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New coronavirus variant: What do we know?
- Tycho 6y agoWouldn't there be an element of cherry picking to this whole variant story? Like, don't viruses mutate constantly, we just don't analyze them in a disciplined manner most of the time, so if you start doing that you're bound to find something like this, but so would anyone else conducting a similar analysis anywhere else and at any other point in the pandemic?
- spuz 6y agoYes variants occur all the time but they don't tend to become dominant. This variant went from 30% of all infections in November to 60% three weeks later. In order for a given variant to supplant all the others and become dominant it must have some characteristics that make it more transmissible. That is why they are particularly worried about this variant.
- raphaelj 6y agoCould it still be that this variant is as infectious as others, but just happens to be the dominant one in the regions where the virus circulates the most, for reasons that have nothing to do with the genetics of the virus? London and the South East are some of the densest populated areas in the UK, and one could expect exponential growth of infections there while other less populated areas could manage to keep their Rt around or bellow zero. If this strain was more prevalent in these regions, you would also see it taking a larger share of the infections nationwide. However, the precautionary principle has been the keystone of good handling in the pandemic, so they are right to apply precautionary measures before it's too late. We will learn more about this strain in the next few weeks.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- spuz 6y agoI don't know enough about epidemiology but I would imagine they have done modelling to determine the likely transmissibility or R number of this new variant to be 70% higher. The probability that this new variant has come to dominate by pure chance must be small. You are right that London is a densely populated area prone to easy spread for the virus but the same must be true for all variants. This variant started its existence as a single strand of viral DNA and has managed to spread far enough to become the dominant strand against competition from many other well established variants.
- occamrazor 6y agoThis variant was not dominant in London some weeks ago, and now is.
- jsnell 6y agoLook at the prevalence graph in the article, you can see that the new variant has been gradually taking over the turf from the other ones. This cannot be explained by just the founder effect unlike most other cases, since the prevalence was high to start with. It cannot be explained away by a single super-spreader event, since a single event will just cause a single step-change. This has been a continuous process. It could be random chance or a selective advantage, but then it comes down to just a modeling exercise. How likely is it that this could happen by chance? And it appears quite unlikely: instead the best way to explain the data is a significantly increased transmission.
- lbeltrame 6y agoIs this also taking out potential confounders out of the equation? I believe the currently available data (as opposed to the SAGE minutes, which has the conclusions) is not sufficient to rule that out.
- jsnell 6y agoWhat confounders would you suggest? Elsewhere in the thread you've been suggesting it's a founder effect. It should be plainly obvious why it's not that, nor something you could attribute to a single super-spreader event.
- lbeltrame 6y agoReading the latest document out, I can't rule out sampling bias, and the methodology used to gather data is also vulnerable to bias (get samples which are PCR-negative for the S gene, but positive to other genes, which is, by their own admission, a poor proxy). The confidence intervals shown by PHE on potential increased transmissibility are also very wide (not the ones from the NERVTAG minutes, but the new analyses by PHE). It needs larger sampling (already doing so, I'm sure) and some biological evidence.
- jsnell 6y agoHow would sampling error lead to the relative prevalence growing from 0% to 60% in a smooth exponential curve over 1-2 months? My understanding on data gathering is that there have been two data sources: sequencing a 10% sample of the positive results, and using the fortuitous point about the three-target PCR tests showing one of the targets as negative for all such tests. Having two data sources is useful since the results from the sequencing are delayed by weeks. But up to the point where they have both sets of data, the relative prevalence lines up very neatly. In particular, it cannot be that these results are coming from some other variant with the same 69-70 deletion. (I don't think it's fair to suggest they implied it was a poor proxy in general. They said it was a poorer proxy the further back in time you go.) Re: confidence intervals, the data they have from the relative prevalence of the new variant has pretty tight confidence intervals (95% CI: 1.34-1.59 R). That makes sense, because the modeling for that is really simple. The confidence interval for trying to correlate prevalence of the variant vs growth rates is indeed quite wide. But it makes sense, because that's noisy data. Yes, more data and more evidence will always be great. How many weeks are you willing to wait for it, before putting in new measures? How will that delay affect the epidemic curve if the findings so far are correct?
- newacct583 6y ago> Could it still be that this variant is as infectious as others, but just happens to be the dominant one in the regions where the virus circulates the most, for reasons that have nothing to do with the genetics of the virus? Yes, but one assumes that confounding factors like that are fairly easy to isolate. At some point, especially as the growth continues, statistics pretty much rules out other explanations. General consensus is that this is almost certainly more infectious. But sure, there's always more science to do.
- jnxx 6y ago> Could it still be that this variant is as infectious as others, but just happens to be the dominant one in the regions where the virus circulates the most, for reasons that have nothing to do with the genetics of the virus? That can happen when general incidence is very low, in a small region, or for a short time. But this is not any more the case here, and having this happening by chance is very unlikely.
- raphaelj 6y agoAlso, the UK seems to do way more sequencing of the virus than any other country, so one would expect such cherry picking to actually happen in the UK.
- mjul 6y agoAccording to the Danish Serum Institute, the UK is sequencing about 10% of the positive test results. The UK is considered a leader in this field in Europe including the British Isles. For comparison, the Danish Serum Institute has a sequencing capacity about 5000 positive tests a week, a rate of around 25% of the positives at the current level. Source, in Danish, from the Serum Institute: https://www.ssi.dk/aktuelt/nyheder/2020/ny-covid-virusstamme-i-england https://www.ssi.dk/aktuelt/nyheder/2020/ny-covid-virusstamme...
- lostlogin 6y agoNew Zealand is achieving over 80% sequencing and more recently has gone over 90%. It's possibly more important when you have less cases so that you can find connections and react to them. It's also a lot easy to do when you have very few cases (<10 versus 30k+). https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/checkpoint/audio/2018774366/how-covid-19-genome-sequencing-maps-the-spread-of-the-virus https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/checkpoint/audio/2...
- Closi 6y agoAlso the UK detected this new strain right next to the Dover Crossing - Isn't it pretty likely it came from mainland Europe and was detected at our port rather than we coincidentally had a mutation right on the border?
- ceejayoz 6y agoLooks like it's probably the opposite. > The variant can be found across the UK, except Northern Ireland, but it is heavily concentrated in London, the South East and eastern England. Cases elsewhere in the country do not seem to have taken off. > Data from Nextstrain, which has been monitoring the genetic codes of the viral samples around the world, suggest cases in Denmark and Australia have come from the UK. The Netherlands has also reported cases.
- maxerickson 6y agoNot really. Thousands of variations have ben sequenced, the notable thing here is the (potentially) faster spread.
- Bombthecat 6y agoYeah, i read somewhere 70%.
- bigbizisverywyz 6y agoWhilst the consensus seems to be that this variant is spreading faster than other variants - is there any information on exactly how it does so?
- MacsHeadroom 6y agoNot really. But this variant does have novel mutations in sections coding for spike proteins. Whether and how those are functional improvements for the virus are tbd. See https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.16.423118v1 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.16.423118v1
- sroussey 6y agoIncrease in the number of spikes per virus.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- fabian2k 6y agoAs far as I understand, that is what happened with previous concerns about mutated strains. In the end they turned out to be no different than the wildtype, and greate distribution was simply because those strains were present in populations that caused more spreading. There is not enough data right now to be sure whether this new strain is more infectious or not, but from what I read there are a few more reasons to be concerned this time compared to the previous times when mutated strains were reported.
- jhrmnn 6y agoAFAIK, this strand is different because of the number of mutations. See figure 2 here https://virological.org/t/preliminary-genomic-characterisation-of-an-emergent-sars-cov-2-lineage-in-the-uk-defined-by-a-novel-set-of-spike-mutations/563 https://virological.org/t/preliminary-genomic-characterisati...
- twic 6y agoThis is a really good report on the new strain, and I urge everyone to read it.
- Mvandenbergh 6y agoSure, there's constant mutation and most of it is phenotypically meaningless. What caused the concern is that this particular set of mutations seem to be associated with a part of the country where the measured dose-response of lockdown measures suddenly went way down. In other words, the effectiveness of a particular set of lockdown measures seemed to suddenly go down in Kent and London but not other parts of the country including parts of the country that had previously shown similar responses to lockdown measures. Either everyone in Kent is suddenly breaking the rules more than people elsewhere, this is unfortunate random variation driven by a few super spreading events (totally possible), or this is the first phenotypically distinct variant (as opposed to irrelevant sequence mutations) which has emerged. Let's hope it's nothing but I'm glad that measures have been taken now.
- mrfusion 6y agoJust in time for Christmas too.
- curryst 6y agoMy layman's interpretation is that variants are kind of a stepping stone to a strain. Viruses do mutate constantly, but I would guess that many (maybe most) of those mutations are effectively a no-op. It's a mutation in a dormant region, so it does nothing. Of the mutations that occur in an active region, some will be bad, and those mutations die out. So I would think we're really only concerned with mutations in active regions that impact viability. We don't really care about mutations that decrease viability, since they'll generally be overcome by more viable versions of the virus naturally. The question with this particular mutation is whether it's a variant or a strain. I.e. is this new variant more infectious? Which would make it a strain, not a variant.
- zpeti 6y agoThere's so many questions that this raises. - Is it more infectious or just bypasses current immunities? - Will the vaccines basically be voided by this? - Is it less lethal? Could it create more general immunity in communities without killing? - Has is spread yet? I've read the UK gov knew about this in october... seems like it's probably everywhere by now
- lucideer 6y agoNo answers on most of those Qs, but the messaging on (2) "Will the vaccines basically be voided by this?" is that no, vaccines should still be effective. I'm not sure how they can no that without restarting extensive trials, but as a sibling commenter points out, viruses mutate constantly so I guess dealing with variants is pretty common when it comes to vaccination.
- xiphias2 6y agoSafety is the hardest part of trials, and also the vaccines that were approved are in Phase 4 (post market surveillence).
- SifJar 6y agoMy understanding is as long as the variant has the same spike protein, vaccines "should" remain effective. So while trials haven't been done yet to verfiy the vaccines are still effective, I'm assuming the spike protein has been observed to be the same so there's no reason to suggest vaccines wouldn't be effective. EDIT: Actually, sounds like a couple of the mutations are in the spike protein and there is some evidence of reduced antibody effectiveness against the mutated version.
- lbeltrame 6y agoN501Y is properly neutralized by vaccination (there's a paper in Science with these data, but I don't have a link handy right now). The deletion seems to reduce antibody neutralization, but: - In the preprint where this was shown, only 4 convalescent sera were tested; - The same 4 sera had large variation in neutralization activity per se; - There is no investigation on potential impaired T cell reactivity (cellular immunity): FTR, the "mink mutation", although it exhibited slightly lower antibody neutralization, did not change the reaction of T cells to it.
- robhu 6y agoEwan Birney (deputy directory of EMBL European Molecular Biology Laboratory)'s Twitter is a really good source of first class scientific information on this. You need to scroll back about 2 days to get the latest info (and he refers to the Twitter accounts of others in the field who can give more information). His Twitter profile is @ https://twitter.com/ewanbirney/ https://twitter.com/ewanbirney/ (Ewan is awesome - he is also (co)director of EMBL-EBI European Bioinformatics Institute, and I had the honour (as a Computer Scientist) of working there for nine years)
- occamrazor 6y agoDirect link to the thread where he explains why the evidence, although not conclusive, strongly supports a higher infectivity of the new variant: https://mobile.twitter.com/jcbarret/status/1340716901610172416 https://mobile.twitter.com/jcbarret/status/13407169016101724...
- maest 6y agoAre there any non-twitter sources available? I can't access that website. Also, I doubt twitter is the place where that information should live long-term anyway.
- iso1631 6y agohttps://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1340716901610172416.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1340716901610172416.html
- jghn 6y agoI did see him mention on twitter the other day that he was going to be on a BBC segment talking about this, so there could be video archives on that front
- _Microft 6y agoTry nitter, it's a fast alternative to reading Twitter content on Twitter itself. I modified the link above for you: https://nitter.net/jcbarret/status/1340716901610172416 https://nitter.net/jcbarret/status/1340716901610172416
- poma88 6y agoBoris needed a news piece to lock the City down.
- jjgreen 6y agoThere's been a certain amount of public arguments between the government in the UK (yay Christmas) and scientists (boo Christmas). I really hope that this is not a tactical exaggeration used by the latter to get their way that's got way out of hand ...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- plutonorm 6y agoIt seems to me to be possible. I'm undecided either way. Also, isn't it suspicious that anyone who has suggested this is downvoted into oblivion/flagged?
- glitchc 6y agoI am now suitably terrified. The vaccine won’t be deployed fast enough. Coronavirus and humanity are in for a roller-coaster ride over the next few years...
- jonatron 6y agoTwo sources: https://www.cogconsortium.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Report-1_COG-UK_19-December-2020_SARS-CoV-2-Mutations.pdf https://www.cogconsortium.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Repo... https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4857 https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4857
- CommieDetector 6y agoYou will obey! You will obey! You will obey! You will obey!
- TazeTSchnitzel 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VUI_%E2%80%93_202012/01 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VUI_%E2%80%93_202012/01
- DrBazza 6y agoA good visualization of the mutations, including the South African one that isn't related, but also increasing: https://nextstrain.org/groups/neherlab/ncov/S.N501?c=gt-S_501,69&p=grid&r=country https://nextstrain.org/groups/neherlab/ncov/S.N501?c=gt-S_50...
- anonymousDan 6y agoThe talk of the virus potentially being on a path to vaccine escape is very worrying. Sounds like we might end up in a situation where we have seasonal COVID like we do with the flu :(
- herbst 6y agoAt this point i heavy doubt we dont. If this mutation took place after one year, what will come in two or three.
- newacct583 6y agoThat was the endpoint regardless. Almost no one thinks this is going to be a smallpox situation where the vaccine is so effective that the virus gets eradicated. Almost certainly, covid is going to turn into an endemic disease just like everything else. Remember: all diseases were novel once! But most of the population will be immune, so outbreaks will be limited and spread slowly. Ideally that immunity will come via vaccination instead of infection. And yes, it remains possible that if it mutates as rapidly as influenza, that we'll need a yearly "covid shot" to plug the gap.
- gns24 6y agoI think most people seem to be underestimating just how bad this is. During the recent 4-week lockdown it was already clear that something odd was going on in Kent; whilst case counts were dropping in the rest of the country, they continued to rise significantly there. Something was clearly different. Now high case counts are spreading from the South East into the rest of the country. We don't know whether we can even stop the growth. During the last lockdown schools remained open; I suspect that it may be necessary to close them in order to just stop the growth. A significant reduction in cases looks impossible. This strain has probably already spread to tens of other countries. Every country which is just about holding things together, whatever their strategy, is going to struggle with a significantly more transmissible variant of the virus.
- kashprime 6y agoIt's fortunate that Pfizer/BioNTech chose the whole spike protein mRNA as their vaccine candidate over the one that focused just on the receptor binding domain -- which the UK mutation changed. Wise choice, and hopefully it will work well against this new variant. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2027906 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2027906 Moderna's vaccine was focused on the whole spike protein too. So even though there are crucial mutations in this mutation, both leading vaccine candidates hopefully will still be effective.
- stubbedtoe 6y agoFor those interested in looking at the raw data, https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/interactive-map https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/interactive-map is a useful visualisation of cases by region, over time.
- LatteLazy 6y agoI don't disagree, but it would be really nice if we could classify lockdowns better. The original lockdown furloughed a LOT of workers, closed schools and closed virtually all shops. Today's "super tier 4+ lockdown" doesn't seem to apply to shops at all (my local shops were all open this morning, is wrapping paper really an "essential"?). Workers are mostly going in. Schools that have remained open unless they already closed and childcare is still running. They've basically just shut restaurants. That's the only change I can see... I've posted elsewhere that my cynical view of the UK gov approach is that they are talking tough and doing nothing. So maybe I'm biased? Perhaps a move transmissible strain will force real action?
- sradman 6y agoVUI – 202012/01 on Wikipedia [1]: > The first Variant Under Investigation in December 2020 (VUI – 202012/01), also known as lineage B.1.1.7, is a variant of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The variant was first detected in the United Kingdom in October 2020 from a sample taken the previous month, and it quickly began to spread by mid-December. It is correlated with a significant increase in the rate of COVID-19 infection in England; this increase is thought to be at least partly because of mutation N501Y inside the spike glycoprotein's receptor-binding domain, which is needed for binding to ACE2 in human cells. Correlation does not equal causation. Most of the northern hemisphere is experiencing a significant increase in cases, i.e., a second wave. It has not yet been established whether this variant exhibits a unique pathogenesis. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VUI_–_202012/01 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VUI_–_202012/01
- jsnell 6y agoBut it's not just about there being correlation between the variant appearing, and there being a new wave. That is a pretty weak data point by itself. We have more evidence and everything so far is pointing in the same direction. The big deal to me is that this variant is muscling out others in sequencing (+ PCR tests which by coincidence can tell the difference between this variant and the previously dominant ones), despite there being a high prevalence. And while the details are sparse, the NERVTAG minutes refer to evidence showing that the patients infected by the new variant have higher viral loads.
- raadore 6y agoOn dec 10 WHO released a statement on their website admitting that PCR tests are faulty, will detect anything we want them to detect and therefore medical staff need to look for symptoms which basically means you’re sick if you have symptoms. https://www.who.int/news/item/14-12-2020-who-information-notice-for-ivd-users https://www.who.int/news/item/14-12-2020-who-information-not... As a scientist that information tells me that all cases have to be considered faulty since the foundation is faulty. The results cannot be trusted.
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- plutonorm 6y agoVery suspicious that this story breaks just as Boris needs to lock down the country over christmas. "everyone is going to hate me, quick think of something to blame.".... Eureka .... "There's a new virus strain, totally unforeseeable, don't blame me for the lock downs" Just sayin'
- oneeyedpigeon 6y agoWhy did he need to lockdown the country other than because of this? Given that he said 3 days earlier that this would be tantamount to "cancelling Christmas", and he now looks like a fool and a hypocrite for ridiculing the leader of the opposition over it, what possible benefit does he have to gain?
- plutonorm 6y ago"Why did he need to lockdown the country other than because of this?" Imagine for a moment that the current case number was entirely predictable. i.e. it is due to Boris ignoring scientific advice, believing he knows better. So the need to close for christmas is a result of not locking down sooner and harder. Now due to that failure to sell the hard truth, people wont be able to meet over christmas and he wants to find a way of shifting the blame.
- tialaramex 6y agoThe strategy in the UK (and much of the world) ignores epidemeology and tries to negotiate with the virus. OK, you say people will die, I'd prefer if they vote for me, how about if we meet in the middle and only a few of them die, but the rest vote for me? This was probably made worse by politicians because it's their natural instinct, but you'll see regular people trying to bargain like this too. "OK I know it's unsafe to do X, but I really wanted to, and so was extra careful to use hand sanitiser today". The virus doesn't understand your proposed bargain, it's just (very complicated) chemistry, it is no more able to agree to a "deal" where you can spend Xmas opening presents with the extended family without getting COVID-19 so long as you promise not to stay overnight than a falling rock is able to spare your life because you prayed to Jesus. One small piece of good news is that to a limited extent, and for some privileged people, technology made it possible to ignore these bad policies and enjoy much of the safety offered by sane policies despite living somewhere that had chosen to ignore them. Anyway, the idea (which I'm not agreeing with) isn't that Boris knew the old plan (Xmas week doesn't need rules) wouldn't work, and concocted this story to cover for the fact that he'd need to U-turn rather than just never issuing the obviously bad policy, nor that this new strain is the only reason it's out of control and the old policy wouldn't work. Instead the idea is Boris was disappointed to hear that scientists (who've said all along that couldn't work) are right and it's going to drown the NHS in patients, likely resulting in staggering death tolls around New Year - and once he understood that he wanted an excuse to U-turn for which a new strain provides a convenient excuse. Boris always looks like a fool. It's a big part of how he got elected. British people think he's a charming buffoon. Under current plans he has several years for them to forget he killed their parents or grandparents before they get the chance to kick him out directly, although it's the nature of Tory party politics that Boris isn't likely to survive that long.
- rubyist5eva 6y agoI know I'm less afraid of it. More contagious generally means less deadly.
- arcturus17 6y agoThis sounds scientifically rigorous.
- rubyist5eva 6y agoAbout as rigorous as the fear mongering in the media right now.
- jmnicolas 6y agoI almost stopped commenting about it on HN, it feels like a wall of downvotes if you don't agree with the mainstream opinion.
- thatguy0900 6y agoWe will have some very interesting textbooks about the mainstream public response to this in 50 years, I'm sure.
- anonunivgrad 6y agoDoubtful. The victors write the history. The Church of “If It Saves Even One Life” and “Anti-Lockdown and Anti-Maskers are Murderers” are clearly the victors in this timeline. Your children and grandchildren will be taught about the backwards racists who were willing to sacrifice old people in the name of money, but how the fascist Donald Trump was finally defeated by the forces of democracy and justice and health was restored.
- thatguy0900 6y agoWell, I agree with you on trump but I feel like the people who have to live with the economic reality of all the mom and pop stores never reopening in favor of big international companies wont be very happy with us
- gewa 6y agoThis Report from the COVID-19 Genomics UK Consortium gives a good summary of the prevalent genotypes with UK COVID-19 cases. You can see how the B.1.1.7 mutations N501Y + Δ69-70 and N501Y are very recent and mostly showed up during the last 28 days. https://www.cogconsortium.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Report-1_COG-UK_19-December-2020_SARS-CoV-2-Mutations.pdf https://www.cogconsortium.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Repo...
- throwaway4good 6y agoMy worry is this: If you take a population where a virus is widespread and start vaccinating then the likelihood for a mutation that escapes the vaccination is much higher, had you instead taken a population where the virus not widespread and vaccinated there. Is this correct? UK has a widespread ongoing outbreak and is the first nation to deliver vaccinations at a big scale.
- kace91 6y agoI'm not sure I follow. Why would vaccination increase the likelihood of new mutations, or mutations surviving better? The only way I can see that reasoning working is that the mutation was somehow vaccine resistant but not resistant to the immune reaction we get after being sick with the comon corona, but it is not obvious to me that it would work that way, I would assume the opposite.
- Volundr 6y agoYeah this is sort of true on it's face, but doesn't really change anything. Of course if a virus is widely spread it's more likely to have vaccine escaping variants out there. If you vaccinate that population those vaccine escaping variants become dominant. Obviously this is less likely in a population with less cases. But you have to vaccinate that high case population eventually and the sooner you do it the better. No sense giving the virus more time to mutate.
- AntiImperialis2 6y ago>Why would vaccination increase the likelihood of new mutations, or mutations surviving better? Our immune systems are general enough to face a wide variety of viruses, infections and strains. When one is vaccinated, it gets prepared for that particular strain of a particular virus. The cost is that it could become more vulnerable to other infections... it's the cost/benefit of specialization vs generalization. Reference: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14970928/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14970928/ The reason is that the immune system is highly optimized and it is optimized to be flexible enough to save enough individuals for the next generation. It is not optimized to save each and every individual against all possible infections. That is unnecessary, as far as evolution is concerned. Having said that, vaccines generally don't weaken individuals to a slightly different variant of the same virus. It should rather strengthen it. The immune system expects the virus to mutate so it prepares for the mutations to an extent. In fact, a category of vaccines called live-attenuated vaccines are basically weakened strains of the same virus (these can sometimes mutate into dangerous strains, eg. https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/polio-vaccination-causes-more-infections-than-wild-virus-66778/ https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/polio-vaccination..., but that's a different discussion).
- guscost 6y agoBased on the precedent of all other endemic human coronaviruses, there is reason to guess that the winning mutations will be less dangerous. This is also consistent with theory: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4873896/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4873896/ > By far, the most widely studied trade-off involves transmission and virulence (Anderson and May, 1982; Frank, 1996; Alizon et al. 2009).
- AntiImperialis2 6y agoThe strains being transmitted the most are likely to keep the host the most healthy for the longest time. However, this is only true in the LONG RUN, when different variants have played out for a while. In the short term, there could be a highly transimissible strain with a much higher mortality. It will eventually come to a point when the most common strains in a population are milder strains... but one of the reasons that happens is that hosts with immune systems unable to handle the strain die off... and those who survive do so because they can handle it better. So, at a later stage, it looks like the virus got milder, but: - it doesn't generally apply to all strains - the strains look mild later because only those for whom it was mild survive
- jnxx 6y agoExactly. There exists a really good example for that, the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918.
- sjg007 6y agoYou’ve traded parasites here for viruses. What about bacteria?
- parliament32 6y agoThe question I'm most curious about: Does the vaccine(s) we've hustled to get developed, produced, and distributed over the last few months basically get invalidated because of the new strain?
- cyounkins 6y agoNo. There is a section in the article about that.
- parliament32 6y agoThat's what I get for just skimming the first half of the article.. thanks.
- poma88 6y agoI feel embarassed because people vilified my comment about Boris using this piece of news with a political cover motive. I am sorry, saying this is different than being a negationist. I hope more people get it now that I honestly try to explain myself better. Thanks.
- mchusma 6y agoThe best reaction to this would be to pressure the NIH to lift the ban on the Astrazeneca vaccine. There is enough stockpiled supply to vaccinate most of the UK quickly and they would have a first mover advantage to getting a bunch of that vaccine. Evidence suggests this varient still has the same spike protein and seems like it would be still prevented by most if not all the vaccines.
- kokx 6y agoThe best reaction is to approve a vaccine which does not have a good proven track record? It hasn't been through complete Stage 3 trials, so we don't know if it works or if it works well. I'm not saying that the Oxford/Astrazeneca vaccine is bad. This is however very unwise. It would definitely erode trust in vaccines if the Oxford/Astrazeneca were to have significant side effects. Which would erode trust in science in the long term.
- enoughBadMath 6y agoAre we going to panic over another flu? If you don't want to catch it, wear an n95 masks. Don't punish the healthy weight population for the unhealthy minority who apparently cannot isolate or wear n95 masks.
- syntaxing 6y agoIs there anyway to know if the vaccines are effective against the new strains?
- konjin 6y agoThere is no evidence for or against this, seeing as the mutation is at most ten weeks old.
- biotinker 6y agoAs mentioned elsewhere in this thread, this is a variant, not a strain. This variant does not have any genetic differences in the spike protein targeted by the vaccines. It is unlikely the vaccines will be differently effective.
- keypusher 6y ago> Table 1 provides details of the B.1.1.7 lineage-specific non-synonymous mutations and deletions. We note that many occur in the virus spike protein. https://virological.org/t/preliminary-genomic-characterisation-of-an-emergent-sars-cov-2-lineage-in-the-uk-defined-by-a-novel-set-of-spike-mutations/563 https://virological.org/t/preliminary-genomic-characterisati...
- nickthemagicman 6y agoViruses mutate constantly. Vaccines target subsequences of amino acids on proteins which both variants most likely have. Mark my words that this a non story/media sensationalism and will be out of the news in a few weeks.
- JohnJamesRambo 6y agoMy state has an Rt as high as London and people are running around like there is no epidemic at all. It's very frustrating. https://rt.live/ https://rt.live/
- 02020202 6y agofake news. enjoy your lockdown and GDP in the shitter. you dumb sheep.
- bmitc 6y agoI find it completely disappointing and disheartening that the west has done almost nothing to curb the virus, thus increasing the chance of mutation and continued spread. It's just hard to see the pointing of fingers at China that's happened, especially in hindsight when it's unclear if it even began in China (which doesn't really matter anyway if it was a naturally occurring zoonotic crossover event) and not somewhere else like Italy, but the west has just rolled over to the threat of the virus in its response. Meanwhile, life in China has been basically normal for a while. It further drives me crazy because I am still disconnected from my family because the U.S. still refuses to allow my fiancée to travel back (she lives and works in the U.S.) from the country best dealing with this to to the worst. It's just sickening there's no support for people like us, and now it looks like it can only get worse in the west.
- porknubbins 6y agoSome of the finger pointing at China may be unfair but clearly they knew a lot about the virus while letting their citizens travel outside. Not that the West would’ve handled it any better necessarily but when you seed the world with virus there is going to be some blowback.
- cma 6y agoChina restricted international flights out of Wuhan on January 23rd. The US didn't restrict flights out even now with much higher incidence.
- bmitc 6y agoThey were also highly restricting travel internally as well, already doing temperature checks on major roads.
- saberdancer 6y agoChina had much more experience with SARS and could understand the risk it poses to their economy and population. With strict government control they can exert and massive resources, they could curb the spread. It's almost comical to look at their total number of cases (80 000) compared to new daily cases today (in USA alone 200 000).
- heyjrokulsihsk 6y agodont get me wrong I got the idea saving people. but isnt this like saving private ryan? to save some people, dies many. complicated. if some doctor die because he tries to save me ( useless some dude ) is this really make sense ? what will happen when so.much people lost their jobs and cannot find anything to eat, for their familiy? is this more healty? like I said I do not understand! and be aware that I do not underestimate the pandemic!
- thedrbrian 6y agoThe telegraph reckons it was spotted in Brazil earlier this year https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/12/21/supercharged-covid-mutation-spotted-brazil-last-spring/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/12/21/supercharged-cov...