14 ms·
> So far, the threat B.1.1.529 poses beyond South Africa is far from clear, researchers say. It is unclear whether the variant is more transmissible than Delta
by kryogen1c 5y ago
> So far, the threat B.1.1.529 poses beyond South Africa is far from clear, researchers say. It is unclear whether the variant is more transmissible than Delta
this is danger porn. pay it no mind and have happy holidays.
- ummonk 5y agoEhh - the majority of times I've seen researchers claim this, the variant has turned out to be more transmissible than other variants. Researchers seem to have a track record of being really hesitant to rule out founder effects and acknowledge higher transmissibility even when a variant is clearly spreading faster than its competition.
- skybrian 5y agoWell sure but we could easily wait a week until scientists know more. What would you do now that you’re not doing already?
- mckirk 5y agoRun around screaming, of course! Have to get rid of the holiday-calories _somehow_.
- WJW 5y agoI have never considered the calorie-burning benefits of screaming while running before, opting for just simple running without any type of noise-making before. Maybe I've been missing out on amazing health benefits this whole time! I think I'll have to try tomorrow. (/s for those who were doubting)
- the8472 5y ago> What would you do now that you’re not doing already? Well, if you're a policymaker then suspending travel to prevent it from spreading internationally. If it's the worst case (more infectious than delta + immune evading) then buying a little time to adapt vaccines or produce the recently announced antivirals could save a lot of lives.
- skybrian 5y agoWe aren’t policy makers, though.
- ummonk 5y agoHN regularly discusses topics which primarily have policy implications, and there likely are policy makers who lurk here.
- vernie 5y agoOn the low end I'd guess that 85% of HN commenters are policymakers who influence international travel regulations, so thanks for the tip, I'll advise my government right away!
- tigershark 5y agoU.K. put South Africa and other African countries in the red list for example.
- ummonk 5y agoThe locations of the spread of this variant might inform whether / when I choose to get a booster (third dose). If it starts spreading in the US, I might get a third dose to be safe. Until then, I'll avoid doing so as I do not want to contribute to domestic vaccine demand (which induces the US to stockpile more doses and export fewer doses to the rest of the world where they're more urgently needed).
- cblconfederate 5y agoI think responses should be local, instead of countries essentially waiting and coordinating themselves in a cascade. If possible new variants should be contained at least until it is clear if they are more dangerous or not. So far china has been able to basically be covid-free by using local strategies, something we havent seen in the west
- tjpnz 5y ago>So far china has been able to basically be covid-free by using local strategies, something we havent seen in the west This was effectively the approach New Zealand took but it wasn't sustainable. Maybe it would be more effective when implemented by an authoritarian regime (although difficult to measure given issues with transparency) but even then it won't last. China's going to have to start learning to live with Covid like every other country has had to.
- cblconfederate 5y agoThe EU is already acting to stop flights from south africa in an attempt to contain the spread. I think the world is finally adopting the New zealand strategy: local, stringent lockdowns. We are not yet ready to try to "live with covid", because it's too dangerous and we can't treat it "like the flu" until we have widely used effective antivirals.
- culi 5y agodon't socialize as much. if you have to have an event try to do it outside or ensure certain safety measures. make sure you and people you're hanging out with have their booster shots, etc. There's a lot
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- soperj 5y agoDoes nature.com have a track record of danger porn?
- chuckleMuscle 5y agoIn my field nature papers have a reputation for employing a fair amount of poetic licence. Have no idea how universal this is .
- astro123 5y agoI worked with someone (this is in astronomy) who said that papers in nature were the most likely to be wrong. They are in nature because they have a dramatic (new/unexpected) result. One good reason for a new/unexpected result is a mistake somewhere. Edit: I'm not saying anything about this paper. I know nothing about this. Just a meta comment that, in really hard to get published in journals, there might be a bi-modality of papers. Really important and really wrong :)
- dekhn 5y agoThis is correct. Think of nature as a journal that publishes papers with a high rate of false positives (claims that turn out to be untrue) on purpose,to intentionally stimulate the state of the art of science. I have actively ignored Nature and Science papers for my entire career (with the exception of my one Nature publication, and W&C 1953 of course).
- Fomite 5y agoIt likely says something that, as an epidemiologist, the only way I've ever gotten a paper into Nature/Science is during a scary infectious disease epidemic. The rest of the time, they're largely uninterested.
- occamrazor 5y agoIf compared to Buzzfeed or the Daily Mail, definitely not. If compared to more specialized academic publishers, yes.
- 5y ago
- cblconfederate 5y ago90% of new infections being this new variant should be quite alarming
- xienze 5y agoA variant outcompeting other variants isn’t in and of itself concerning. Viruses mutate in order spread more effectively, not surprising. Does it produce milder or more extreme symptoms? That’s the interesting part and the article doesn’t go into any specifics.
- culi 5y agoHmmm I'm totally just babbling here but this makes me think if it'd be possible to just engineer a harmless strain that is more effective at being transmitted (or perhaps even circumvents vaccines better). Then instead of worrying about vaccinating people we could just try to have that strain spread faster than the harmful ones A similar thing happened in some South American countries with a cholera outbreak. Strains that made people more sick forced them to stay inside whereas the more harmless strains allowed people to socialize more and the harmless ones ended up spreading faster
- chimprich 5y agoThat's not an entirely new idea, and it's not entirely crazy, but it has a lot of issues. What are the ethics in engineering a new virus and deliberately infecting people? What happens if some of those people die? What happens if your variant that has been engineered to spread extremely effectively mutates into something more lethal? How do you test your engineered virus? Large-scale tests on people? How would that be faster or more effective than producing a new vaccine and testing that instead? What happens if your tests show that the engineered virus is not as benevolent as you hoped, and is actually rather horrific? Can you put the genie back in the bottle?
- BbzzbB 5y ago>What happens if your variant that has been engineered to spread extremely effectively mutates into something more lethal? This alone should make it a non-option, there will be no way to contain it or stop it from mutating, I fail to see how it wouldn't just be a question of time the same way COVID variants are. The consequences could be disastrous and simply worsen the situation.
- Wherecombinator 5y agoThere’s a thread on Twitter here that makes it quite concerning https://twitter.com/miamalan/status/1463846528578109444?s=21 https://twitter.com/miamalan/status/1463846528578109444?s=21 I don’t have a background to properly analyse this but to me it looks legit.
- ukie 5y agoNobody cares.
- tigershark 5y agoAnother interesting one: https://mobile.twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1463956686075580421?s=21 https://mobile.twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1463956686075...
- swampthing 5y agoThe solution to overreaction should probably be to adjust the reaction to information, not to ignore information altogether.
- judge2020 5y agoI’m sure it’s not hard to grasp how people might react to “puts scientists on alert”.
- polote 5y agoWe still don't know if Delta was much more transmissible than Alpha actually. We have only observed that Delta spread faster than Alpha at some point in time. Not only have happy holiday, but also have happy return to normal. Most adults are vaxxed, if we don't remove restrictions now we will never remove them.
- ummonk 5y agoFully agree with your second paragraph but your first paragraph is nonsense. We have evidence that Delta has a much larger viral load and that it has outcompeted the Alpha variant everywhere in the world. You have to be in total denial to pretend the Delta variant might have been no more transmissible than Alpha.
- polote 5y agoI said it spread faster at one point in time, what is different than what you said? Imagine delta and alpha are both introduced in a naive population at the exact same time. Which one will spread faster? No one has a clue
- tigershark 5y agoDelta since it outcompeted Alpha everywhere in the world.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- contravariant 5y agoYou've seemingly reduced 'Delta is more transmissible' to its most meaningless interpretation. A large (mostly) unvaccinated and uninfected population has been exposed to both variants and the delta variant won out, what more proof do you want?
- chimprich 5y agoDelta will spread faster. We know this from seeing it spread in countries that have low vaccination rates and easily outcompete other variants. This can also be seen in laboratory experiments.
- idlewords 5y agoYou were on this forum calling covid "a normal seasonal virus" in February of 2020, so maybe sit this one out.
- throwawaylinux 5y agoWeren't "experts" calling for events to continue and that border closures would be racist and that people should not wear masks around that time? Maybe he was just listening to the experts.
- frenchyatwork 5y agoYes, but none of those "experts" were calling it "a normal seasonal virus", they just didn't believe such measures were necessary. SARS-COV-1 didn't require widespread border closures or masking, and it very much wasn't "a normal seasonal virus".
- throwawaylinux 5y agoYep so the rhetoric about it could easily have lead someone to think it wasn't much more to worry about than the seasonal flu.
- tempestn 5y agoThat's fair, but when people have opinions based on weak evidence, they should hold those opinions weakly, rather than reinforcing them to others.
- throwawaylinux 5y agoAre you criticizing the experts here? Careful that's verboten.
- tempestn 5y agoI'm not, no. As more evidence is accumulated to support a hypothesis, it is rational to strengthen one's belief in it. All beliefs should start out weakly held, until sufficient evidence is gathered to either reinforce or change them. And of course even strongly held beliefs should be re-examined if sufficient evidence piles up to the contrary.
- darig 5y agoJust another seasonal idiot
- arisAlexis 5y agoExtremely dangerous view. It happened twice until now that humanity thought like this and we paif a heavy price. Time for "better panic than sorry" approach.
- GekkePrutser 5y agoOn the other hand the earlier pandemics were over much quicker. For example I read about the anti mask league in San Francisco. The masks were only mandatory there for a couple of months! After that things were already getting back on track. After 3 big waves it was all over and things were back to normal. Death toll was high but during a short period. And very localised. Here in the Netherlands the Spanish flu was hardly a thing at all. I wonder if in the end we're just prolonging the agony. And the measures have a human cost too. Depression, loss of economic welfare which leads to poorer health conditions. There's more and more talk of letting things slide more ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29337373 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29337373 for example) and I'm personally wondering if this isn't the right thing too. Corona isn't going away and if we have to keep living with constant lockdowns and masks there isn't much quality of life left. And really eventually we're all catching it anyway. I'm totally happy taking as many vaccines as needed but long-term behavioural changes into directions which are not human nature is a big price to pay. We can't do this right away (we need more vaccination levels and effective medication) and we have to seriously invest in healthcare but as an end-goal this looks like a much more positive future perspective to me than continuing to fight against every infection. Personally I'd gladly take a bit higher chance of dying instead of having to struggle with these measures every day.
- arisAlexis 5y agoNo, if we don't know how lethal is this variant we can't be more liberal simple as that.
- culi 5y agoThat just means there's not enough data. The data from South Africa itself shows it's spreading dramatically faster than even Delta did which is already showing itself in the increase in new cases rapidly spiking up. Whether or not this new variant causes more or less sever disease is still to be shown
- exdsq 5y agoNote the UK government, who are incredibly slow and incompetent, reacted within hours to the news breaking with a travel ban from six countries the variant has been identified in. That speed of reaction makes me think there’s something to this.
- zenlot 5y agoCouldn't be more predictable. Just before festive period.