[HN Gopher] B.1.1.529
___________________________________________________________________
B.1.1.529
Author : tosh
Score : 131 points
Date : 2021-11-25 19:37 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| somewhereoutth wrote:
| Where there is a partially vaccinated population, yet still
| widespread infection, then there will be strong selection
| pressure for vaccine immune escape (and indeed prior infection
| immune escape).
|
| It may not be this variant, but if such an escape variant
| emerged, it would quickly spread - assuming the mutations don't
| interfere too much with viability and transmission.
|
| Vaccines, with other measures as necessary, should be used to
| suppress a highly contagious virus to nearly zero (trigger
| warning!!) to prevent this from happening.
| toyg wrote:
| Sucks to be the South African government: too poor to vaccinate
| efficiently, shares data with rest of the world in "excellent"
| meetings, gets immediately quarantined via airline bans. And then
| we wonder why countries tend to be secretive...
|
| Note I'm not saying we shouldn't trigger transfer bans (we
| should), but there should be a compensation mechanism that goes
| with them - like money or free vaccines. Otherwise poor countries
| have no incentive to cooperate.
| makomk wrote:
| South Africa's big problem with vaccination right now seems to
| be that they're running out of willing people to vaccinate -
| they just postponed a bunch of vaccine deliveries because their
| current stockpile is big enough already, and apparently a lot
| of people there are reluctant to get the vaccine.
| chaoskanzlerin wrote:
| the speed within which B.1.1.529 became dominant is _really_
| concerning
| _Microft wrote:
| If it is confirmed to spread like this chart makes it look
| like, this is very bad.
|
| https://nitter.net/jburnmurdoch/status/1463956686075580421
| bertil wrote:
| This is still a handful of cases (10 total, the only comparison
| curb I've seen is on three cases in Botswana; there could be
| one on six other cases in South Africa). We'll know more soon,
| and hopefully, local health authorities will contain anything
| worrisome, but this is not yet like Delta with thousands of
| cases emerging overnight in some countries.
| threeseed wrote:
| Not really comparable to Delta.
|
| Given that so much of the world is vaccinated.
| zx76 wrote:
| Yes, I've also been really surprised by this. The fact that
| South African wastewater coronavirus detection is spiking
| dramatically [1] makes me wonder if this variant could be a
| genuine step up from the current status quo.
|
| [1] https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-11-25-the-
| covid...
| jsnell wrote:
| It's easy for a variant to become dominant just by random
| chance if the prevalence is low. That's the case here. Alpha
| and Delta were quite different, they took over when the case
| counts were high, so it was basically impossible for founder
| effects to be the reason.
|
| So in this case we need to rely much more on the circumstantial
| evidence (which admittedly seems pretty solid on a first skim).
| _Microft wrote:
| On Nitter, no Twitter account required:
| https://nitter.net/chrischirp/status/1463885593461628928 (link to
| end of thread, so you can scroll up over the broken part of the
| thread)
|
| On Threadreader:
| https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1463885539619311616.html (full
| thread)
| black_puppydog wrote:
| Nitter ftw. I've noticed I barely every open threadreader now.
| boringg wrote:
| Oh man nitter is so much better - twitter is just full of
| ad/promoted content. Never knew about nitter.
| grawlinson wrote:
| I'd love a browser extension that automatically redirects all
| twitter URLs to the nitter equivalent.
| guilhas wrote:
| What does this means? Now we need booster 4? Or don't need
| booster 3? Or nothing matters anymore?...
| bertil wrote:
| So far, not much: it appears that there are very few cases
| confirmed (10 so far). If all those people isolate and don't
| contaminate anyone, that could be the end of it. But one of
| them just flew on an intercontinental flight, so... yeah,
| things might not be contained.
|
| If even one of them transmit to someone else, who transmit is
| themselves... this could spread like the Delta variant. There
| has not been any clinical test on the effectiveness of
| vaccines, of course; however, with so many mutations, in
| particular the mutations on the parts that code the spike
| protein, the vaccines that have proven effective so far (which
| focus on that spike) are likely to be far less effective. It's
| likely we would develop new vaccines, but that presents more
| risk, so would need more tests, etc. Lockdowns are likely in
| the meantime.
| quotemstr wrote:
| > it appears that there are very few cases confirmed (10 so
| far). If all those people isolate and don't contaminate
| anyone, that could be the end of it.
|
| What makes you think that a set of mutations like this can
| evolve only once? Even if _this particular lineage_ of COVID
| goes extinct, its existence demonstrates that the virus is
| responding to selection pressure in the way you 'd expect any
| organism to respond under conditions of natural selection. If
| evolution can pull of B.1.1.529 once, it can do so again and
| again.
| gmuslera wrote:
| Boosters of the same vaccine will make the effect of a vaccine
| to last longer, if its protection diminishes with time. Other
| variants are present too, so regardless if this particular
| variant spreads to your zone or not, it probably won't harm.
|
| The problem if is this variant is different enough to the
| original variant for the vaccine to be effective against it or
| no.
| 9wzYQbTYsAIc wrote:
| From the Prof.:
|
| "We do know that B.1.529 has many more mutations than other
| variants _and_ has mutations seen in other variants that are
| associated with BOTH higher transmissibility AND immune
| escape."
| bawolff wrote:
| Its a developing situation. What exactly it means isn't clear
| yet. Booster 3 is almost certainly still helpful but how
| helpful against this strain requires more science. Booster 4
| (at least in the near term) would continue to probably do
| nothing further because its not a simple matter of more
| boosters at the same time equal more protection. That's just
| not how it works.
|
| People seem to want to treat covid as if its a school
| assignment; as if there is a teacher giving you harder and
| harder homework in an arbitrary fashion who knows what is going
| to happen and you can ask them. Its not - this is the real
| world. Answers come when people test out theories and discover
| what's what. Its a process, and it takes time. What the article
| is saying basically is that there is a lot of uncertainty but
| what we do know so far is concerning.
| quotemstr wrote:
| Depending on who you listen to, well, you might need boosters
| every few months for the rest of your life. There's concern in
| some circles that because the vaccine trains your body to
| respond strongly to one specific version of one specific part
| of COVID, it permanently reduces your body's ability to learn
| how to counter different parts of other versions of COVID ---
| meaning that once you start taking boosters, you'll need them
| forever. It's unclear how much of a point this camp has.
| usedtoprog wrote:
| Boring. Another overly-dramatic message from the UK's self-
| proclaimed "Independent SAGE" - a left-wing, pro-restriction,
| pro-lockdown group of health advisers.
| usedtoprog wrote:
| Time to get on with enjoying your life because this never ends.
| Y_Y wrote:
| Please fix the title and mention that this refers to a new COVID
| variant
| _Microft wrote:
| Names looking similar to the one of this variant have been
| mentioned on the news already, so it might not be completely
| surprising for some people that this is about SARS-Cov2.
|
| The nomenclature is called PANGO by the way. It is named after
| the software tool "Phylogenetic Assignment of Named Global
| Outbreak Lineages" (PANGOLIN) which is used to classify
| lineages of SARS-Cov2.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phylogenetic_Assignment_of_Nam...
|
| https://cov-lineages.org/
| quesera wrote:
| On first read, I thought someone had revived the B
| programming language (predecessor to C), and started their
| pre-2.0 versioning at 1.1.
|
| FWIW.
| djantje wrote:
| The pull request https://github.com/cov-lineages/pango-
| designation/issues/343
| makeworld wrote:
| A deleted Tweet from her has broken the thread. The full version
| can be viewed easily at
| https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1463885539619311616.html
| rich_sasha wrote:
| So, basically, another Covid variant, but much badder than Delta?
|
| I'm a bit fed up with coronaviruses tbh.
| geraldcombs wrote:
| The coronaviruses don't appear to be fed up with us,
| unfortunately.
| throwamon wrote:
| Honestly I'm more fed up with people who can't seem to be able
| to sit quietly in their homes for two weeks.
| orra wrote:
| "Two weeks" is quite the litotes. COVID-19 has been around
| /two years/.
| throwamon wrote:
| Exactly! Imagine how many diseases we would have eradicated
| if we all just stayed at home for _that_ long!
|
| Not just diseases, by the way - as Pascal would have said,
| "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to
| sit quietly in a room alone."
| orra wrote:
| Ah, I hadn't grasped your irony. I heard it suggested
| somewhat seriously recently, which miffed me a bit.
| Lockdowns were probably the least awful option in early
| 2020, but as you know it doesn't make them a great idea
| now.
| Pyramus wrote:
| My understanding is that parent was not joking. It's a
| great thought experiment though, and let's not forget
| that humanity did eradicate a number of diseases.
| vletal wrote:
| Hopefully not _worse_. The current assumption seems to be that
| it could be different enough to avoid existing immunity gained
| against previous strains.
| op00to wrote:
| Remember the spike needs to bind to the ACE receptor which is
| what vaccines target, so if it escapes vaccines, it probably
| isn't going to be as easily infectious. Maybe.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| If that was true in this scenario why would it have gained
| so much victim market share in South Africa so much quicker
| than Delta did?
| wk_end wrote:
| SA is very undervaccinated (less than 25% per the link)
| so it's probably too early to say either way.
| vletal wrote:
| Your answer seems to assume that the distribution of spike
| proteins which binds to the ACE is very close to the one
| for which we obtain immunity by getting vaccinated.
|
| Yet we can already see that Delta binds better than the
| early strains and the efficacy of existing vaccines against
| it is like 60%, which contradict that. Does it make sense?
| ciphol wrote:
| Vaccine efficacy decays with time. If you've had a 3rd
| vaccine recently, it will be much more than 60%
| effective.
| Yuioup wrote:
| We all are.
| thenewnormal wrote:
| I particularly liked how the mutations were described as
| "horrific". How are they? Do they have terrible claws and sharp
| pointy teeth?
| _Microft wrote:
| As many as a horrific car crash has.
| haunter wrote:
| So probably new shots every 4-5 months and the end game will be a
| yearly shot like with the seasonal influenza?
|
| Got my 3rd shot a month ago but I can see we will get a new one
| in the spring. Rinse and repeat
| the8472 wrote:
| There are several effective anti-virals in the approval
| pipeline. Vaccines plus the antivirals combined will hopefully
| crater severe cases and this will become just another cold
| virus.
| bingohbangoh wrote:
| hell of a yearly shot
| threeseed wrote:
| Not really. As far as vaccines go they look to be very safe
| and effective.
| bawolff wrote:
| There's really no evidence to come to that conclusion at this
| time.
| DeusExMachina wrote:
| Israel is already at the fourth shot. Not evidence, but
| definitely grants the suspicion.
| belltaco wrote:
| Source?
| angelzen wrote:
| Nov 24, 2021 "Health minister suggests fourth vaccine
| dose amid rising fears of fifth COVID wave"
|
| https://www.timesofisrael.com/health-minister-suggests-
| fourt...
| 9wzYQbTYsAIc wrote:
| Something along those lines is what the very early medical
| projections were, yes, as I recall.
| bajdn wrote:
| Take your retarded fascist fear mongering branch covidian
| propaganda the fuck out of here.
|
| Fucking fascists.
| bajdn wrote:
| All covidians should be shot dead.
|
| Fuck these terrorist pieces of shit.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Why can't they come up with a better name like security
| vulnerabilities have nowadays?
| bajdn wrote:
| Your God fauci tortures puppies and throws acid on monkey brains.
|
| Oh, he also directly funded the creation of covid cause he's a
| bioterrorist piece of shit.
|
| You all are such nice people.
| c7DJTLrn wrote:
| We need to just get on with it. We can't just keep locking down
| and banning travel. For the majority of us the virus poses no
| danger.
| aaomidi wrote:
| Source of this claim with the new variant?
| c7DJTLrn wrote:
| This number of mutations isn't enough to completely change
| the mechanics of the virus. It's still the same thing in
| different clothing which might be enough to pass through the
| vaccine firewall, but the lethality won't be much different.
| I don't have to be a biologist to apply basic logic.
| eudoxus wrote:
| well at least you're _not_ making sweeping generalizations
| with no references /citations/sources on a field of
| research you admittedly aren't a part of...
| meepmorp wrote:
| > I don't have to be a biologist to apply basic logic.
|
| Biology doesn't really work like that. The number of rules
| is vastly smaller than the number of exceptions to them.
| kashunstva wrote:
| > This number of mutations isn't enough to completely
| change the mechanics of the virus.
|
| Maybe. Maybe not. The majority of the mutations in the
| B.1.1.529 genome are expressed as changes in the spike
| proteins but others are not and remain to be better
| understood. It is too early to tell what effects those
| remaining mutations will have on the lethality of this
| variant. If those mutations result in more efficient
| intracellular replication or other changes in intracellular
| viral life-cycle efficiency, then the morbidity and
| mortality may be greater, independent of immunologic
| escape.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > This number of mutations isn't enough to completely
| change the mechanics of the virus.
|
| One mutation can be enough, if its the right mutation.
|
| > I don't have to be a biologist to apply basic logic.
|
| Basic logic only helps if you start with accurate premises,
| which having an understanding of the relevant biology helps
| a lot with. Otherwise, you end up with GIGO.
| sofixa wrote:
| > For the majority of us the virus poses no danger.
|
| It does if emergency services and ICUs are at capacity and
| nobody can get treated for anything or medical personnel is so
| overworked they make mistakes or burn out.
| mercy_dude wrote:
| I travelled in UK and it seems you do have to do an antigen tests
| when you get in as a traveller. Is antigen test able to detect
| this variant?
| _Wintermute wrote:
| It can detect it as a positive result, it can't distinguish
| between variants.
| jl6 wrote:
| Is there any reason to believe that higher infectivity should
| correlate with lower lethality? i.e. the virus which keeps its
| host alive the longest has greatest opportunity to replicate and
| spread?
| giarc wrote:
| Yes, there's kind of a triad of attributes that affects a virus
| and it's ability to cause a pandemic. Virulence (how sick
| people become), transmissibility (how easy does it spread),
| lethality (can it kill at high rate).
|
| -higher virulence causes people to stay at home more, and less
| spread in community
|
| -higher transmissibility means more spread person to person
|
| -high lethality means people die faster and not spread as fast
|
| SARS and MERS before SARS-COV2(COVID) all had high lethality
| and therefore those that were infected didn't get a chance to
| transmit to others that well, and likely helped slow the
| spread. COVID seems to have a good balance between the three.
|
| The above is a big simplification, but the general idea sticks.
| zarzavat wrote:
| Your model is missing one big variable and that is latency,
| the time difference between when people are most contagious
| and when they are symptomatic.
|
| SARS-1 had low latency, and so people tended to become
| contagious and symptomatic at around the same time, reducing
| transmission. Whereas SARS-2 has a high latency which helps
| it to spread while people are unaware they even have it. This
| also insulates SARS-2 from selective pressure to reduce its
| virulence.
| quotemstr wrote:
| Keep in mind that imperfect vaccination shifts this triad in
| the direction of higher sustainable lethality:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marek's_disease
|
| In both the natural and leaky-vaccine scenarios, the virus
| evolves towards an ecological equilibrium, but in the leaky-
| vaccine scenario, that equilibrium is shifted in the
| direction of greater lethality. See the linked article: as a
| direct consequence of mass vaccination of chickens, Marek's
| diseased evolved from a minor illness into a highly-virulent,
| highly-transmissible disease that causes 100% lethal cancer
| in chickens unless the chicks are vaccinated before they
| hatch from their eggs.
| jl6 wrote:
| What do you think about this article, by the author of the
| Marek's disease study, that criticizes extrapolating from
| the chicken scenario to the covid scenario?:
|
| https://theconversation.com/amp/vaccines-could-affect-how-
| th...
| Pyramus wrote:
| It should be noted that for Sars-Cov-2 specifically (i.e.
| given a virus that has the properties of Sars-Cov-2 already)
| lethality will likely be a neutral factor for the evolution
| going forward. The reason being that viral titres peak around
| day 2 in a window of 1-5 days, whereas it takes at lot longer
| to die from Covid. In other words there is same sort of cap
| where lethality prevents transmission, but Sars-Cov-2 is
| nowhere near it.
| [deleted]
| dvt wrote:
| I'm fully bracing for downvotes, but I really think that having
| professional immunologists/scientists/etc. interacting directly
| with Twitter masses off of fresh-off-the-presses data (weak data,
| at that) is a mistake. For a few reasons: (a) it creates an
| environment where everyone wants to "break the news" first, even
| if it's full of hot takes, incorrect, or incendiary. This isn't a
| big deal when breaking who the Kardashians are dating, but it's
| very dangerous when talking about public health policy. And (b),
| there's zero accountability. If this entire thread ends up being
| wrong -- as so many of these Twitter hot takes have been proven
| to be wrong from last year -- no one cares. It's memory holed,
| and the good professor is just happy for the 15-minute limelight
| _today_ , without worrying about what happens _tomorrow_.
|
| I know this is not a particularly popular opinion, but I think we
| have things like peer review, the three sigma rule of thumb, and
| so on, for good reason. It's disappointing to see scientists spew
| out an entire thread and then cap it off with "just my opinion,
| so who knows" -- just as dishonest as crypto pumpers and their
| "not financial advice" disclaimers. Give me a break.
|
| I'm happy you got your Twitter engagement though, that's what
| it's all about.
| bertil wrote:
| > there's zero accountability. If this entire thread ends up
| being wrong -- as so many of these Twitter hot takes have been
| proven to be wrong from last year -- no one cares.
|
| It is true in many cases, but I feel like anyone who has
| contributed _as an expert in epidemiology_ has a good track
| record on correcting their statements. Did I miss anything
| worrisome?
| orra wrote:
| Eh, Indy SAGE (of which the author is a member) can be quite
| cranky. Just because the UK Government are terrible and SAGE
| advise the UK Government doesn't intrinsically make Indy SAGE
| any good.
|
| Specifically, Indy SAGE are eternal doom-mongers. Most of
| what they say is completely out of proportion in this
| vaccines era of COVID.
|
| They also scream "close the borders" _all_ _the_ _damn_
| _time_. This is (a) generally pointless when COVID is
| everywhere, and moreover the UK is doing worse than many
| countries. Also, (b), it helps perpetuate the UK's dangerous
| anti migrant rhetoric. Just yesterday people drowned in the
| English Channel as a result of the UK's hostility to
| refugees, and a bunch of xenophobic politicians feigned
| horror.
| dvt wrote:
| > feel like anyone who has contributed _as an expert in
| epidemiology_ has a good track record on correcting their
| statements
|
| I think this feeling would be misguided:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7447267/ --
| retractions have been basically non-existent. On the
| scientist _or_ the journalist side.
| bertil wrote:
| The only reference to a forecast in that article is a
| "chair of the department of medical ethics", not an
| epidemiologist, on a television program, not a tweet that
| they can comment.
| threeseed wrote:
| The primary author seems to have a lot of incorrect
| positions though:
|
| "Ioannidis estimated that deaths in the U.S. from COVID-19
| could potentially be as low as 10,000--or they could
| approach levels not seen since the flu pandemic of 1918"
|
| "writing to President Trump of his concerns about the lack
| of evidence regarding the efficacy of lockdowns"
|
| And just like with the Y2K bug one of the issues with takes
| like this is that it ignores all of the work that people
| did to prevent it becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. If
| there were no vaccines, lockdowns or similar health
| measures maybe the predictions would have been accurate.
|
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-ioannidis-
| aff...
| disabled wrote:
| There are scammer epidemiologists. Dr. Eric Fiegl-Ding is one
| of them who also has a Twitter profile.
|
| A good write up on him is here:
| https://www.thedailybeast.com/coronavirus-alarmist-eric-
| feig...
| sbuttgereit wrote:
| This assumes that a correction or retraction will necessarily
| spread with the same dynamics of the original statement. The
| distribution network, and the motivations of other actors
| spreading the information, is more important the person
| making the original statement. In this case, much of Twitter
| is the appeal to emotional responses, not rational ones. And
| as a medium for information conveyance is just terrible (16
| tweets for something like this is evidence of that fact).
| Given that, I expect that any real value to the message here
| will be completely lost, as would that of any correction or
| retraction, because those amplifying the message will be
| doing so on the basis of their own prior sentiments on
| response to the diseases.
|
| All considered I feel the point of the original comment.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| That's a tough one. I had a similar reaction: this is science,
| not tabloid, why are we mixing the two? On the other hand,
| Twitter is a weird-ass mechanism that can disseminate all sorts
| of information instantly. On the third hand, information is not
| knowledge, they are two very different things: Knowledge is
| power, Information seems to cause chaos.
|
| I'd prefer we stick to the research paper format for stuff like
| this where there is a distinct space for results, and a
| distinct space for conclusions. Let's make knowledge out of the
| information first.
| coffeefirst wrote:
| You're not wrong. On the one hand it's great to have a public
| forum for science, on the other I've learned I can't vet it at
| all, so I should wait until they get farther along before
| reacting at all. After all, Twitter has predicted 45 of the
| last 2 consequential variants.
|
| As an individual that's fine. As a society, we've got you and
| me who've learned to hold back, friends and alarmists who react
| to every signal to their own detriment and risk drowning out
| the real message, and we've got disillusioned trolls who
| cherry-pick the noise to "prove" scientists aren't trustworthy.
|
| I don't know if it's possible to have the open conversation
| while cooling off the side effects.
| _Wintermute wrote:
| This is more for other scientists, science-twitter is quite a
| big thing and often how scientists communicate new results,
| pre-prints, job-postings etc. It's just sad that the media and
| lay-people are ruining one of the only positives twitter
| provides.
| Iolaum wrote:
| On the other hand, professional immunologists/scientists/etc on
| twitter have posted stuff on Twitter that governments wanted to
| suppress or just didn't care enough to act on.
|
| For example look The Seattle Flu Study Story at
| https://stratechery.com/2020/zero-trust-information/
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Yes but in this case the poster is commenting on a public
| statement from the South African government so we're
| typically not in the situation you're talking about.
| makomk wrote:
| This pretty much concurs with the current BBC reporting, just
| with more graphs: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-59418127
| It's honestly better than I'd expect from any of the usual
| American publications these days as well.
| keketi wrote:
| ...and the UK just banned all flights from South Africa,
| Namibia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Lesotho and Eswatini:
| https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-59424269
| [deleted]
| ithkuil wrote:
| TIL Swaziland got renamed Eswatini in 2018
| threeseed wrote:
| I think the history of COVID disagrees with this.
|
| If the scientist is completely wrong then the impact is that
| governments and the public took precautions that were
| unnecessary. But most of those impacts e.g. banning visitors
| from hot-spots, stronger health measures e.g. mask-wearing come
| with limited downsides and potentially huge upsides i.e. saving
| lives.
|
| So it seems like that scientists should do more to engage with
| the public and communicate any potential threats as clearly and
| early as possible.
| AndrewBissell wrote:
| "limited downsides"
|
| https://news.yahoo.com/remote-learning-led-to-
| catastrophic-l...
|
| https://www.wfp.org/stories/hunger-pandemic-food-security-
| re...
|
| https://gazette.com/business/nearly-40-of-u-s-small-
| business... https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-
| brief/the-imp...
| threeseed wrote:
| That is what happens when you don't act early.
|
| You end up with aggressive, last-resort measures like
| extended lockdowns.
|
| Hence my point that there is minimal downside to being
| overly cautious when you first hear about new variants.
| AndrewBissell wrote:
| I call this the "No True Lockdown" argument. If they fail
| to indefinitely prevent significant outbreaks (and in
| nearly every case they have), well, it just means they
| weren't implemented soon enough. Even if they drag on for
| weeks and months with zero cases, only to have an
| outbreak at the slightest loosening of restrictions. I
| guess the idea is that if the entire world did this at
| once the virus would disappear? Completely unworkable,
| and almost surely false, given the existence of animal
| reservoirs.
|
| Your entire framing of these policy choices as inevitable
| and the only option is baseless. Australia and New
| Zealand used to be held up as the shining lights of "just
| act fast enough and you can avoid the need for any
| sustained restrictions" and now we are seeing just how
| well kicking the can in that way actually works, and the
| lengths that must be gone to keep kicking it.
| somewhereoutth wrote:
| Working in China.
| lvs wrote:
| Agree, but I would widen this critique quite far into Twitter
| and social media in general. The motivation to promulgate
| information, factual or otherwise, on social media is
| attention-seeking, not truth-seeking. The method is sticky
| because it rewards attention-seeking with the desired
| attention, thereby optimizing on the kind of information,
| factual or not, that gains attention.
|
| However, had the link been one of the many news articles on
| this topic rather than a tweetbarf, I think this comment would
| not be at the top, and we'd be talking about the virus instead.
| disabled wrote:
| A good read on this is "Contrarian Doctors: The Pandemic is
| Over, Again".
|
| See: https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-pandemic-is-over-
| again/
|
| I knew that the pandemic was far from over with in the US even
| with the mass vaccination campaign being declared mostly a
| success this summer.
|
| On a worldwide scale, given the rates plus the raw numbers in
| locales plus mobility within borders along with people crossing
| borders...it simply did not add up.
|
| Plus, Americans are a very polarized group of people. (I say
| this as an American citizen living abroad who is also
| culturally American and has lived there the vast majority of
| her life.). Some counties in the United States had 25-30%
| vaccination rates at best right before the fall season. (I have
| not recently checked.)
|
| But, I do recall reading that the US created a model (which of
| course is frequently being updated) for coronavirus spike
| protein mutations that would predict when the virus was
| statistically likely to evolve in such a way. I think it was a
| DARPA funded program or something like that. So, it's not like
| this new "big news" came out of nowhere.
|
| But, what is going on in the ascribed South African province in
| the above linked Tweet is unlikely to just be random
| coincidence. First, it is South Africa's most populated
| province at around 15 million people. Second, it's nearly
| summer in South Africa and it's been hot there. Overall, we
| need people to investigate and for people to stop transmitting
| things that are not covered well and balanced, making many of
| us susceptible to confirmation bias.
|
| But, stopping virus transmission altogether should have been
| our goal worldwide. Very few countries have succeeded. Yes, the
| WHO failed but so did the vast majority of the world's
| countries.
|
| See: Covid pandemic was preventable, says WHO-commissioned
| report: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/12/covid-
| pandemic...
| DwnVoteHoneyPot wrote:
| I think twitter hot takes are fine. That's what twitter is for.
| It's just a discussion, a way to test ideas.
|
| The problem is people considering twitter comments as facts and
| basing their medical decisions off of them.
| the8472 wrote:
| > This isn't a big deal when breaking who the Kardashians are
| dating, but it's very dangerous when talking about public
| health policy.
|
| https://twitter.com/ungeneva/status/1244661916535930886
| https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1234871709091667969
|
| Also remember, it's not airborne and sanitizing surfaces is all
| it takes.
| Pyramus wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand - that was the official position at
| the time, not a 'hot take' on Twitter. The problem with
| experts getting it wrong is experts getting it wrong, not the
| unfiltered fire hose that is Twitter.
|
| Edit: To clarify this is not a judgement on experts getting
| things wrong. Experts can't know everything.
| stefan_ wrote:
| Is it? What's the danger? Now that B.1.1.529 is out there, what
| changes for you? The entire western world already pretends
| Covid is over.
|
| Like, there is no _call to action_ here. No one is looking to
| deceive you into buying an ape for the good of the arts.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| sorry off topic, but what in the world is your last idiom
| there referring to? is there something i don't know about art
| grants and the underground primate market?
|
| (while i'm asking, why is everything in the future so heavy?)
| camjw wrote:
| It's a reference to Bored Ape Yacht Club a popular - at
| least with Crypto people - series of NFTs. If you use
| Twitter and follow any Crypto people/VCs you might have
| seen them as profile pictures. One of these sold for $200k.
| It's a JPEG :)
| Someone wrote:
| Probably https://boredapeyachtclub.com/#/ (more info at
| https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/bayc-
| bored...)
| boringg wrote:
| Tough call here. If it ramps up the pressure to stop this
| before it spreads to quickly thats a win - the risk is if it
| isn't as dangerous and the new rules cause backlash amongst the
| fatigue.
|
| Also putting that information out into twitter will get to the
| right people and the wrong people (i.e. people who can
| understand whats she's saying and people who aren't) and then
| the information gets used in multiple different ways.
|
| Yes hot takes are risky.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| I think you'll find it's a popular opion, but not one you'll
| find espoused much on Twitter. I like to think you and people
| like me are the "silent majority".
|
| While it's fascinating to see this stuff out in Public, it's
| the same kind of fascination I had when Trump started diplomacy
| via Twitter, or when I saw my neighbours have a shouted
| domestic argument on their front lawn...
| basisword wrote:
| I'm not sure why people are posting Twitter threads but this is
| headline news, at least in the UK, and that news doesn't seem
| to stem from this thread. The UK has also added several
| southern African customers to the travel red list again and
| they aren't doing that late in the evening based on a random
| Twitter thread.
| jansan wrote:
| I recently found this video that shows and comments the worldwide
| evolement of variants over time. It is astonishing just how
| dominant Delta has become.
|
| To me this was more entertaining than a marble race.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig_FjVVHS00
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