Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[mongers]

Summer is going to be painful.
Everyone in Europe travelling again and enjoying the benefits of the vaccine whilst Britain plays at being East Germany.

[alfred russel]

-There are unforeseen impacts to putting out bullshit science that may initially appear harmless.

An example...

The CDC estimates flu deaths each season. In a recent season its current preliminary estimate is 61,000 in the US. A number of people have pointed to the large number of flu deaths (and absence of serious public health response) as a reason to reduce the response to covid. Whatever the lack of merits of that may be, it has prompted a reexamination of those estimates, and there has been quite a bit written that the CDC numbers for the flu are in fact overstated and unreliable.

It isn't hard to imagine that researchers were prone to estimate flu deaths on the higher end -- higher numbers probably provide some tailwind to vaccination drives -- but now you have a serious global pandemic and those high estimates are being used to both undermine the response and CDC credibility.

Or another example could be the research done prior to covid indicating the impact of education on life expectancy (strong correlation), but that got ignored in the response.

[DGuller]

I agree that once you put the thumb on the scales of science, you kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, even if you had the best of intentions.  Once you start selectively filtering your findings, you're no longer a scientist, and do not deserve to be treated as such.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Summer is going to be painful.
Everyone in Europe travelling again and enjoying the benefits of the vaccine whilst Britain plays at being East Germany.

Because we weren't like East Germany quickly enough

I think the failure to red list India early (for political reasons - Johnson wanting to do a foreign trip) is up there with the autumn lockdown as a huge decision that the government got wrong and, like the second wave, this is on them. This variant appears to be more transmissible than the UK variant and more dangerously. Luckily the most vulnerable were largely vaccinated by the time it arrived here. If we'd managed to keep it out maybe we could be more open now - but the government delayed red-listing India for a month and now we have the consequences

I think we will end up in a good position, by international standards, due to a very high takeup of the vaccines and because we are a rich enough country to get a proper supply. When we get there the general public should give credit to itself for getting vaccinated and not getting off on anti-scientific nonsense. Johnson and his crew of fellow swindlers deserve little or no credit for their management of the pandemic.

[Josquius]

Because we weren't like East Germany quickly enough

I think the failure to red list India early (for political reasons - Johnson wanting to do a foreign trip) is up there with the autumn lockdown as a huge decision that the government got wrong and, like the second wave, this is on them. This variant appears to be more transmissible than the UK variant and more dangerously. Luckily the most vulnerable were largely vaccinated by the time it arrived here. If we'd managed to keep it out maybe we could be more open now - but the government delayed red-listing India for a month and now we have the consequences

True.
Incidentally I have noticed an uptick lately in idiots saying we're so lucky brexit happened or else we wouldn't be in such a great situation for corona and vaccines. Which seems really detached from reality (as per). The EU was a bit slow off the mark in getting contracts, had some political mis-steps early on, and has lagged behind two or three weeks (lagging behind with the virus a few weeks too) but otherwise seems to be going alright (plus of course their programme being optional, but meh)

I think we will end up in a good position, by international standards, due to a very high takeup of the vaccines and because we are a rich enough country to get a proper supply. When we get there the general public should give credit to itself for getting vaccinated and not getting off on anti-scientific nonsense. Johnson and his crew of fellow swindlers deserve little or no credit for their management of the pandemic.

I'm saddened that this "We all love the NHS" stuff seems to have dropped off a cliff.
Maybe the NHS does work like a fairy and if you don't keep clapping it dies?

Summer is going to be painful.
Everyone in Europe travelling again and enjoying the benefits of the vaccine whilst Britain plays at being East Germany.

The EU and less crazy non-members are setting up a programme for common recognition of vaccinated people and opening up travel.

[Threviel]

[Sheilbh]

Incidentally I have noticed an uptick lately in idiots saying we're so lucky brexit happened or else we wouldn't be in such a great situation for corona and vaccines. Which seems really detached from reality (as per). The EU was a bit slow off the mark in getting contracts, had some political mis-steps early on, and has lagged behind two or three weeks (lagging behind with the virus a few weeks too) but otherwise seems to be going alright (plus of course their programme being optional, but meh)

I think vaccines were a definite benefit from Brexit. If we were at the level of the vaccination that the EU is at, I think we'd probably be looking at more than another 5 weeks delay.

Obviously the EU will vaccinate everyone but a few weeks or a months delay in the context of a virus can mean thousands of deaths especially when you have a second and now third wave like we have. Lockdown did most of the work but the vaccines were an important part of it and the earlier people are vaccinated, the more who are vaccinated the better.

[Richard Hakluyt]

....also vaccinations are political; how would brexiters act if they were being told by the EU commission to get vaccinated? I'm sure that many would have chosen to go anti-vax as a matter of political will.

We can call them silly asses for that but it nevertheless remains the case that effective vaccination campaigns rely on high takeup...even among the idiot community.

[Josquius]

Incidentally I have noticed an uptick lately in idiots saying we're so lucky brexit happened or else we wouldn't be in such a great situation for corona and vaccines. Which seems really detached from reality (as per). The EU was a bit slow off the mark in getting contracts, had some political mis-steps early on, and has lagged behind two or three weeks (lagging behind with the virus a few weeks too) but otherwise seems to be going alright (plus of course their programme being optional, but meh)

I think vaccines were a definite benefit from Brexit. If we were at the level of the vaccination that the EU is at, I think we'd probably be looking at more than another 5 weeks delay.

Obviously the EU will vaccinate everyone but a few weeks or a months delay in the context of a virus can mean thousands of deaths especially when you have a second and now third wave like we have. Lockdown did most of the work but the vaccines were an important part of it and the earlier people are vaccinated, the more who are vaccinated the better.

The EU vaccination scheme was optional and it doesn't stop countries doing their own thing on top of it.
On vaccines the UK's gamble, in rushing through acceptance of the vaccines and the ones they spun the wheel on picking, paid off. Though I wouldn't say this is particularly due to brexit. On the other hand being afraid of upsetting India....

The EU is delayed on vaccines yes but comparing this to the progress of various waves of the disease they are in a better place than the UK was.

[Tamas]

This Delta variant thing in England is just incredible. Single shot of vaccines barely protect against developing symptoms. Spreading quickly, pretty much already eradicated the Kent variant, relatively speaking.

I mean, it was bloody obvious that if this variant ever enters Europe it's going to happen here first. But as Sheilbh said, there was a Johnson photo op at stake so red-listing India just had to be delayed. It's just too late to stop it now.

[Sheilbh]

The variant was only identified after India was on the red list - but you feel like if there's an out of control outbreak somewhere that's probably an indicator that something's going on regardless.

Useful stats from the latest press conference and why rolling out second doses is now key (and has been moved up). Even one dose has a pretty significant affect on hospitalisation but nowhere near so much on infections - with two doses both fall a lot:



And yeah it has become dominant very quickly. From what I understand PHE preliminary data is that it's more transmissible and more lethal than the old variant:

[Richard Hakluyt]

I am concerned about future variants that could be even more transmissible and/or lethal. It is a shame that the G7 meeting only came up with plans for 1bn vaccines to be given away when substantaiily more are required.

[Sheilbh]

I am concerned about future variants that could be even more transmissible and/or lethal. It is a shame that the G7 meeting only came up with plans for 1bn vaccines to be given away when substantaiily more are required.

Yeah - and of that only about 800 million are new commitments others were just re-stating previous covax commitments. I think the ambition on this is pathetic - vaccinating the world by the end of 2022 is too slow.

Also I think India shows the need to also massively expand global sequencing capacity to identify new variants quicker. We all knew there was an out of control outbreak in India through March-April (when we were calling for them to go on the red list with Pakistan and Bangladesh) but didn't discover that a new variant was driving it until May. The UK does a lot, Denmark and Australia do a lot but we need to share that expertise and capacity and build up new capacity globally for constant monitoring to avoid the risk of being surprised by a new variant when it's too late.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Very much a false economy by the rich states 

[Sheilbh]

Incidentally given the earlier chat about models - this is the model driving Johnson's decision to delay lifting all restrictions until 19 July (my suspicion is that may be pushed back because that will possibly be the peak of this wave):


Lines are the central projections with the range fanned around them. There is no official model or projection. This is the consensus position of the sub-committee (on modelling) of the government's scientific advisory committee - but they have also published the projections they've received from different contributing universities.

From my understanding so far the emerging data on vaccine effectiveness against the delta variant is looking more like the optimistic assumptions (as is up-take of the vaccine) than default or pessimistic. But it really emphasises the uncertainty in any modelling of this type - that range is very significant - but also how essential vaccine roll-out is.

In that light the government target is pathetically low and I get that it's sensible to achieve low attainable targets - but basically if we keep hitting 2/3s of the daily vaccination rates of the last few weeks we'll easily hit the target. I think we should be trying to push it as far as we can and targets can help with that so I wish they'd been more ambitious.