[HN Gopher] Why a variant that's 50% more transmissible would be...
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       Why a variant that's 50% more transmissible would be a much bigger
       problem
        
       Author : doener
       Score  : 5 points
       Date   : 2021-01-02 21:49 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (twitter.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
        
       | LatteLazy wrote:
       | Another bad twitter thread. Points for trying but he's got the
       | maths wrong.
       | 
       | The issue he has missed is that transmission rates directly
       | affect lethality. 3.2% of covid patients require intubation [1]
       | 
       | So the lethality rate is 0.8% ONLY for as long as you have enough
       | ventilators and nurses and beds. The minute too many people have
       | the disease at the same time, those beds get full, and the
       | disease becomes 3.2% lethal.
       | 
       | This has been the key issue since day 1: avoiding a quadrupled
       | death rate from system collapse. So far, we couldn't keep R
       | values below 1 in the UK or US. Some places are at risk of being
       | overrun already. Now the R value is going up, as the new varient
       | is more transmissible. So it is possible that the new varient is
       | both impossible for our societies to handle AND torpedoes our
       | main plan.
       | 
       | This is why the EU suspended all flights with the UK when the
       | numbers came out. Its effectively BOTH more transmissable AND
       | more deadly.
       | 
       | I'm starting to think we need a 24h covid channel like we have
       | 24h news. People seem to be trying to work this stuff out. But
       | they're all failing. I'm probably wrong too in at least part of
       | the above?
       | 
       | This is also why I don't source anything from fucking twitter
       | threads. They're always people
       | 
       | /Rant
       | 
       | [1]
       | https://pubs.asahq.org/anesthesiology/article/132/6/1317/109...
        
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       (page generated 2021-01-02 23:02 UTC)