent and Essex despite them moving into Tier 3 a few weeks ago. It was working elsewhere, but not there. “This is an explanation,” he says. “Quite whether it’s the whole explanation is hard to tell.” It may mean that restrictions have to be tougher, if the new strain really does spread more easily. Essentially, Tier 3 and the new 4 are meant to bring cases down; if that’s harder to do, then we have to work harder.
For the vaccines, we can be reasonably hopeful, I think. Birney points out that there were already many strains in circulation when the vaccines were being tested; the fact that they were so effective is reason to think that they must have worked against the large majority of them. It’s not definitive — “that argument is not fully watertight,” says Birney, “because currently other strains are rare”, but it’s reassuring.
More theoretically, we can take heart from the way the immune system works. As well as B-cells which make antibodies, we have two other kinds of T-cells. One kind I think of as Stasi-like secret policemen. “They basically knock on the door of every cell and say ‘show me segments of all the proteins you have inside you’,” says Birney. “And if it finds one it hasn’t seen before, it decides it’s a virus and presses the ‘please commit suicide’ button’.”
The other kind goes up to B-cells. Each B-cell produces a unique antibody; when those antibodies destroy a pathogen, the cells keep some of chopped-up parts of those pathogens inside themselves, like prisoners, or trophies. The second kind of T-cell goes up to them and demands to see all the trophies. If it finds one it recognises, it orders the B-cell to make loads of copies of its unique antibody, stimulating a rapid immune response.
Because the T-cells only look at very short segments of protein, any single T-cell could be confused by a single mutation — if one T-cell recognises the 69-70 spot, then it wouldn’t pick up the B.1.1.7 variant with the 69-70del mutation. But because there are millions of T-cells, each remembering a slightly different bit of a protein, it’s unlikely that even quite a few mutations would remove T-cell immunity. We normally measure immunity by looking at B-cells, because they’re easier to test for, which is partly why immunity looks like it drops off quickly in Covid patients.
But T-cell immunity is longer lasting. Javid thinks it’s quite likely that the new strain could have a slightly shorter period of B-cell immunity, because of his hypothesis about resistance to antibodies, but it’s very unlikely that we’d lose T-cell immunity altogether. Kucharski adds that, in general, while the flu evolves so rapidly that antibody resistance fades in months, with seasonal coronaviruses that process takes years. Hopefully that will be true of SARS-Cov2 as well.
(There’s the added point that the new mRNA vaccines are much more plug-and-play than older ones, so in theory, you could make new vaccines for new strains pretty quickly. But I don’t know how quickly you could get new safety approval from regulators.)
Of course, this is all speculation: we need evidence, rapidly. That’s why surveillance is absolutely vital. If some new strain does outwit the vaccine, we need to know about it immediately.
Two last points. One, there’s the question of whether the new strain is more deadly, or less deadly. And the evidence is weak either way; as I said at the beginning, often you get selection pressure for viruses to become less virulent, but in the case of Covid-19 it’s in an awful sweet spot where it isn’t very deadly for most people and can spread via presymptomatic and asymptomatic people, so the selection pressure isn’t great, but it’s still very deadly among vulnerable people.
Birney says that “hospitalisation rates in the South-East [where the new strain is widespread] are not a million miles away from what you’d expect given the infection rate”, so at the moment we can only say that it’s probably not loads more or loads less dangerous. Javid says that one mutation is similar to one found in a Singapore strain which seemed to cause less deadly disease in animal trials, but again, he says, that’s speculative.
And secondly, the immediate reaction from our European neighbours has, understandably, been to close their borders with the UK. Kucharski makes the point, though, that there is a good chance that they’re shutting a stable door on a long-bolted horse. Britain has the best genetic surveillance of disease in the world, as measured in viral genomes sequenced per capita; that’s not a boast, it’s simply the case. It is very possible that the new strain is spreading rapidly in France, the Netherlands, Belgium and so on, but the surveillance is less effective at spotting it. It’s another reason why we need to improve surveillance everywhere.
At the beginning, I said I was wrong to be cynical, and to think that the new strain was being over-egged to hide the government’s own mistakes. It’s a real new strain, it seems to be more transmissible, and although it doesn’t change anything fundamental, it does make life harder. Javid describes it as an “amber light”.
But I do think there is some blame to be attached here. It might not have been obvious that things would go wrong in this way, but it was surely very possible that things could go wrong in some way. I think that it was ridiculous to think back in November that we could give any confident message about Christmas being opened up. It seems mad that millions of families have been told they can meet up, and then, five days before with the turkey already ordered, told they can’t. A more responsible attitude might have been to be much more cautious early on, to say that an open Christmas was an aspiration rather than promise.
But perhaps I’m still just sad about all those open car boots, all those presents passed from grandparent to child via an intermediary after another small hope was raised and dashed. There have been an awful lot of sacrifices, but that little indignity felt like it could have been avoided.
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SubscribeI completely disagree about PCG tests. The WHO themselves said positive tests should only be taken as so along with clinical observation and symptoms, and that asymptomatic testing should not be carried out. You are right that it finds separate parts of the virus but does not infer full virus infection for that very reason. In my extremely humble opinion this has been the cause of this soul destroying hysteria, and we could have protected vulnerable people with a few small behaviour changes rather than shut down our lives, families, friends and destroyed our economy.
Destroyed the economy is bad, but two other things are as bad. Poor students do not ever catch up from missed school, studies find. School leavers who do not have starter jobs to begin their climb on the employee ladder suffer over their lifetime employment. The schools closed and starter jobs have been decimated. But what I fear the most is the West losing to China around the world as we focus on covid, rather like cancer patients were ignored for this. The weakened Western economy makes it all worse as well though.
Carey, is that just a typo? You are talking about PCR tests, aren’t you?
The CCP ‘owned’ WHO have been a major part of the problem, from initial denial through not stopping international flights that carried and spread the then know virus, they even blocked it being named in the usual way, hence it being known as SARS-CoV-2 rather the Wuhan virus. When the ‘carefully selected’ WHO experts finally get to the well laundered Wuhan Institute of Virology they’ll find nothing, and if they do I very much doubt it’ll ever see the light of day.
The issue of whether the new strain is more contagious is hotly disputed, notably by Carl Heneghan of the Oxford Centre for Evidence Based Medicine. You do seem awfully excited Tom.
Not just Carl Heneghan:
timeforrecovery (dot) org/mutantstrain/ -> (fix it)
There is absolutely not evidence – yet – to support this assertion. Also it is rumoured that the “70%” figure is another outcome of these wild guesses/prediction models laid out before to support policies. Not to be surprised when one finds out that the infamous Neil Ferguson is part of the committee that made the investigations:
www (dot) gov (dot) uk/government/groups/new-and-emerging-respiratory-virus-threats-advisory-group -> (fix it)
I’m sick and tired to be constantly seeing ridiculously named groups that lack transparency and go against scientific best practices. to drive forward excruciating policies.
The degree of evidence required to meet the definition of ‘scientific’ is subjective. It depends on how high you set the burden of evidence. If you set it so high, there is very little scientific evidence for anything. You can almost never prove causality, as you will never control for all variables (there will be unknown unknowns). You can have such a high level of correlation in repeated studies that it seems highly likely there is a causative relationship. But the point at which you decide there is ‘scientific evidence’ is a subjective call, even if you agree to a specific definition. To think otherwise is to be unfamiliar with science and the scientific method.
It does not seem unreasonable to assume this new strain is more infectious, given the evidence. Albeit you cannot ‘prove it’. And when people’s lives are at stake, you do not always have the luxury of waiting for more definitive proof before making decisions.
To suggest that 99% of the British scientific community are ‘unscientific’ and only the 1% dissenters are the true scientists, is as about as unscientific as you can be.
Carl Heneghan’s predictions have consistently been wrong. He claimed there would be no second wave. Then claimed the second wave was not real.
I doubt that 99% of the British scientific community are ‘unscientific’ but we do seem to have moved from a point where the facts are the important items to a point where its “expert” opinions.
Agreed its not the sort of thing to play with when lives are at stake but one of the principles of science when I was young was being able to falsify a hypothesis. Now its seems to be consensus.
Remember when the consensus was that the world was flat?
You mean it isn’t flat? Dammit all! When did this happen?
Some deluded, brainwashed fools believe there are hills and valleys. I blame social media.
I imagine that before long someone will soon establish that the earth isn’t carried around on the back of a giant turtle, either.
The earth is on the back of the mighty crocodile, it is turtles all the way down from there. Science already accepts this.
it is Time for Small business Assocation to Sue Whitty,Vallance,Ferguson, Boris,Keir & Hancock for lies,neglience and Chumocracy,whilst britain puts up with this nonsense..At current rate the Vaccine will take 9 years to administer ,trifle Long dont you think?..
Not all hypothesis are falsifiable, particularly in medicine. Moreover often there is no evidence for any course of action. When the patient is dying, you still have to make a decision. You can’t say there is ‘no evidence’ and walk away.
It’s ironic, if not a bit tragic, to be lecturing me about degrees of evidence, when there is no evidence to begin with in this case 🙂
“the newly discovered mutant strain is 70% more infectious”.
Questions like: when was this discovered? What methods have been used? What is the sample of the population tested? What is the prevalence of the the new mutant virus in the population in comparison with other mutants/strains? What models were used? Hypotheses? Methodologies?
.. go down the drain
Completely agree. Academics always switch to lecturing mode (believe me I have spent too much time with them) mode when they are losing an argument.
Correct on your proposition. The unvalidated analysis behind this is not remotely noteworthy. Like the original Lancet analysis of covid-19 deaths in China (march 2020) that had three over-the-top adjustments to push the numbers to agree with their hypothesis. Then Imperial went out and marketed it to all governments. Scientific? Nope. Money grabbing? Your call.
The evidence is:
Most cases reported in areas of ‘high growth’ are of the new variant. Areas that do not have high growth have few cases of the new variant.
That is sufficient prima facie evidence to take action. It would be reckless not to.
Again, we do not have the luxury of undertaking indepth research and peer review before taking action. All of the questions you ask are being worked upon and we shall have the answers eventually. Having said that, much of what you reference is already available. We have been monitoring mutations of the virus since the start of the Pandemic. The UK are world leaders at viral genome sequencing and surveillance.
Well, looks like you have some inside knowledge after all. Good, I was a bit worried that you were just guessing. Also, do you happen to know the demographics of the people tested, in those accelerating areas? Like age, total number of tests, symptomatic vs non-symptomatic etc? Would be good to have an overall picture of the situation
I specifically said we do not have all of the information you specified in published form, but it’s recorded and in some detail and will eventually be published. You sometimes have to make decisions with incomplete data. That is what leadership is all about.
Never in the history of government has so much information and data being published regarding a specific set of policies. This is fairly detailed information already published on the variant, including some of the information you are requesting.
However if your implication is that an 80% increase in cases over the past 16 days is somehow irrelevant because it may be in a specific demographic, you are have poor understanding of the pandemic. Even if infections are in a specific demographic, the infection surveys (ONS and Imperial) demonstrate that increased transmission in one demographic normally spreads into all the others over time. This is published data.
The variant may prove not to be very relevant (or potentially even favourable), but there is prima facie evidence that it may be more infectious and therefore action is warranted.
The problem I have is that I have seen plenty of situations where politicians, pressure groups and the media have all been bleating “something must be done” and the “something” turned out to be catastrophic. The invasion of Iraq, for example.
Firstly, we need to make sure that something is true, then, bearing in mind that the evidence is being presented mainly by the British state, we need to make very sure that it is really true, and not some collection of out-of-context bullshit designed to drive policy in a particular direction. Finally, if something does actually need to be done, we have to make sure that the cure is not worse than the disease.
As the side-effects of lockdown are catastrophic, and the death rates from Covid are not particularly bad – in the UK, it’s still below the 80,000 estimate for Hong Kong flu in 1968-9 for which NO LOCKDOWN was considered necessary – I think that more lockdown would be immensely foolish. It didn’t work in November, what makes you think it will work this time?
Read my original post above. We do not have the luxury of undertaking long term scientific studies, by then it’s all too late. This is not a knee jerk reaction, there is a department dedicated to monitoring variations in the COVID virus and its impact on the pandemic. They have been undertaking the analysis since October.
This is the problem for the government. People like you argue it’s all too quick and rushed. Whilst at least 50% of the country say it all takes too long (dither and delay) and BJ is guilty of killing thousands.
The fact that the PM is pleasing no one is evidence he is taking a balanced approach. Neither overreacting or underreacting.
Sorry J J, I largely disagree. Covid is a virus that has killed tens of thousands of people in the UK, just like the Hong Kong flu did in 1968-69 (80,000 deaths out of a population of 55 million). Harold Wilson didn’t take a hatchet to the UK economy to “save the NHS” . Nor did Harold Macmillan in the flu pandemic of 1957-58 because they both had the good sense to know that it is the UK economy that pays for the NHS and everything else.
I agree that the government has a difficult job to do when the media is squealing at them to do something, but they have a 80 seat majority. They have the duty to be strong and the parliamentary position to be strong. They just don’t have the backbone.
The reference to 1968 is erroneous. We did not have the testing or treatment options that we have now. Mortality rates were also much higher. We were dealing with many fatal infections back then, it was part of normal life.
The people currently want covid restrictions. We must respect the ‘will of the people’. That is what the government is doing. Nothing courageous about lettings hundreds of thousands of people die in a misguided attempt to keep pubs, restaurants and entertainment venues open. People will naturally stop visiting these places anyway, once the hospitals start to overflow. So the economic impact happens under both scenarios (restrictions or no restrictions). At least this way we get to save some people who would of died.
Arguably all the government have done is try to avoid the hospitals exceeding capacity anyway, who can argue with that approach? The vaccines are now being rolled out, we just need to bunker down for a few months more. We can live without the pub or going out for meal / a bit of entertainment until then. The impacted businesses and employees are being compensated. Yes, it will and is costing a fortune, but spread over 20 years it’s doable.
The will of which people? I must have missed the referendum.I certainly do not see that its the will of my cancer patients whose surgery has been cancelled or their diagnosis delayed due to Covid. The NHS capacity is not being exceeded because the service is predominantly about Covid patients at the expense of those with far more significant illnesses. As far as capacity in the NHS is concerned in December 2019 bed occupancy was 94.9% compared to 89% in Dec 2020 and ITU occupancy was 83.8% compared to 75% this year.
Covid restrictions are paralysing the normal working of the NHS not helping it!
Your entire argument about the will of people reminds me of Brexit. Yes that was also the will of the people but based on what information?
Polling shows that people overwhelmingly want tougher COVID restrictions. We have these restrictions to ensure the hospitals remain open. If they have too many covid patients, we need to cancel non COVID treatments. Your logic is upside down.
In terms of bed occupancy, you are confusing capacity with the actual numbers. We have more people in hospital this year than last, but we have expanded capacity, so the percentage occupancy is about the same as last year. Furthermore the difference between full capacity and 90% is about 10K beds. We are admitting 2K new covid patients per day. Do the Maths.
If people overwhelmingly want tougher restrictions, why are so many, including some of the scientists and politicians, not to mention the plebs, protesting them and ignoring them in many cases? You’ve been reading to much MSM.
People are not ignoring the restrictions. The polling and ONS tracking data states most people support and obey them. Those that disagree are in the minority, but over represented on youtube, the twittersphere and social media. It’s why you think they are a majority.
Of course some people are, notably Ferguson himself, yet he publicly supports lockdown. Why do you think he had to resign? And lots of people managed to celebrate Christmas in spite of the lockdowns. Even the royal family violated restrictions, open your eyes. Sometimes polling and actions are quite different.
Most of that information is available from @CovidGenomicsUK. You can see the prevalence and critique their hypotheses.
It does seem unreasonable when some sage twerp winds up the government who go into a panic lockdown. All of these academics such as Ferguson have been consistently wrong and yet repeat the same mistakes in the hope of being right once.
Has their been a second wave?
Yes the Electorate Waved bye bye to boris, Keir,Ed,Nicola,Mark &similar spacious organisations like WHO,UN ,EU
No according to the opinion polls. Conservatives are polling at almost the same level they did when they won a landslide election victory a year ago.
Don’t buy into the MSM and Left Wing propaganda on Boris. Most of us who voted for him know he is doing the best job he can.
I suspect the relatives of the 16K people who died with COVID written as the ‘underlying cause of death’ on their death certificate would say yes.
And before you say these are people who would of died anyway, these are excess deaths (ie additional deaths to those we would normally expect)
were these deaths in age above the average lifespan of people in the UK ?
That twitter troupe has been debunked. The average age of a covid death is 80 and the average age of death is 81. However people who live to 80 do not die on average one year later! They live, according to the statistics, another 8 years. Furthemore, 50% of people who die are under 80, mainly in their 60s and 70s (with 10% being less than 60). When you take into account 60K to 70K have died, thats a lot of people dying in their 60s and 70s who would of lived for many more years.
You can argue that economic cost is not worth saving these people, but do not pretend people are not dying. That is just intellectual cowardness.
‘ but do not pretend people are not dying’…. of course.
Then the question remains as to how many of those who have died with Covid-19 did indeed have co-morbities and whether the seriousness of these afflictions meant they would not have continued living many more months.
The economic question would have to acknowledge the human cost of lockdown also. This is altogether an unfortunate calculation to be obliged to make.
Are we not obliged in every sense to make this calculation through considerations of the same intellectual cowardice that you correctly highlight ?
The educated, one hopes, calculation by the WHO of 140 million dead through secondary causes of lockdown is a sobering thought.
Arguments pertaining to a concept of the greatest good for the greatest amount of people, including an appreciation of ‘life years lost’ come to mind of course.
Some medical journals have attempted that calculation. What you need to appreciate is that it’s almost impossible to do with any degree of precession. We do know for almost certain many people will die of COVID in the short term if we take no action. We do not know how many people will die in the future due to a fall in GDP. In some ways it’s bread now rather than jam tomorrow. That is, save the people we know we can save for definite now, rather than letting thousands die on the off chance we shall save some people at an unknown point in the future.
To demonstrate my point, its not well known that most studies suggest economic recessions actually improve mortality and not reduce it, at least in developed countries. This is partly due to a reduction in work related stress and travel.
And remember we have never had a complete lockdown. 97% of the economy continues as normal (ie excluding traditional retail, mainly pubs, restaurants and entertainment)
You seem to give no fucks that 25 percent of Young adults and adolescents are reporting suicidal ideation which is just as bad as a covid hospitalization. Mental wards no longer have enough beds. 40 percent of the population are suffering from anxiety and depression. Suicides and overdoses are skyrocketing until hotlines have a 890 percent increase in calls from previous years. The lockdowns have ignited a mental health crisis in our youth, I had to pull my brother out of his bed and stick my fingers in his mouth so that he would throw up the opioids. All of this to save grandma and grandpa when we could’ve just adapted our society instead. of shutting it down. On top of that 250 million people are facing food insecurity according to the world Bank quadrupled from previous years meaning their starving to death. I bet only 20 million were going to die from covid with a 0.2-0.8% IFR. The western governments decided to soley focus on the physical aspect of public health, which is deteriorating because health does not get better during the lockdowns now people are even more susceptible to the virus since their underlying conditions are worsened by a lack of physical activity, while completely ignoring the mental and spiritual side of public health. All three aspects have to be in balance. I rather focus on transitioning society outdoors where the uv-c radiation from the sun can annilhate the virus and the flowing ventilation than tell people to stay home in de facto house arrest.
Yes, 50% where above the average life span. So anyone who dies above the ‘average lifespan’ is irrelevant? Statistics show the average number of years lost is 10 per covid death
No they’re not and the death figures have been exaggerated, manipulated. All following the borderline genocide on care homes by incompetent government.
I’m amazed how many times BJ is allowed to make statements that are proven to be lies and refuses to answer the question that is being asked but repeats the same old dross( as per his briefing) The media have been “looking” to hold them to account but it’s all one big act.
The strategy has been project fear. There’s no context as they churn out the death figures
Hancock supposedly calling people irresponsible for fleeing the capital on crowded trains… it’s exactly what he wanted. Are we supposed to believe he didn’t expect it to happen. If it spreads over the whole country we can all be locked down and London first to be released as it moves elsewhere.
We hear nothing about the shielding. If shielding was correct from the start why doesn’t it get used as the perfectly logical approach right now.? Because it will cost him votes but laying into the youth costs him no votes.
The fact that they may now abandon the flawed PCR regime due to this mutation will give them room to maneuver and still not have to admit how they’ve got it wrong with all the jobs for the boys operations.
This may be the light at the end of the tunnel but don’t hold your breath
Sorry, I retract my comment. Clearly it’s a conspiracy by the globalists and lizards, led by Bill Gates and his friend Boris Johnson. No one is dying from COVID, they just decided to destroy the economy so they could make lots of money (from the collapse of the stock market and the non-profit Oxford vaccine that is being sold at 3 pounds a jab). Thank you for showing me the light.
I’m not saying it’s a conspiracy, however the remit to move the very elderly back to care homes despite being infected with Covid led to “your” excess death figure. There’s a multitude of statistical analysis showing how the figures and charts are being manipulated. There is no doubt the government have adopted project fear. As for the not for profit vaccine, you cant say the same about Ferguson and his associations or non disclosures. If herd immunity became the solution it would open the floodgates of criticism and signal the end for Boris. All his moves are about the next election and not the next generation. Science is littered with non peer reviewed theories. we read of the speed the PCR regime was adopted by the WHO that is now coming under closer scrutiny.
For the avoidance of doubt just exactly what is the mortality rate for citizens under 65 with zero co morbidities. The cure is worse than the disease and the scientists/experts have been sadly found wanting and government unable to get a grasp on basic numeracy
You are ignorant of the data which is leading you to erroneous conclusions. Twitter and youtube is full of such people. For example, in the UK the proportion of people who died in care homes was one of the lowest in the world. If Ferguson wanted to get rich, he would not of pursued a career as an academic. Someone with his mathematics skills could of gone into banking and made a fortune. Herd immunity involves 2 million people being hospitalised over the pandemic. Given we only have 160k beds, even herd immunity would of required massive restrictions to avoid a the hospitals overflowing (which is arguably all we have done anyway).
You need to accept that something bad has happened, life can be cruel. There is not always someone to point the figure at, no more matter how cathartic you find that. Conspiracies give people a sense of comfort, but they are rarely true. https://www.weforum.org/age…
For the avoidance of doubt, there are almost no over 65’s without at least one commodity.
When you have scientist being censored there is a real problem. How do you know what 99% of scientists think if they are not allowed to say it. (I’m talking about scientists who are currently employed and risk losing jobs)
On the 99% comment. No scientific advancement has come from joining the consensus. It is always those that can think for themselves that move society forward. Scientists prefer (think climate change) to have a quiet life and stay within the consensus. That is how they get grant money because what they propose is safe and uncontroversial. The scientific community has in 2020 lost their veneer of seeking objective truth. The fact Ferguson (and the climate change people is RCP 8.5) takes the worst case scenario of his miserable model and calls it “most likely” or RCP 8.5 as “business as usual” shows that hysterical narrative trumps cold analysis.
Ferguson did not take the worse case scenario. He assumed a IFR of 0.9% and hospitalisation of 4.3% (both variables differ dramatically by age). Both of these assumptions have proven to be reasonable given our experience to-date.
And yet he was seriously wrong. Seems like there ought to be questions.
No, his projections were more or less correct.
Fortunately they were not.
He used an IFR of about 0.9% and hospitalization of about 4.3%. We know 70K people have died from COVID (lets use the more conservative 68K excess deaths figure from ONS). We do no know the true infection rate, but suggestions indicate probably about 7 million to 10 million (10 to 16% of the population) of the population. So that’s between 1% and 0.6% fatality rate
Search ‘fullfact org IFR’ for peer reviewed studies to back this up.
Had he not used 13 year old computer code for influenza which he then tried to hide and not release, that predicted 550,000 UK deaths and 2.2 million US deaths, you’d be right too. But sadly, he did. Happy for you to be gullible but don’t expect everyone to be.
the 500K figure was notional, it was never a projection. 200k was the projected loss of life with no lockdown
It was 550,000, not 500,000 and 2.2 million in the US. Seriously 13 year old influenza based code? And then tried to hide it.
Oh, now you are a coding specialist as well as an epidemiological expert. There is no end to your skill set. Who needs decades of advanced mathematical training and experience of actually studying pandemics, when all you need is access to twitter guros and a bit of sarcasm to make good epidemiological projections.
Have you even read the study? The 550 was a notional figure (ie not one expected to occur in reality). It assumed no one changed their behaviour even though there was a global pandemic and 100,000s of people were dropping dead around you. It also assumed the worse case reproduction rate.
Ferguson’s IFR’s have been proven to be an underestimate.
“Using these age-specific estimates, we estimate the overall IFR in a typical low-income country, with a population structure skewed towards younger individuals, to be 0.23% (0.14-0.42 95% prediction interval range). In contrast, in a typical high income country, with a greater concentration of elderly individuals, we estimate the overall IFR to be 1.15% (0.78-1.79 95% prediction interval range). “
No one involved is a coding specialist, including Ferguson. That’s part of the problem. Why do you think he tried to avoid releasing his code? Don’t dodge the issue.
Ferguson didn’t make good predictions, that’s what the problem is. How you have missed that is a mystery. If anyone assumed that no one would change their behavior, they are not smart enough to have been involved. And Ferguson is hardly alone. Even the sainted Anthony Fauci is now admitting that he lied about herd immunity. He missed the mask issue. He made major mistakes. So did Ferguson. And they both topped them off with hypocritical behavior. They don’t have credibility.
COV SARS2 IFR is nowhere near those figures – on average. See the metastudy done by Ioannidis, hosted on the WHO sites themselves (you can google WHO + Ioannidis). 0.04%-0.20%.
This is by far the most authoritative study on the matter so far. IFR will likely be proven as more data comes in to be around 0.1% on average or maybe slightly higher, not far off other ILI IFRs.
You realise Loannidis predicted the death count in the USA from covid as low as 10K, it’s currently 330K and will be much, much higher before this thing is over.
Loannidis’s IFR paper is now two months old and you also miss read it. To quote from the paper: Infection fatality rates
ranged from 0.00% to 1.63%, corrected values from 0.00% to 1.54%. Across 51 locations, the median COVID-19 infection fatality rate was 0.27% (corrected 0.23%)
That is much, much higher than flu that is about 0.1% Furthermore the low IFR’s are due to some African countries which have very few known coid deaths (assumed to be related to low population density, lower average age, natural cross reactive immunity due to poor sanitation and high vit d levels).
In developed countries it’s much higher. Most range between 0.5% to 1%.
Search ‘full fact org IFR’ that provides a UK IFR of 1%
or
‘BMJ IFR’ or META-ANALYSIS
Published: 08 December 2020
Assessing the age specificity of infection fatality rates for COVID-19: systematic review, meta-analysis, and public policy implications
Moreover, our results indicate that about 90% of the variation in population IFR across geographical locations reflects differences in the age composition of the population and the extent to which relatively vulnerable age groups were exposed to the virus. These results indicate that COVID-19 is hazardous not only for the elderly but also for middle-aged adults, for whom the infection fatality rate is two orders of magnitude greater than the annualized risk of a fatal automobile accident and far more dangerous than seasonal influenza. Moreover, the overall IFR for COVID-19 should not be viewed as a fixed parameter but as intrinsically linked to the age-specific pattern of infections.
Can you tell me when Ferguson et al have EVER been right with their dodgy predictions and scenarios. Can you point to where you think Heneghan was wrong, I’d like to look at the full context of what he said.
What a crass and ill informed post. Ferguson is one of the best qualified, most experienced and peer reviewed, published pandemic modelers on the planet. Heneghan is not even in the same league. You appear to have gained your scientific education on twitter.
Ferguson’s original paper has proved to be correct in most areas. Have you actually read it? He used a IFR of 0.9% and a hospitalisation rate of 4.4%. This is consistent with our experience to date. The 500K number bounded about on the internet was never a projection, it was a notional figure as it assumed absolute no action and no behaviour change. The actual projected figure was 250K with minimal intervention (ie social distancing for over 70s only and case / household self isolation if symptomatic).
So Ferguson is very credible, despite what Twitter tells you.
Heneghan is relatively unknown. He said the original first wave would not be bad, it was terrible, he then said there is no second wave and it was due to hysteria. Then he accepted there was a second wave but it was no too bad. Now he has accepted there is a second wave and its bad. However now he is saying there is no impact of the new variant.
There is room for disagreement in science, indeed it’s essential. But assuming someone is right just because they are a disenter and in a minority is absurd. What matters is the evidence they present and there credibility.
Who is paying you to post such utter and transparent BS!
Ferguson should be in prison for the lies and false information and willfully bad science that he has spread. And everyone (except you) knows this.
Not just covid but Mad Cow, Foot and Mouth…It is unbelievable that this sociopath is still employed. One has to conclude that he continues to receive a pay cheque because he turns out whatever data his overlords request in order to support their draconian policies and power grab.
No one is paying me. I review the available information and come to my own conclusion. Rather than acting like a like a twitter clone and just repeating the latest (often misinterpreted) ‘theory’ from some obscure source.
You had never heard of Neil Ferguson until the start of the year. You almost certainly knew nothing about epidemiology. Now you are an expert on both. A little more humility in your opinions may be warranted. If most of the experts can’t be certain, you certainly should not claim to be.
The idea that a British government would pay a British academic and University to intentionally corrupt their data is so bizarre as to be absurd. For one, they had no time to do that. Secondly it does not serve their interests. And thirdly there was no way they could get away with such a fraud without being found out. Get a grip of yourself man.
I can’t believe I’m wasting time writing to people like you.
They didn’t pay him to corrupt data. They paid him to present an alarmist case so they could lockdown the economy. And guess what, they have been found out. That’s what the public is mad about. Destroying the economy was completely unnecessary.
So ‘they paid him’ to ‘destroy the economy’. That makes even less sense.
Think before you come out with these crazy conspiracy theories.
It now appears the projections have been proven correct. The second wave will be as bad as the first. Which rock are you hiding under not to see what the rest of us see? Daily hospitalisation are now 2K per day and rising. Is this a mass conspiracy by every hospital and admitting doctor in the UK? We only have 10K spare beds available. Do the maths.
Not quite. They paid him to supply (that’s what “present” means in this instance) the case so the politicians could then lockdown the economy thereby destroying it. Ferguson isn’t a politician.
And yes the beds are a huge problem every winter even without covid. Just not enough of them. Seems like you’d catch on.
In 2005, Ferguson predicted that up to 150 million people could be killed from bird flu. In the end, only 282 people died worldwide from the disease between 2003 and 2009. There’s plenty more if you want it.
I understand professor Levitt does not agree with your assessment of Ferguson. He took issue with the argument and evidence first presented by Ferguson and resented the intrusion enough to ignore Levitt’s interest and propositions.
As we all know.
If this is true – and he seems to have stuck his neck out a very long way, then Ferguson’s credibility is or should be irrevocably damaged.
If….
No necessary conditions ?
He said there would be a spike in winter -and there has been – it is hardly a ‘wave’, and that this is simply an extension of the so-called first wave – after all, a novel virus is only novel once. From my reading of and hearing his views, I believe he’s been spot on all through this. He takes it very seriously, but at least he’s calm.
It’s more than a a spike. We shall shortly have as many people in hospital as the first wave. The experts are now talking about the start of 2021 being worse than the start of 2020. Heneghan made some sense before we had the data, but his claims have pretty much being debunked by reality. I wish he was right though, but the facts are the facts. You don’t have false positive excess deaths.
Heneghan is nothing.
Are you a jilted lover? Saying ‘he is nothing’ is not a very profound argument. Albeit I probably agree his credibility is questionable (see above post)
Is this nick harman of prezi dot com who also aims to dismiss anyone who questions the current medical and vaccine orthodoxy? If so, I can understand why you would object to anyone, like Prof Carl Heneghan whose focus is evidence-based medicine.
What a very silly comment
I am in South Africa and have listened to widespread hysteria… this one caught my attention on talk radio while driving “people are concerned about flying because the new mutation is airborne”. My car nearly left the road.
Maybe your car has caught the airborne mutation
something to do with bats taken out of context, most likely.
Airbourne? Well yes, exhaled micro-droplets drying losing mass and ‘sink rate’ and hanging in still air, hence ‘Hands, Face, Space, Ventilate’ on one hand, and fast international spread enabled by air transport on the other, more here https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih…
Airbourne? Well yes, exhaled micro-droplets drying losing mass and ‘sink rate’ and hanging in still air, hence ‘Hands, Face, Space, Ventilate’ on one hand, and fast international spread enabled by air transport on the other.
New strain ? Increased transmission ? Fine. Viruses keep mutating, but do not necessarily become more lethal. There is absolutely no data as of now that this virus is the slightest more virulent. Is there some method in this madness? I am not sure.Maybe ….maybe not. But a probable lockdown till spring, as announced ,seems a wee bit odd.
It was always the evil plan to lockdown until mass vaccination is completed. This latest scare tactic and further infringement on our rights is just part of the plan to turn the screws of coercion.
Thanks for a clear and informative article. I was also initially suspicious of the new strain claims. Which is a really sad indictment of how badly the Government has managed the messaging over the virus. They just aren’t trusted to tell the truth.
When you say the government, do you mean the PM who is reporting what he has been told by the medical experts who are employed by the NHS/related quangos? If they are telling them this then what is he supposed to do?
I am not a fan of BJ by the way, his lack of clarity in why he does things means no one understands the reasons behind his actions.
But he is not taking decisions based on feelings. He is reacting to what bureaucratic experts are telling him. If you disagree with his pronouncements then it should be the experts and their reasoning that is being critiqued.
If he has been told the new strain is up to 70-75% more transmissible, and then that the potency is more serious (not sure he has been told this last bit), or that deaths will increase as a result, what should he do with this new info? What would the press say if he did not lockdown?
Quite.
I mean I don’t Trust Johnson to act on the information he is given. I thought initially the news of the new strain was being used to explain this weekend’s cancellation of Christmas arrangements, which was in fact a reversal of an earlier bad decision. Before the new strain news the rise in infections was clear. He has previously chosen not to act on the advice of his scientific advisors – the delay in the Autumn lockdown, for instance – and been very reluctant to share the advice he has been given with the public.
Ok so you don’t trust him, so does that mean that whatever he does will be met with suspicion? Its impossible. He wanted to go for herd immunity this year and the media went crazy and he backed down. They’re now going crazy over everything that he does and amplify anything.
He is allowing people as much freedom as he can. When it doesn’t work and things change then he has to change policy. Does that help explain things better?
I’ll admit his messaging is terrible. If he just said “I believe in giving people as much freedom as they can. However if data shows that things are getting worse than I will have to change policy based on the advice from experts.’
Everyone will calm down a lot.
Other than those who want the State to crack down on our democracy and those who choose to do their own thing. Those people want the State to go in good and hard. They have a name.
Largely agree with you. But you are still being unfair to the PM (albeit fairer than 90% of people!).
The PM consistently explains the reasoning behind his decisions. That he values and believes in Liberty, but the current evidence is that the loss of life would be so great that restrictions on liberty are justified. He also consistently explains the strategy, in terms of testing, track and trace, vaccines, tiering and responding to changes in the data / science. But people intentionally mishear or ignore him, particularly the media and the opposition. Then it becomes a troupe that ‘Boris has no strategy’ or ‘Boris is inconsistent’ etc
Any post pandemic inquiry should focus as heavily on the Media and Opposition’s role in this terrible saga as much as it does the Government’s.
Hi JJ, I follow politics but not the minute detail of it. I have never heard him say this, but then again I’m not paying close attention to every utterance so I am sure you’re correct when you say that he has said this.
As I have said elsewhere, if he was clever then he would be repeating this key message again and again and again so it CANNOT be ignored. He knows the media is arrayed against him so he should not give them a chance to ignore it and to paint him as being foolish. Play the game.
Maybe he’s not that savvy after all?
He is saying it almost daily in the press briefings 🙂 His transcripts are available on line. Go and read them.
But the media ambush him on every briefing and ask questions which are all a variant on ‘will you apologise for killing everyone?’ or some type of silly gotcha attempt. The meda headlines are then taken from the media questions and answers, not the PM’s statement. As Lenin once said ‘you repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth’.
The media and the Left have wanted to discredit and undermine the democratically elected government from day one. They were wounded and humiliated by the PM’s landslide election win. They had thrown everything and the kitchen sink at Boris Johnson to discredit him and prevent him from winning. The British public ignored them.
The Pandemic was a gift from above and they are playing it for all it’s worth. It’s payback time, on steroids. The fact that, during a national crisis, by undermining the government you are undermining the country, is irrelevant to the Left. The ends always justify the means. Many on the Left believe you have to burn the existing structures to the ground before you can build socialism from the ashes.
It’s the same situation in the US
Yes but Starmer,Davey,Sturgeon,Drakeford have been inane its The Political Class,Civil servants,Lords Need to be put up against a wall &shot ”A Velvet revolution/”..
Most of the UK printed, and online media supported Johnson at the last election. It is only recently the pro-Tory media has turned its attention to his failings. Criticising the Government of the day when it makes mistakes is not the same as undermining the country.
I’ve read the transcripts. He does explain his reasoning but the problem is his reasoning doesn’t generally follow from analysis of the facts. It’s not just Johnson – it’s the Government.
Eg. Greenwich and Islington Council make a decision to close schools a couple of days early – they are threatened with legal action and the following day Government announces enforced closure of Secondary schools for 80% of pupils for a week post Christmas. Can you explain the reasoning behind that?
The enquiry should focus on 1. The use of the flawed pcr tests 2. The idea that non symptomatic people are spreading the virus and 3. What did the gov do to weigh up weather the measures are worse than the cure. This one goes deep and I’m convinced that all the measures will have a worse impact than the virus would have had.
No chance Whitewash report for Summer?..
He’s trying to look tough in front of the EU. Probably quite rightly.
Agreed.
It is a salutary lesson in promising things and then not being able to deliver. He is an idiot.
If he had said “Christmas will go ahead as planned BUT there is a chance we may have to shutdown if infections rise’ then what would people be complaining about.
If he’d said it in ancient Greek, he’d clearly be hailed as the greatest PM since Churchill.
If he had said “Christmas will go ahead as planned BUT there is a chance we may have to shutdown if infections rise’
That is exactly what he said, if you had been listening. Stop obtaining your opinions from the BBC and the Left.
You clearly don’t know me then:)
He should be hammering home this message because he is being hammered for flipflopping.
He knows the media is arrayed against him so he should play the game and repeat repeat repeat because he should know that the BBC/others won’t give it coverage unless forced to by his repetition.
He is naive and this makes me think he might not be so bright after all.
He has to flip-flop. Cases go up and down.
He did say that!
He surrounds himself with experts who think as he does. Unherd has a different set of experts, how if he used those? No, Boris totally had his nerve broken by his illness. I think he found he could not face death and came out broken and so used experts who told him the worse as he wanted to justify his fears. He is now a coward who seeks advice which tells him to hide is prudence.
Check out the membership of the Joint Committee on Vaccines and Immunisation. When I checked earlier this year, the list showed that 11 out of 19 them were funded, directly or indirectly by vaccine companies. This phenomenon of ‘Regulatory capture’ is rife in the scientific community. The people to look to for real science in the current mayhem are epidemiologists, virologists etc who are not funded by vaccine companies. Sadly they are often censored on social media because they don’t trot out the mainstream narrative/orthodoxy.
Bill Gate’s thumb is on every scale in every vaccine group in the world.
YEP!!!
“Regulatory Capture”
What a quaint name for what was once termed conflict of interest and corruption.
So I have not heard what immediately springs up in my brain, being a conspiracy loon. That somewhere back in some bio-lad covid-19 mark II, and III and IV and V are lined up to be slipped into the scene when ever the hysteria begins to slow. The Wuhan ‘Bat Lady’ said things like this covid 19, and Much worse, are lined up in great numbers waiting for their opportunity to break out. As soon as this variant gets to be old news and protestors are back at Trafalgar saying to unmask, the next variation will be released. I mean why not? Great things are happening in the world, weird ones, billions daily going to the mega rich, China spreading its power like an ink drop on a wet towel, bio labeling of the world’s people being registered and all getting tracked and traced….
I agree with you completely, DR.
The Govt is not trusted to tell the truth because they have been proven many times to have not told the truth.
As Robert Kennedy Sr. said, “People in authority lie.”
“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”
Even Pavlov’s dog would figure this out by now.
This is complete hogwash. A PCR “cannot” detect, or isolate covid-19 in human beings, and no such study has ever been undertaken, or even published. A PCR test can only detect strands of a virus (of a possibly 10,000 or more in the human body) but it cannot single out or identify which one it may be. This has already been legally established in two landmark court cases in Madrid, and Portugal. Just more propaganda.
Has anyone ever claimed PCR tests can isolate COVID-19 or the virus behind it? Isolation of SARS-CoV-2 is an entirely different process.
And the SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR tests specifically detect strands of SARS-CoV-2 RNA, whatever court cases may, or more likely may not, say.
Kary Mullis, who received a Nobel prize for inventing the PCR process (never designed as a test) said it should never be used to diagnose any disease because, as he said “you can use the PCR process to find anything in anybody” (if you use enough amplification cycles). Conveniently for the pandemic theatre directors, Kary Mullis died on 7 August 2019, allegedly of pneumonia.
Er…YES..this whole so-called pandemic has been predicated on the lie of the RT-PCR test….”Everything”. …and the reason the courts ruled in favour of the plaintiffs was because neither the governments, or their scientific advisors, could produce the evidence of their claim. ie, the scientific study that proves a PCR test can detect covid-19. It’s that simple.
I suspect the B.1.1.7 is already in many countries but their laboratories are not as good at genetic surveillance as the UK ones are. It will eventually turn out that the reaction of European countries has been excessive and the stable door has been shut long after the horses were over the horizon..
It is already in many countries, but stopping further imports of this strain will slow its spread nonetheless. One case with the new strain might result in 1.2 new cases, while ten with the new strain would lead to 12 new cases, for instance. The longer they can keep numbers down, the more time there will be for research and preparation.
But at what COST? Slowing to the same end result is of questionable value. Look at the VAST damage this locking down of the world is doing! Europe is being turned on its self, and the whole world distancing its self from each other. It will cost Trillions if this extreme lock down continues, and it is not just continuing, it is Increasing! Erring on the side of caution is not different from erring on the side of irresponsibility.
Breaking down societies and economies is the ultimate goal here.
One, there’s the question of whether the new strain is more deadly, or less deadly.
it’s cute that the author believes this will matter to our overlords, who need no encouragement in finding ways to prevent healthy people from being around other healthy people.
Just like gun control is a conspiracy, and global warming was invented by a global conspiracy, eh Alex?
Conspiracy is your word. The data is clear on the relative risk associated with Covid. The straw men of gun control and climate change need more straw.
All I can say is the indignity of those fortunate enough to be able to meet at a service station and exchange gifts can be nowhere near close to the indignity felt by those who have lost their jobs and livihoods due to the draconian covid measures. I’m hoping one day a contributor to this site will make the effort to investigate and highlight the plight and suffering of the real victims (alive and dead) of this ongoing tragic farce.
“Of course, this is all speculation: we need evidence”. Took me a while to get to this point. The R number is a first order derivative of the data that is largely based on tests that are not exactly reliable. Now we are comparing two first-order derivatives which is very dangerous thing to do.
Lets have a look at the graph and the analysis behind the numbers. “this remains a hypothesis and we cannot yet infer the precise nature of this event” is academic-speak for, “the numbers are not reliable enough to make a conclusion”
So the real question is, how did we go from this academic slop to getting PM to shut down London?
Boris is a broken husk, Carrie is holding his lead, and he has appointed councilors who give him the bad news he wants to justify his broken nerve.
There are so many aspects that tantalise an epidemiologist or virologist. Who amongst them wishes to relinquish the chance to ‘control the situation’ or indeed the virus – to our betterment and the greater good ?
‘It’s another reason why we need to improve surveillance everywhere.’ They love it.
However – where lies the greater good ?
If this disease (in the UK) had the power to rob the ‘young’ of life rather then those over the average age of life expectancy in this country then perhaps one might contemplate causing estimated secondary deaths because of the present lockdowns policy worldwide of 140 million, as supposed by the WHO.
It looks like we might be complicit in the biggest mass murder in human history on the basis of a PCR test that issues false positives like ticker tape from a fantastical 1950’s computer.
Yet again Tom Chivers has it backwards.
“by lucky chance, the standard PCR test looks at three different chunks, one of which happened to include the … mutation”.
No, Tom. Have a think about the bias in that statement.
All trees are green, but not everything that’s green is a tree.
If I only look for mutations in three short chunks of the viral RNA and happen to find it there, that does not mean that mutation has only happened in that short chunk.
If this is the quality of the analysis, and level of selection bias, underpinning Birney’s argument, it appears that he – or maybe just Tom in his interpretation – don’t understand how to use data.
Who’s saying mutations have only occurred in the chunks the standard PCR tests look at? The entire RNA sequences of many of these new strains have been sequenced, revealing many mutations beyond the regions the PCR tests look at. It’s never been claimed that these PCR tests look at the entire viral genome.
I think the point he was making was that because one of the three chunks the PCR test looks at provides evidence of the mutation it was easy to track its growth and geography. The existence of the mutation would still have been noticed through genome testing but working out its significance would have been harder if the three chunks of RNA sequence had been different.
An idea I’ve often had is that the government is in a lose lose situation due to the media, e.i. if they tighten up restrictions then all the reports are on how badly the economy is doing, yet if they loosen restrictions all the reports are on the rising deaths and the cases etc. But can it really be that the media has such power that it can guide government actions this way? I am all for the media being critical of the actions of the government especially in such a time when power is being weilded so freely by the government in telling us what we can and can’t do, but surely that is as far as it goes? The government is elected in order to govern, it is not elected to keep the media happy, surely the government answers to us, not what some writers for a newspaper thinks?
It’s precisely that. The hard truth is that keeping the economy going has to cost lives. There’s no way around that. But no politician is ever going to stand up and point the gun at granny. So we’re stuck in this impasse where the media simultaneously shouts ‘a single life lost is too many!’ and ‘save the economy!’. It’s not often I have sympathy for the govt but they’re between a rock and a hard place on this one.
If you were a conspiracy loon, as all rational people are, you would believe the Government does what it is told mostly. There are the Elite called ‘The Donors’ who give the real money to campaign to the candidates, and also control the political parties this way. They give to the ones who back their agenda, and without them you go nowhere unless an aberration like Trump. And like Mephistopheles was to Faust, they own their soul for ever on.
China bought the WHO for $40,000,000 wile billions from Western nations had no influence. Soros is an example. A few thousand here and there buys him all the insanely Liberal DAs needed to basically destroy law and order in great cities.
No need to have sympathy for the government most have sold themselves to the dark side.
The MSM is 100% agenda driven. You seem to think it is merely in opposition, nothing could be further from the truth. (It is also almost all from the Woke/Liberal/Left.)
Fairly balanced and mature article. The public and media response to COVID continues to be incredibly hysterical and immature.
Half of the country believe the Government have done too little too late and intentionally hide evidence.
The other half believe the Government have overreacted and intentionally mistentretped the evidence to justify their desire to lockdown.
Both sides cannot be right. The only thing I know for certain, is thank god I am not the PM.
I actually think Boris is holding up well under almost unimaginable pressure. There are no good options or good outcomes. He is constantly trying to chose the least bad outcome. In that context, I actually think he is performing quite well.
In my opinion the government by pretending initially that this crisis did not exist waited way too long to even contemplate closing the country down. This caused both a huge number of causes and deaths and the devastation of the economy. This further dithering coupled with seemingly no preparation for the return of COVID in the winter is just the continuation of what happened early in the year.
Sorry, that is counterfactual. The UK locked down at the same time as 90% of countries including Germany and Australia. Unfortunately it transpired we were more infected than those countries, hence subsequently higher infections and deaths. There is no way we could of know we were so highly infected at that stage (as could no other country, some got lucky, some did not). The UK is also highly susceptible to deaths and infection spread from COVID, which we could not of known at the time either.
Given the context and data available at the time, the government made the correct decisions at the right time. They moved quicker and continue to move quicker than any government in history. I appreciate that is not what the Media tell us, but it’s the factual truth.
I agree with the bulk of your comment, although my main issue is with the idea that we had to wait for data. So much of our lives seems to be based on tedious pseudo intellectual clap trap that sounds clever but results in a failure of common sense.
I work in finance and was well aware of what was going on in China. I was looking at international travel coming into the UK and saying “it’s coming because we’re not stopping any flights.”
People would be amazed at the amount of people who arrive each day from China/Italy/SPain (the epicentres of the early virus).
So why wait to shut the borders down when simple common sense showed that this would be the only way to delay things? Not saying that this would have worked in the end but it could have saved us from shutting down the entire economy.
Madness. It’s decisions like these that make people think that there is an unseen elephant in the room and I can’t say I disagree.
If you work in finance, you will know that the UK is highly dependent on the global economy. We have more people flying in and out of the UK per capita than practically any country on the planet. Our life blood is the airports.
I would expect no government who values about the economy to just shut the borders because of some ambiguous information about an unknown virus on the other side of the planet. In hindsight you are correct it would of made a difference, but again we could not of known that at the time. No historical precedence in the UK for a country wide epidemic.
However it is not true we did nothing. All visitors from Wuhan were being met by ‘infection control teams’ and were being asked to self isolate in early February. By the time time the UK scientists realised how serious the pandemic was, we were already highly infected and closing the borders would of made little difference to the infection rate (but would have left people stranded overseas and caused damage to the economy). This is clear from the SAGE minutes.
(ANSA) – Milan, February 28 – Lombardy’s hospitals are close to breaking point due to the coronavirus with “most of the beds, in the IC wards, occupied by this pathology”, Milan’s Sacco Hospital virologist Massimo Galli told a press conference at the Lombardy regional government HQ Friday.
“I was at a hospital the other night where I think there were a few coronavirus patients and I shook hands with everybody, you will be pleased to know, and I continue to shake hands,” . 3 March – Boris Johnson
“counterfactual”, my eye.
Agreed for the most part re Boris’s performance. He is indeed between a rock and a hard place. Suggest you’re being a bit harsh on the public and perhaps not harsh enough on the media. The former being largely unaware of the finer points and the latter defaulting to their sensationalist tendencies.
And its really easy to play Captain Hindsight which almost everyone who expresses an opinion here and elsewhere is doing.
But can we be cynical about the ideas that this originated in Kent and requires the sort of over-reaction we’re seeing amongst our European neighbours… just at the time Brexit negotiations are closing out?
If you are not cynical about everything covid you are a sheep. Put on your mask and clap you sheep….Baaaa clap, clap baaa.
Thanks Tom for a clear and informative article on the science. On a human note, your description of families meeting at service stations to hand over presents has me in floods of tears.
Hugs
Floods of tears? Really? We need to toughen up a bit as a nation and start being a bit more stoic.
Bit harsh. We all have different emotional triggers. There’s no harm in accepting that and expressing it.
So this new strain, one of many that has and will occur, is even more contagious than the already highly contagious SARS-Cov-2. It sounds like it is unstoppable then. Just like the common cold is unstoppable, even for the Chinese :). So what’s all the fuzz about if you can not stop it?
Exactly, well said.
We can still slow its spread. And if vaccines work, we might stop it.
Maybe yes , maybe no, and we wait and we wait untill……probably untill the great reset whatever it may bring?
The damage being done by lockdown is beyond reckoning! It is like stopping fighter aircraft production in 1938, – to slow the economy wile essentially at war with China – a war largely fought by economic measures.
The world is like 1932 in the Pacific where Japan had the SE Asia co-prosperity Sphere as a cover for colonizing the region, but this time it includes the total colonizing of Africa economically, and South and Central America, and the Caribbean, and more, by China.
For us to stop our economy and harm it terribly at this time, to -wait and see- is as great a folly as miss-calling the BlitzKrieg by sitting about waiting and hoping for the best.
This strain of the virus has been around since September and Birney says
that “hospitalisation rates in the South-East [where the new strain is widespread] are not a million miles away from what you’d expect given the infection rate”, so at the moment we can only say that it’s probably not loads more or loads less dangerous.” So what changed over a matter of days to justify the Governments change of decision on Christmas as it had already spread around the country.
The media got hold of it
More likely the Sage ‘scientists’ wanted to find a way to force Boris into putting further restrictions in place over Christmas.
What could be better than a ‘mutant strain’ of the virus? It sounds very scary – the media will love it. Plus it’s ideal for us, we can say – it’s new we don’t much about it but we think it spreads 70% faster. Then, when the real scientists have had a chance to analyse the data, it will turn out to have a lower IFR than the previous strain but we still all have to be scared anyway and obviously have the vaccine
And what will be the toll of the insistence on panicking? I’m starting to think that the ‘cure’ being worse than the disease is a distinct possibility.
Even the real scientist’s assessment of the IFR will possibly be inaccurate as the data they use is very likely to be unreliable. However whether it is accurate or not we will never know as it will not be reported. Surely the only metric that is anywhere near reliable is how many extra deaths per calender month are being recorded over the monthly average for say the last 5 years?
I’m surprised you didn’t cover the “70% more infectious” claim, surely there is solid science behind that very precise figure – right? 😀
When you find the evidence, please do send it to Carl Heneghan at the Oxford Centre for evidence based medicine, as he sure hasn’t seen it judging from his tweet a day or two ago.
Apparently this ‘new’ variant was first identified in Brazil last March. So there is nothing new about it whatsoever.
Any sort of source for that?
Google “N501Y Brazil” and you will find several references.
Great, clear explanation of what is going on with this virus and the early stage thinking.
Many thanks.
how many samples are being looked at by your informants and what is their geographical distribution? IF this strain took off in the UK in Kent and Essex we would expect it to be more prevalent there and less elsewhere but ‘govt sources’ over the weekend talked of 1/3 Kent; 1/3 London and 1/3 elsewhere in the UK – suggesting a rather normal and even spread since September…
Personally, I’d have thought a behavioural explanation is far more likely for the continued rates of infection in Kent (exhaustion with lockdown and widespread ‘rule-breaking’) PLUS increased testing not being factored into the increasing case numbers…
You are not looking at the extent of the increase. In London they have shot through the roof. And no, it is not due to increased testing. Testing is up 4% and infection rates up +50%. As tiering rates have increased, infection rates have increased. Behaviour changes cannot explain the increase.
There might be something to your behavioural explanation. But given the distribution of the UK population, 1/3 Kent; 1/3 London and 1/3 elsewhere seems entirely consistent with this variant starting in Kent, hence the highest number of cases per capita there, and spreading to London, very close by with a large population, and to the rest of the country, with – so far – a relatively low rate per capita.
Tom is far less blinkered than many and the truth is over complication of the facts is just as dangerous as over simplification. If you read the full report that Tom quotes from they have no idea what the effects are and why it might be more transmissible.
If your trying to make policy to stop the spread of any variant you have to go back to two simple points.
ICU bottle necks.
Deaths.
This variant has been around for many weeks and neither of these two elements demand excessive cause for concern.
Excess deaths early in December were running at 1,600 a week and the death rate has plateaued in December at a round 400 a day.
The rate of growth of transmission in Germany is faster than the UK so whilst this particular strain may have moved into pole position as being up to 71% more predominant than others the net result is the positive rate is about 6.7% whereas in Germany it’s 10%.
If I had to offer an anecdote I would say Mask Wearing is making people complacent not realising high touch surfaces are equally important when attempting to avoid getting the virus.
With something as unsophisticated as a Coronavirus the idea that is more capable of transmission if you wash your hands sanitise wear a face mask and a face shield and gloves seems unlikely. It’s just people are not wearing gloves.
I am not a believer in conspiracy theories… im more inclined to believe in stupidity or luck accounting for many government decisions. That said… it does seem a very steange coincidence that this supposed “new variant” has occurred right at the crucial point of the Brexit negotiations.
I wonder if this might not be part of a “good day to bury bad news” play and that after a Brexit deal cave in, BJ can come out and say “it was all a big error… nothing to see here”.
Conversely it could be Remainers inside govt departments trying one last heave to stop it. It seems unlikely, but … well…. just putting the idea out there.
I have found humans are perfectly capable of any sort of mess coming from a place of self-serving, greed, stupidity, arrogance, ignorance and delusion. All of which have clearly been at work with Covid.
Idiotic modelling systems predicted disaster. Governments reacted to that. Modelling system adjusted to something more benign. Governments ignored that.
Why? Because, having embarked on a course, many found their polls improved and all is politics in the end. Terrify enough of the masses, impose your power and off you go. How can you turn back? Better to keep doing what you were doing and plead that you made every effort if it goes awry.
Then, invest all faith in a vaccine, no matter how dangerous it might be, to prove Covid is a threat when it is not, and when Covid burns out, as they always do, claim the vaccine did it and Daddy or Mummy Government saved you all.
Tick the boxes to good polls. That is how easy and how destructive it is.
“It’s wrong to think of viruses as mutating “for” something: the errors are random.”
Congratulations for getting this right. Nearly all commentators including David Attenborough himself, no less, are forever telling us that mutation is a response to a change in the organism’s environment or that it has a purpose like, in Attenborough’s case, a longer proboscis so that the insect can reach deeper into a longer flower. There is no purpose directing a mutation. It is random that is why the foundation of evolution is called ‘Random mutation’. It is true, however, that the purpose of random mutation is evolution and survival of a species, if you believe in the creator designer; not true if you believe in the blind watchmaker! Humans cannot, by definition, answer that question.
Since the ‘old’ virus, although never fully isolated in a truly scientific way, was no threat to most people, a new mutation is not likely to be either because by the look of it, as a variation on SARS, what is called Covid, is meeting general levels of existing immunity which is why the majority of people have no symptoms or symptoms so mild they do not count.
The risk group remains the same group which is at risk for everything, including the common cold, very sick with 2-3 co-morbidities, very old and in care.
This is quite far from the truth, although for some reason it is an assiduously promoted piece of disinformation.
I hope that there is wide scale defiance of this draconian cancellation of Christmas, and for future restrictions. Enough is ENOUGH and the world needs to reopen NOW or the poverty crisis is going to kill more than the virus and cause misery for even more.
Excellent bit of Science writing. Thanks!
Of course, the same fatality % + a higher No of infections = more deaths.
And, more infections = more chance mutations = more long term risk.
So +70% in transmission does (as you point out) mean stricter controls.
Apparently there’s a new mutant version of Matt Hancock. That’s the one the worries me.
As the article says, viruses mutate all the time, but one of the main reasons for that is, generally speaking, they want to find ever more efficient ways of infecting as many people as they can as quickly as they possibly can.
This, in its way, is a natural survival response on their part, but it’s also worth pointing out that they also have a strong self-interest in keeping as many of their potential hosts alive as they possibly can and that often means making themselves more infectious but usually less deadly in order to do so.
This ‘new strain’ is one of many and has been known about since September and one of the major reasons for that is that the UK is one of the world’s leaders in genomic sequencing and monitoring, funnily enough along with Denmark where its also been found in millions of hapless, now ex-mink, not because it only exists here (or there) but because this country has the expertise and has actually been looking for it, unlike elsewhere where it also undoubtedly is currently occurring ‘unnoticed’.
Until our hospital beds start filling up en masse with otherwise completely healthy people, particularly those under the age of 65, then I’ll seriously start panicking, but until such time, god forbid, I shall continue to see this for what it is, not a health crisis, but predominantly a man-made, largely preventable act of socioeconomic suicide.
A virus has no agency. It replicates itself, or not. If a mutation makes it more likely to do that, it will replicate faster and eventually displace the slower-spreading versions. But we also see only those which succeed. A virus that mutates so as to become so lethal that it kills it host quickly will not spread, and it it mutates so as to destroy its host population then it will die out with its host species. Bad luck for the virus and bad luck for the host species too of course.
That’s way too long for a haiku, so I’m struggling to see your point here.
I’m pushing back against the use of the sort of language that ascribes motivation or planning to the way a virus mutates. A virus doesn’t “want” to do anything or “respond” to circumstances by “making itself” anything. It has no “self-interest”. It makes about as much sense as saying that a roulette wheel in a casino “wants” to keep the punters solvent because of the wheel’s “self-interest” in not bankrupting them.
Creatures change by chance
Good or ill no-one can tell;
Long harsh winter looms.
‘Creatures change by chance’
Where might evolutionary theory fit into this then, I wonder?
To your mind, a living virus has as much or as little agency as an otherwise totally inanimate roulette wheel, and any of its potential mutations are completely random, ergo potentially contrary to its self-interest ie presumably not influenced in any way by the changing environment they themselves might exist in?
Yes, mutations are certainly potentially contrary to the interest of the organism. In fact, looking at the human organism, we might say that many, possibly most, of them are: we tend to call them genetic disorders.
The influence of the environment is seen in whether the mutation causes the organisms in the next generation possessing that mutation to be better adapted to living and reproducing in the environment than other organisms that do not. If they are then that mutation will tend to spread within the population and possibly predominate or even displace the original gene.
However, the mutation itself is not determined in any systematic way by the environment. Some mutations are caused by environmental factors such as radiation, of course.
I should perhaps add that our emerging understanding of epigenetics tends to modify this “central dogma” somewhat: we do not understand how existing genes are “switched on” by factors that may be environmental. I should also add that I’m by no means an expert on this subject!
Genes change, are they good?
The cold world they’re in will choose
Which will live or die.
You and me both.
The difference here being that most human genetic disorders aren’t so easily transmissible on a mass scale as those that occur in a virus for obvious reasons.
They are, most likely ‘errors’, the exceptions not the rule and, let’s face it, there’s far more scope for outright errors to occur in the building of a complex human being than of a simple virus.
In terms of ‘environment’ not systematically affecting whether a cell mutates or not, there’s strong evidence to suggest that cancer cells ‘think’ and react to medical treatments sufferers receive gradually rendering them useless over time.
Further to this, viruses or cancers constantly evolve most likely in an effort to perpetuate themselves and in an attempt to make themselves harder to ‘kill’.
In the case of a virus, that may mean making itself more or less lethal to its host, but that very obviously isn’t a ‘moral’ decision on its part and yet its evolution might actually prove to be of unwitting benefit to both parties in the broader sense.
That is not the view of conventional medicine. Cancers seem in general to be a form of mutation, and of course if cancer cells are subjected to an adverse environment (such as chemotherapy) will either mutate in a way that adapts them to their environment, thereby tending to negate the effects of the treatment, or not, in which case the treatment will be successful (from the point of view of the patient) in preventing the cancer cells from reproducing.
It’s not clear how you would distinguish “thinking”, that is, some form of deliberate adaptation, from the effects of random mutation and selection by environmental pressure. So Ockham’s Razor suggests that it’s not a useful concept.
Of all the lorry drivers recently tested at Dover only a tiny fraction tested positive.
A couple of months ago TFL carried out a thorough (yet poorly publicised) examination of the underground system and of their buses. No traces of Covid-19 were discovered.
Lockdown lovers please refute. Points will be awarded for intelligent insight and deducted for moral bullying.
Well done! 10 out of 10!
There is nothing more to say.
Interesting that the UK is stated to have the best virus monitoring in Europe.
What is it about the UK healthcare and laboratory system which makes us the best?
Their press…
Eh?
I understood that this was a variant to the virus and not a new strain. Apparently the distinction is significant so should not the correct terminology be applied.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk…
Surely the point is there have been 1108 instances out of 1,5m positive results since end Sept. (when new strain found)? In NW 250% + infection rate increase in NW Sept – Oct, same in Midlands Oct – Nov, but only 60% + in London/SE Nov – Dec? All figures from govt. sources. Doesn’t make sense to me.
“The PCR tests will have to be redesigned, because the whole point is to have redundancy against mutations, and now they’ve lost some of that redundancy.”
As I understand it, the standard RT-PCR tests look for three chunks of RNA, but one of these is common to coronaviruses. If another chunk has now become ‘invisible’ due to this mutation, isn’t that most or all of the redundancy gone?
Or have I got hold of the wrong end of the stick?
There is NO Scientific evidence,the Virus Could or Not mutate 40,000 different ways..If you believe it is remainers last chance to blockade uk then it will fail,EU will implode in next two years as uK tastes freedom,similar to warsaw bloc when berlin wall came down in nov 1989..What is pantsdown Ferguson doing vwith his Wrong models ??.he is an arch Grauniad remainiac?..
Sir Desmond Swayne Interview Exposes BBC Hypocrisy As They Help The Government Hide From Scrutiny
YOU TUBE watch?v=cQiNXFfbGa0
A long article to inform us that there is another political tool for the Left to use in concocting their knee jerk off the cuff authoritative edicts. An in passing mention of the origin of the virus being a jump between animal species. No mention at all about the gain of function manipulations that were going on at the University of North Carolina research lab. One doctor in attendance was Dr. Shi Zhengli of the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan China. The gain of function manipulations were stopped in the USA because they were too dangerous. The release of the virus occurred after Dr. Shi returned to her lab in China. She continued the gain of function manipulations and sometime after there was a release. The CCP destroyed all evidence and patient zero was cremated. Then the CCP blocked travel within China but allowed free travel of infected persons to the rest of the world and especially to the West. The article makes no mention about the origin of the virus being an intentional biological attack perpetrated by the CCP with intent.
If you want to know the depths the CCP went to in media manipulation on corona virus read this NYT article. I cant believe it hasn’t had wider circulation outside the USA
https://www.nytimes.com/202…
Very weak evidence for more fear mongering. The writer ignores the real issue with the accuracy of PCR tests which result in false positives by design, and government supplied data points connected to official sounding organizations spouting fear porn. We are shutting down the planet for 99.7% survival rate virus and now hearing absurd conclusions about vaccine effectiveness spouted by the pharma industry and their lackeys at FDA. https://off-guardian.org/20…
https://off-guardian.org/20…
How dangerous is the mutation..well quite simply if its more contagious, there are more people infected,some vulnerable and some not so vulnerable..its obvious that there will be more direct and unfortunately indirect deaths,as hospitals are almost full!.So logically its very dangerous..next few weeks will see if its more clinically dangerous..Next few months will have results of new virus and vaccine immunity..in the meantime the mutation needs to be respected as dangerous
I’m stating that there is NO “dangerous mutated virus. If you disagree, show me the study that identified, and isolated it.
“Quo usque tandem abutere, Boris, patientia nostra?”
When the Nuremburg Charter trials start, this guy should be right in the front row for aiding and abetting crimes against humanity. He is peddling “fake news” and misinformation.
The C-19 Symptom Tracker Study run by Zoe and Prof Tim Spector of King’s College, London, always takes a sane view based on their data and does give regular analysis by region/geographical space, sometimes age and gender too. They have some 4.4 million signed up and about 1.5 million regular reporting of which I am one. The UK Gov is also given their data on a daily basis – it is is snowball sample and I don’t know how representative it is by social class, ethnicity and so forth but it is never panicky! So I tend to listen to them. I agree with those here saying we do not have the luxury of waiting for all outcomes – the Government does have a responsibility to act to save lives of its citizens. And it has often been chaotic and unreliable. And there should be a better balance with other fatal and serious illnesses such as but not exclusively cancer. My question is (hang been very lucky to receive the current vaccination in the first week (I am 84, my partner, 92). I feel liberated and cannot understand what ‘science’ can suggest we could possibly transmit the virus when we are more than 90% unlikely to get it or have it, (indeed when tests say we do not) to others still. Would that not be different from every other vaccination?
It’s interesting to return to this article after a week or so – I had book-marked it to read thoroughly when I had more time.
There seem to be a lot of opinions held, but as regards the scientific facts we are not really a lot further forward. Epi studies carried out on a variety of bases confirm each other in the existence of a new virus variant with 50% greater transmissibility. That’s a real b****r and unsurprisingly we now seem to be being panicked into deploying the vaccines outside of their recommended use (I may be wrong about that – I haven’t yet found a good explanation of a longer interval between the 2 jabs as being OK – but maybe there is one) .
Meanwhile there is not yet any confirmation of this from laboratory cell culture (nor is there any refutation). Hopefully these results will arrive in early Jan.
Whilst there seems little possibility that the new variant would get around the vaccines (used properly) I do wonder how the variant could be so much more transmissible without also being more severe. Virology often deviates from common sense, so it is possible that it is indeed not any more severe – but I’m doubling down on the sensible precautions until this becomes clearer.
My gut feeling is that the new virus can reinfect people who’ve had the old virus. I’ve been hearing more and more reports of people getting the virus twice, and now we are seeing a new virus explosion at the original UK epicentre of the virus – London.
That could easily make the virus appear to be more transmissible, and less deadly.
However, if people really are getting this who’ve had the first virus, it doesn’t bode well for a vaccine, certainly not when the next significant mutations occurs. That doesn’t rule out the vaccine reducing the nastiness of this virus mutation, and people who want the vaccine, and who are vulnerable should be offered it.
The Chinese vaccines consist of inactivated whole virus, so they’d be even less likely to be ‘fooled’ by a few mutations here and there.
The bottom line then is that Dan Andrews and Brett Sutton in Victoria, Australia, were dead right to lockdown hard fast and early and then stick to it. That has proven to be the best strategy for both reducing the spread and therefore the number of deaths and also for minimising the economic impact.
I have always been non-plussed as to why there does not seem to have been any attempt in UK to find out why infections started rising after July. Whether it was because people weren’t adequately complying with restrictions is the most obvious question. In Victoria’s case the initial cause of the entire second wave was known to be a family leaving quarantine early. They knew the rules. But the guards also knew and let them leave or didn’t apply them perhaps because of some failure in their training. A public enquiry has just published its report. Ministers have already had to resign. Criminal charges may follow under health and safety laws, alleged breaches of which, caused over 500 deaths.
Other causes of the second wave spread are known to include a group of young women partying in Melbourne and then taking the virus interstate, lying their way through checks. They were found guilty in court and faced possible imprisonment but I don’t know the outcome of the sentencing.
It seems to me that one of the reasons the causes of the second wave in UK (from July) are not investigated closely is because the government earlier on was pilloried in the media for even hinting that anything could just possibly be the fault of people outside the government. It seems that the public in UK will not under any circumstances accept any blame whatsoever. Whatever it is, it is always the government’s fault.
There is only one way to get on top of coronavirus and minimise the economic impact: hard, fast and early lockdown. The sooner and harder it’s done, the sooner it’s over and the sooner the economy can recover. It’s that simple.
How do you work that out? Lives and economies trashed in ways which will savage more than one future generation for a virus which is no threat to most people. The world’s top epidemiologist, John Ioannadis, said it is no threat to 95% of people and other experts have said 99%. All that suffering for absolutely nothing.
I also remember the experts saying in the beginning that lockdowns WOULD NOT ERADICATE but would simply give hospitals time to prepare. They had time, we presume they prepared and they are still pretty much empty.
Other States which did not have the fascist style of lockdown seen in Victoria did fine. Which proves, lockdowns are useless.
Also, tracking the stats, mortality ramped up when lockdowns were put in place. Covid-19, whatever it is, still ranks along with the Flu in terms of severity and in most cases, not even a bad one.
In the 2017 bad Flu season, some 1,100 Australians of all ages died in 2-5 months and more than 300,000 sought medical help. In a year of Covid we are nowhere near that.
This is an odd way of putting it. Are we to assume that because “only” 0.1% of the population have died of it (so far), the rest were and are not at risk? Would we say the same for the London blitz? After all, 99% of the population were not killed, so should we conclude that the blitz was “no threat to most people”?
My god, that’s horrific – you actually believe that! People being held criminally liable for a virus spreading, you should have just added ‘burn the witch’ to the end of that.
Covid 19 is a natural cause of death – albeit a novel one. The harms we cause through lockdowns come about because of conscious decisions that our rulers and their advisors make. They are of an ethically different nature.
People should do what they can to keep themselves free from Covid and – by extension – those who are most at risk of catching it from them (people in close settings – not someone you randomly get within two metres of in Tescos). A little more conscientiousness as regards catching coughs and sneezes and hand cleanliness is always to be welcomed as well.
But, given the cost of trying to suppress a virus in the way you suggest (to say nothing of the futility and the lack of precedent of it); and the regressive practice of blaming other humans for disease (with all the abuses such a thing justifies – i.e China and Victoria), the authority – moral or otherwise – for what we are doing is far less simple than you claim.
Peter I followed the Victoria lockdown from July 8th.
Typically 200 people die of influenza in Victoria each year thats an average which for the sake of undermining not helping my argument is a little on the high side.
Death from Sars Cov 2 accelerated for 65 days over four fourteen cycles thats far worse than any European Country in the Pandemic Phase and resulted in a multiple not of 3 but 4 times influenza with 809 deaths. That is worse than the UK USA Italy Spain and Sweden who in the Pandemic Phase were variously between two and three.
The reason for this appalling outcome is by the end of that 65 days deaths in Aged Care Facilities were 78% of the total deaths. That is a staggering example of ineptitude. By the end of the surge the number of cases in ACF had risen from 11% to 49%. So on the basis of a 3 to 1 mortality rate Victoria failed miserably. What 100 days has done to the people there is anyone’s guess.
I speak from New Zealand where the cognitive effect on business and the mental health of many still bare the scars of Lockdown for around the 80 day mark. A young woman spoke movingly to me about the loss of business, loss of relationships and broken marriages recently and you will note I have not considered the economic consequences or debt creation in a so called successful outcome because I believe the impact on mental health is far far more important and will be with us for a very long time. When you stop a species performing its normal ritual functions for an extended period of time you are playing with fire.
Virtually everything in this article is an untruth. I don’t think it’s a lie, the author appears sincere.
There is no “new strain” of the ‘Rona. This fictitious “new strain” is not more contagious than the flu.
The ‘Rona is and continues to be a fabrication–it is the flu, with all its attendant nastiness.
The ‘Rona is being used to subjugate us, with the help of authors like this one. Sincere, reasonable, and dead wrong.
Scientists and doctors worldwide want us to believe COVID-19 is different to influenza, and that SARS-CoV-2 is a coronavirus, unlike influenza viruses, with a very different genetic code? That’s a pretty gigantic conspiracy. Who are they trying to subjugate us to?
It might help your credibility if you mentioned some form of evidence for this.
Surely there must be some efficient way to filter out completely lunatic posters from this thread?
Nothing filters out the Rona. The Chinese deliberately poke holes in the masks before they sell them.