City of Angels doing its damnedest to make sure everyone ends up as one as fast as possible.
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Bro it’s the peak let it happen.
(Also, cases should drop first before hospitalizations. People frequently test positive before admission, then get admitted for a week or so, then get discharged. Would guess it’s a 1-2 week lag.)
My county had 43 positives on 139 tests yesterday.
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Hmm. By eyeball only- Up relative to the lull between holidays but not doubled. Maybe 30%ish on average?
All still well below 2019.
The hard part is what’s the business vs personal split
Thanks
I’m hoping but hedging.
Essentially bargaining stage of grief.
James Gallagher
Health and science correspondent, BBC News
New variant ‘almost certainly’ in majority of Europe
The new variant of coronavirus is almost certainly in the majority of European countries already, according to Prof Neil Ferguson, from Imperial College London.
He was giving evidence to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee alongside other experts from the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group, which advises government.
The variant has already been detected in other countries such as Denmark, but is likely to have spread much wider.
Prof Ferguson said: “I’m almost certain in my view, that this virus has been introduced into the great majority if not all European countries at this time.”
The UK has sequenced 45% of all the genetic codes of coronavirus in the world and it is still not certain whether it originated in the south east of England or was just first detected there.
This has raised concerns the UK is being punished for discovering the variant.
At the same hearing, Prof Peter Horby, from the University of Oxford, said: "I think it’s fair to say countries that have more extensive and rigorous science and are more transparent do expose themselves to important information being made available to others.”
Selection pressure plus
Lots of opportunities for mutation=
More transmission
Probably not at proof level yet but the preponderance of evidence sure points that way.
Not surprising. Its why depressing case numbers is so important. Followed by eradication or at least severely reducing case numbers such that contact tracing works well for isolation and ring inoculation.
Hancock: Another new variant is in the UK
Hancock now says there are two cases of another new variant in the UK.
Both are contacts of cases who have travelled from South Africa.
“We are incredibly grateful to the South African government for their science,” he says.
“This virus is yet more transmissible and appears to have mutated further than the new virus.”
He says the UK is quarantining new cases, and placing restrictions on travel from South Africa.
lol. Just relentless dishonesty on this issue.
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Disgraced charlatan Emily Oster is a known herd immunity advocate:
Some Americans working in healthcare are beginning to receive their shots, but widespread vaccination will take time, and kids will be later. It’s believed that we need 70 percent or 80 percent of people vaccinated to achieve some kind of herd immunity that can slow the spread of the disease, and that definitely won’t be reached in January or February. So we need to be patient, wear masks, keep our precautions up for a little while longer.
Just monstrous!
EDIT: Oops, that was a link to a Templeton-supported researcher winning the 2020 Chemistry Nobel. Link to the herd-immunity/COVID denial/OFB stuff is here.
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And he’s basing that on, what, gut feels or does he actually have sequence data? Your quote doesn’t contain any compelling evidence.
We’re awaiting other countries to perform their own sequencing data and leaving them to make their own announcements.
He was giving evidence to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee alongside other experts from the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group, which advises government.
UK has 800 untested truckdrivers crossing it’s border with mainland Europe every 24hrs. Also a fair bit of passenger traffic. New variant sequenced back as early as 2x September so, IMO it would be a small miracle if it weren’t already ‘all over’ mainland Europe. Italy - confirmed. France came out a few days ago and confirmed they detected the South African strain.
Just a view, not a troll. I am interested to know when US will confirm one way or the other, that is all.
UK have sequenced two of the changes back to Brazil and USA as far back as june or july, but not all the mutations present.
This is from some time after 14th December:
Emergence and rapid spread of a new severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) lineage with multiple spike mutations in South Africa
The language is all couched in mights and maybe’s - certainly they don’t provide evidence that it’s even more transmissible than the new UK strain. Does appear to have more mutations within the spike protein though.
Here, we describe a new SARS-CoV-2 lineage (501Y.V2) characterised by eight lineage-defining mutations in the spike protein, including three at important residues in the receptor-binding domain (K417N, E484K and N501Y) that may have functional significance. This lineage emerged in South Africa after the first epidemic wave in a severely affected metropolitan area, Nelson Mandela Bay, located on the coast of the Eastern Cape Province. This lineage spread rapidly, becoming within weeks the dominant lineage in the Eastern Cape and Western Cape Provinces. Whilst the full significance of the mutations is yet to be determined, the genomic data, showing the rapid displacement of other lineages, suggest that this lineage may be associated with increased transmissibility.
Edit: oops, you were questioning the other Churchill post
It’s kind of wild to live in a world where we can quickly sequence various new strains actively spreading in a pandemic.
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Yeah, I don’t doubt the existence of the South African variant, and it looks like they actually did the sequencing to confirm the strain in these two cases. The thing about the UK strain being in the EU is somewhere between wishcasting and considered estimation, but there doesn’t appear to be any actual evidence behind it.
There is some irony in the UK whining about unfair travel restrictions being put on them because of their strain but then slapping their own travel restrictions on South Africa.
Also, hospitalizations shouldn’t be a 7DMA, but a snapshot (I think bobman pointed this out first). There’s a literal number of people in the hospital. You don’t need to account for noise in the weekly reporting cycles, and 7DMA makes an inflection point much less pronounced.
Here’s the change in hospitalized population from the previous week:
Most recent week: +5,000
Prior week: +6,000
Week starting 12/1: +6,000
Week starting 11/24: +10,000
Week starting 11/17: +11,000
Definitely well past an inflection point, but our peak is probably still a week or two out. Heavily California-dependent.
Sadly, I have a new person closest to me who has passed from COVID–a longtime business associate in California. He was recovering from COVID, late-60s guy, when he suddenly had a heart attack. I consider this COVID whether it’s an official statistic or not. He was supposed to retire this week. Truly awful.
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After several months, good evidence it has spread widely in the UK and an open, well traveled border, the default assumption is that it’s in the EU, isn’t it? In any case we know it is.
The ECDC said a few cases with the new variant have been detected in Iceland, Denmark and the Netherlands. The agency also cited media reports confirming cases in Belgium and Italy.
The head of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Germany’s disease control authority, said on Tuesday he assumes the new variant has already reached Germany from Britain.
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Yeah, I reckon it’s considered estimation. From the interview he gave Ferguson seems to be extrapolating from the fact Denmark unearthed 10 cases of the UK strain. He does caveat with an “in my view” but his argument is basically that given Denmark has relatively few cases and given the UK has far greater traffic with other European regions it’s a virtual certainty that if the variant is there it must be all over.
I’ve been working in a school for the last 2 months, just flew Internationally and I’m clean. If you’ve been taking precautions around people and working alone most of the time, it shouldn’t be a problem.
.
Isn’t the thing with pandemic that the faster viruses spread, the less fatal they tend to be? If covid was that fatal, people wouldn’t have the ability to walk around and contact so many people. They’d be too sick to get around and interact with others.
The only government whining with ‘travel restrictions’ is centered around truck drivers being allowed to cross channel so we, as an island nation can still import food. The army will provide now provide daily tests at Dover. I’m sure the moaning will stop when the rest of europe finishes (starts) their genomic surveillance.