New Covid Variants

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basementer
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Re: New Covid Variants

Post by basementer » Sun May 09, 2021 6:48 am

headshot wrote:
Sun May 09, 2021 6:01 am
Cases are rising because people are acting as if all measures have been lifted.

There’s barely any social distancing taking place any more and the rule of six/two households only is being mostly ignored. Even my usually sensible neighbours had about 12 people from at least four households in their garden for a birthday last week.
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Re: New Covid Variants

Post by Woodchopper » Sun May 09, 2021 1:55 pm

The excellent John Burn Murdoch on the spread of B.1.617.2 (India) in the UK.
https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status ... 65185?s=21

tldr it’s spreading rapidly, but overall case numbers are still dropping. It isn’t escaping immune responses.

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Re: New Covid Variants

Post by raven » Sun May 09, 2021 4:12 pm

Woodchopper wrote:
Sun May 09, 2021 1:55 pm
The excellent John Burn Murdoch on the spread of B.1.617.2 (India) in the UK.
https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status ... 65185?s=21

tldr it’s spreading rapidly, but overall case numbers are still dropping. It isn’t escaping immune responses.
Thanks, that's a good thread. I like his point that it's possible the increase is down to the rush of people coming in from India & us picking up all the cases amongst them because the samples all get sequenced. The crux is how much community spread we're getting vs incoming travellers though, which is unclear.

He says it'll take a several weeks to tell - I literally said to MrRaven yesterday: it'll be three weeks before we know if it's going to take off here. But if it doesn't escape immunity, that's not so much of a worry.

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Re: New Covid Variants

Post by headshot » Sun May 09, 2021 6:20 pm

basementer wrote:
Sun May 09, 2021 6:48 am
headshot wrote:
Sun May 09, 2021 6:01 am
Cases are rising because people are acting as if all measures have been lifted.

There’s barely any social distancing taking place any more and the rule of six/two households only is being mostly ignored. Even my usually sensible neighbours had about 12 people from at least four households in their garden for a birthday last week.
What's your locale, headshot?
West Midlands.

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Re: New Covid Variants

Post by Woodchopper » Mon May 10, 2021 6:44 pm

Preliminary report on SARS‐CoV‐2 Spike mutation T478K
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs ... /jmv.27062

It’s found in B.1.617.2 (India).

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Re: New Covid Variants

Post by Woodchopper » Mon May 10, 2021 9:07 pm


The World Health Organziation said on Monday that the coronavirus variant first identified in India last year was being classified as a variant of global concern, with some preliminary studies showing that it spreads more easily.

The B.1.617 variant is the fourth variant to be designated as being of global concern and requiring heightened tracking and analysis. The others are those first detected in Britain, South Africa and Brazil.

"We are classifying this as a variant of concern at a global level," Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO technical lead on COVID-19, told a briefing. "There is some available information to suggest increased transmissibility."
https://www.reuters.com/business/health ... 021-05-10/

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Re: New Covid Variants

Post by Woodchopper » Tue May 11, 2021 9:51 pm

Coronavirus variants are spreading in India — what scientists know so far
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01274-7

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Re: New Covid Variants

Post by Herainestold » Wed May 12, 2021 12:21 am

T
he dangers of the reckless reopening was underscored as scientists estimated that B.1.617.2 is the cause of over 40 percent of all new coronavirus cases in the capital, London. On the day Johnson and Whitty gave the all-clear to Stage 3 and abandoning all restrictions, surge Covid testing was taking place in a fourth council area in London. Testing went ahead in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea after cases of the South African variant were found in the Notting Hill district.

Epidemiologist Dr Deepti Gurdasani from Queen Mary University, London told the GMB programme Monday, “Cases of this new [Indian] variant are doubling every week within the UK while other variants are dropping. Overall cases have been dropping, which shows that even with current restrictions in place, this variant is growing very, very quickly. In London, 50 percent of cases now are no longer the so-called Kent variant.”

There is mounting evidence that B.1.617.2 is present all over the UK, as among the cases identified in London only a fifth resulted from travel to India. Fifteen percent of new cases in the North West of England and over 10 percent in the East of England and South East England are attributed to the Indian variant. Surge testing is due to start in Nottingham—but not for two weeks—after a rise in Indian variant cases.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/0 ... p-m12.html
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Re: New Covid Variants

Post by bob sterman » Wed May 12, 2021 6:01 am

Nationally in the UK there has just been a 12% rise in the 7-day total number of cases.

Right before the May 17th relaxation of rules and the start of indoor "cautious cuddling".

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Re: New Covid Variants

Post by wilsontown » Wed May 12, 2021 7:44 am

Here's my updated plot of the % change in the 7 day moving average of cases from the previous day, as of yesterday. We've seen some blips in this visualization previously that turned out to be nothing, but we can see that the 7 day case average has been increasing over the last few days. Not ideal timing before further re-opening. I probably wouldn't be panicking just yet (with the caveat that panic has always set in too late so far) but would certainly be closely monitoring everything as we all go back down the pub. And of course case numbers on their own matter less if they aren't followed by increased hospitalizations and deaths.
cases_11052021.png
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Re: New Covid Variants

Post by shpalman » Wed May 12, 2021 8:08 am

Indeed, Italy is talking about using a sort of "hospitalization-based" version of R_t as a metric, instead of R_t in the population. This is basically admitting that we're going to let covid knock itself out as long as it doesn't give too many people serious acute consequences.
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Re: New Covid Variants

Post by PeteB » Wed May 12, 2021 8:11 am

wilsontown wrote:
Wed May 12, 2021 7:44 am
Here's my updated plot of the % change in the 7 day moving average of cases from the previous day, as of yesterday. We've seen some blips in this visualization previously that turned out to be nothing, but we can see that the 7 day case average has been increasing over the last few days. Not ideal timing before further re-opening. I probably wouldn't be panicking just yet (with the caveat that panic has always set in too late so far) but would certainly be closely monitoring everything as we all go back down the pub. And of course case numbers on their own matter less if they aren't followed by increased hospitalizations and deaths.

cases_11052021.png
The SPI-M models all seems to expect an exit wave

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Re: New Covid Variants

Post by bob sterman » Wed May 12, 2021 8:33 am

wilsontown wrote:
Wed May 12, 2021 7:44 am
And of course case numbers on their own matter less if they aren't followed by increased hospitalizations and deaths.
Or the emergence of new variants in a large pool of new cases.

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Re: New Covid Variants

Post by wilsontown » Wed May 12, 2021 9:12 am

bob sterman wrote:
Wed May 12, 2021 8:33 am
wilsontown wrote:
Wed May 12, 2021 7:44 am
And of course case numbers on their own matter less if they aren't followed by increased hospitalizations and deaths.
Or the emergence of new variants in a large pool of new cases.
Yes, fair point. But it looks like re-opening gradually and hoping that vaccinations / immunity pick up the slack is going to be the only game in town unless things go seriously sideways again.
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Re: New Covid Variants

Post by Woodchopper » Wed May 12, 2021 9:47 am

PeteB wrote:
Wed May 12, 2021 8:11 am
wilsontown wrote:
Wed May 12, 2021 7:44 am
Here's my updated plot of the % change in the 7 day moving average of cases from the previous day, as of yesterday. We've seen some blips in this visualization previously that turned out to be nothing, but we can see that the 7 day case average has been increasing over the last few days. Not ideal timing before further re-opening. I probably wouldn't be panicking just yet (with the caveat that panic has always set in too late so far) but would certainly be closely monitoring everything as we all go back down the pub. And of course case numbers on their own matter less if they aren't followed by increased hospitalizations and deaths.

cases_11052021.png
The SPI-M models all seems to expect an exit wave
What appears to have happened in parts of the US is that younger people have ended up in hospital. Some of them have been severely ill but overall mortality isn't nearly as high. So a UK outbreak in late May and June may involve few deaths compared to the the winter and 2020, but there could still be pressure on hospitals, especially if those younger patents are in hospital for longer then the older ones.

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Re: New Covid Variants

Post by Woodchopper » Wed May 12, 2021 6:34 pm

Thread on B.1.627 in India by a virologist
https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/139213 ... 69890?s=21

Thread on B.1.617 in the UK
https://twitter.com/jcbarret/status/139 ... 08098?s=21

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Re: New Covid Variants

Post by headshot » Wed May 12, 2021 8:35 pm

The Guardian is reporting the EMA statement about “promising evidence” MRNA vaccines appearing to be effective against the India variant, with further research on AZ underway.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/ ... dd83f77364
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Re: New Covid Variants

Post by Herainestold » Thu May 13, 2021 12:13 am

Woodchopper wrote:
Wed May 12, 2021 9:47 am
PeteB wrote:
Wed May 12, 2021 8:11 am
wilsontown wrote:
Wed May 12, 2021 7:44 am
Here's my updated plot of the % change in the 7 day moving average of cases from the previous day, as of yesterday. We've seen some blips in this visualization previously that turned out to be nothing, but we can see that the 7 day case average has been increasing over the last few days. Not ideal timing before further re-opening. I probably wouldn't be panicking just yet (with the caveat that panic has always set in too late so far) but would certainly be closely monitoring everything as we all go back down the pub. And of course case numbers on their own matter less if they aren't followed by increased hospitalizations and deaths.

cases_11052021.png
The SPI-M models all seems to expect an exit wave
What appears to have happened in parts of the US is that younger people have ended up in hospital. Some of them have been severely ill but overall mortality isn't nearly as high. So a UK outbreak in late May and June may involve few deaths compared to the the winter and 2020, but there could still be pressure on hospitals, especially if those younger patents are in hospital for longer then the older ones.
The younger patients are in hospital longer than the older ones because they are not dying as quickly, unlike the oldies. So the hospitals fill up with younger but very sick patients, and some of them will die. This of course puts severe strain on the hospital system. So the hospitals can be overwhelmed but with a lower mortality rate and fewer deaths.
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Re: New Covid Variants

Post by shpalman » Thu May 13, 2021 8:06 pm

having that swing is a necessary but not sufficient condition for it meaning a thing
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Re: New Covid Variants

Post by shpalman » Fri May 14, 2021 12:09 pm

jimbob wrote:
Thu May 13, 2021 8:15 pm
You can see the cases spread from the central Bolton region to nearby MSOAs in the government map.

Image

Image

Image

Sorry about the changing scale. Not sure how I managed that
My mum's response to this outbreak on the other side of the country was "This cannot happening to me!!!!!"

Mum, this is not happening to you.

By the way, here's a map of the outbreak and of the vaccination rate

Image

Image
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Re: New Covid Variants

Post by Woodchopper » Fri May 14, 2021 12:45 pm

No need for fancy statistics to find the correlation there.

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Re: New Covid Variants

Post by Woodchopper » Fri May 14, 2021 1:07 pm

Thread
but there are signs that the vaccines may be working against the Indian variant B.1.617.2

Resurgences in Bolton & Blackburn are so far confined to younger people. Cases remain low & flat among the mostly-vaccinated older population.

[...]

What about in India, where the variant originated and is believed to be dominant?

Age-stratified data on cases & deaths here is very patchy. But what little there is also hints at a vaccine effect: share of cases/deaths taken up by the elderly (the most vaccinated) is falling

[...]

In Bolton and Blackburn, numbers of cases associated with the Indian variant are climbing, while those not associated with B.1.617 have continued to fall.

Again I’d note here that the absolute numbers are small, but I think it would be negligent to ignore this trend.

[...]

New data published yesterday by @PHE_uk shows that there is a subtle yet visible trend whereby areas in which new variants (most of which are thought to be B.1.617.2) are most prevalent are also now seeing higher case growth, on average.
https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status ... 33249?s=20

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Re: New Covid Variants

Post by wilsontown » Fri May 14, 2021 1:13 pm

Our esteemed leader will be addressing the nation this evening, should be "interesting".
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Re: New Covid Variants

Post by Woodchopper » Fri May 14, 2021 1:15 pm

Another thread on the spread of B1617.2 in the UK. Its looking like its a lot more transmissible.

https://twitter.com/Kit_Yates_Maths/sta ... 15232?s=20

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Re: New Covid Variants

Post by jimbob » Fri May 14, 2021 1:27 pm

Woodchopper wrote:
Fri May 14, 2021 12:45 pm
No need for fancy statistics to find the correlation there.
Yes but it could be deprivation as a common factor
Have you considered stupidity as an explanation

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