[HN Gopher] Ask HN: How worrying is the new Covid variant?
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Ask HN: How worrying is the new Covid variant?
The news coverage I'm reading (BBC, FT, NYT, etc.) seems very
concerned in saying this new variant has a strong chance of evading
vaccines, existing immune responses, etc. Whenever they quote
scientists, however, it sounds more like "We don't know, so better
safe than sorry." Are there any HN readers who know a thing or two
about biotech that could shed light on the science of what we know
and the current risk of this variant?
Author : cl42
Score : 31 points
Date : 2021-11-26 19:22 UTC (3 hours ago)
| fsflover wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29344274
| m0zg wrote:
| In the US the narrative will depend primarily on whether it helps
| or hurts the chances of current ruling party to do well in
| midterm elections. You can downvote all you like, you know it's
| true.
|
| In the rest of the world, word is the new variant is very mild,
| although it does evade vaccines and so on:
| https://ca.news.yahoo.com/travel-ban-storm-tea-cup-173442533....
| Could be that this is the "vaccine" for those refusing to
| vaccinate.
| tasogare wrote:
| > The news coverage I'm reading
|
| That's the real problem here. Turning off the TV and stopping
| reading the news, crafted precisely to generate anxiety, is the
| solution. It will probably be a nothingburger, but the media need
| something to divert from the "mysterious" heart attacks.
| Remember, two years ago covid was presented as a very deadly
| virus and it turned out to be only dangerous for a very specific
| and small segment of the population (70+ yo and obese people).
| threeseed wrote:
| a) 5+ million people are dead. This isn't "nothing".
|
| b) Delta strain of COVID is affecting younger people at
| increasing rates [1] and at least here in Australia we are
| seeing hospitalisations with far more young people than in the
| past.
|
| https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-07/delta-variant-of-covi...
| tasogare wrote:
| The overwhelming majority of people who died of it reached a
| very advanced age and had other medical conditions. They
| would probably have died of a normal flu too.
|
| Your link is pure fake news. It's an article trying to pass a
| known side effect of the mRNA medication (myocarditis) as
| stemming from the virus. Also it's from the press of an
| authoritarian country that is deporting people into camps...
| threeseed wrote:
| a) So you're saying hundreds of millions of people are
| going to die suddenly over the next 2 years from flu and
| "medical conditions". Be curious to see the studies on this
| looming catastrophe.
|
| b) Australia is not an authoritarian country by any
| definition and ABC News is highly respected as an
| independent news source.
| GDC7 wrote:
| Worst case scenario (immune elusion):
|
| BioNTech/Pfizer already said that they need 90-100 days to put
| together an entirely new vaccine.
|
| The infrastructure for distribution is already in place given
| that the 1st vaccination round is not over yet and people who had
| the first round are now getting boosters.
|
| The Merck/Pfizer pill should not be affected by mutations given
| that it's oriented at the effects. They are both approved in the
| US and are about to be approved in Europe, the US purchased 10M
| doses in advance.
|
| Masks , temp check, vaccination status check are already
| commonplace.
|
| THIS IS NOT US GOING BACK TO MARCH 2020. EVEN IN THE WORST CASE
| SCENARIO.
| dham wrote:
| It's sad to say but we should have just let this thing rip in
| March 2020. We would have a lot of death I know, but we would
| have been back to normal by June. Variants would have never been
| a thing and it just becomes a cold.
|
| I'll come back to this message in 10 years to see how history
| looks at this situation.
| moneywoes wrote:
| So the hospitals would just refuse people?
| jihadjihad wrote:
| This is an attitude I hear a lot from within my own family, but
| it ignores one of the primary reasons we took such measures in
| the first place: the healthcare system not being able to
| service that amount of load. It's not even about people dying
| from COVID as much as other, unrelated patients being denied
| access to necessary care because the healthcare system is
| flooded.
| hanklazard wrote:
| Most concerning part to me is the threat of it evading the mRNA
| vaccines which use spike protein sequences.
|
| One continued ray of hope: Paxlovid, the upcoming Pfizer drug, is
| designed against a viral protease and so we would not expect this
| variant to decrease this drug's efficacy.
| randomopining wrote:
| There's always gonna be room in the 8 billion people on earth for
| a variant to come around, just like this. We need a combination
| of fast vaccine updates for the elderly/etc, and also just
| increasing collective health to get some herd immunity.
| yen223 wrote:
| You aren't going to find a well-informed answer on a forum for
| software engineers.
| kortilla wrote:
| Good thing this isn't a forum for software engineers.
| yosito wrote:
| From all of the experts I'm following, I'm hearing that it will
| take a couple of weeks to determine if this variant is able to
| evade vaccines or if it is more severe. What they do know now is
| that it has a lot of mutations and highly increased
| transmissibility. Sounds like governments and public health
| professionals should be on alert, but the average person should
| focus on getting vaxxed and wearing masks.
| crate_barre wrote:
| This variant will be global within those few weeks. It's like
| we don't learn about the speed in which all this happened.
| Travel restrictions to and from South Africa need to happen
| yesterday.
| yosito wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if the variant is already global.
| There is a known case in Belgium from November 11th. Travel
| restrictions are mainly political at this point.
| ogogmad wrote:
| What about testing and tracing? _And_ doing travel bans.
| yosito wrote:
| What evidence do you have that travel bans stop covid?
| threeseed wrote:
| In Australia at least we had mandatory hotel quarantine
| for all foreign arrivals with many of them being
| infectious.
|
| If you didn't have that quarantine they would be out in
| the wild infecting people. Not what you want when many
| parts of our country e.g. Western Australia had zero
| community transmissions.
|
| Without some sort of travel bans there is no way you
| could manage that level of inflow.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| There is none. There is scant evidence that any of these
| NPI's do anything at all besides give the appearance that
| government is "taking this serious".
|
| People that claim this kind of stuff "just makes sense"
| aren't taking into consideration the second order effects
| on human behavior that might make things even worse. For
| example closing outdoor parks probably made things much
| worse because people would meet inside instead...
| threeseed wrote:
| This comment is simply wrong.
|
| Health professionals were factoring in second order
| effects. The problem is that there isn't a wealth of
| research or evidence which shows which option is more
| likely to work. So a lot of at least in the early days
| was trial/error.
|
| What would do know is that increased mobility translates
| to increased cases. And so opening parks whilst much
| safer than being inside results in increased mobility as
| people need transport to/from those parks.
| ogogmad wrote:
| Infectious diseases spread by human contact. Reducing
| contact between infected and uninfected people should
| therefore slow down spread. We can use this time to
| gather information about this variant in order to make
| better decisions about how to deal with it. The
| precautionary principle dictates that we act by assuming
| that a very bad outcome is likely until we get more
| information.
|
| A very bad outcome (which we don't have enough
| information to rule out) is hospitals being overwhelmed
| with sick people, so that some patients are left
| untreated, with a greatly increased rate of dying as a
| result. The reason this is possible is because there are
| a large number of mutations in this variant, which might
| allow it to bypass people's immunity. This can make
| immunity acquired through previous infection or
| vaccination ineffective.
| yosito wrote:
| Last time I checked, there were infected people on both
| sides of the border.
| ogogmad wrote:
| Which border? What infections? I'm not living in Belgium.
| ogogmad wrote:
| Slow down, mate. The WHO would like a word with you: (all
| quotes from the Guardian) - The World Health
| Organization cautioned countries against hastily imposing
| travel restrictions linked to Omicron, saying they should
| take a "risk-based and scientific approach". It would take
| several weeks to determine the variant's transmissibility and
| the effectiveness of vaccines and therapeutics against it,
| WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier said, noting that 100
| sequences of the variant have been reported so far. People
| should continue to wear masks whenever possible, avoid large
| gatherings, ventilate rooms and maintain hand hygiene, he
| added. - South Africa condemned the decision of
| other countries to impose travel restrictions as
| 'unjustified'. The health minister, Joe Phaahla, Phaahla said
| South Africa was acting with transparency, and that travel
| bans introduced by a number of countries against southern
| African nations are "completely against the norms and
| standards" of the WHO. Phaahla called on all South Africans
| over the age of 12 to come forward and receive the vaccine,
| which he said remained a "major bulwark" against infection
| and severe illness. - South Africa's president
| Cyril Ramaphosa will discuss reimposing lockdown restrictions
| at a meeting on Sunday, as the country scrambles to assess
| the potential for Omicron to unleash a deadly fourth wave. As
| I've mentioned above, the government appealed for people to
| get jabbed as soon as possible - only around 35% of South
| Africans have been vaccinated.
| tfehring wrote:
| Of course the WHO and South African government oppose
| travel bans. That doesn't mean imposing those bans isn't in
| other countries' best interest. Taking a risk-averse
| approach in a highly risky and uncertain situation isn't
| inconsistent with the WHO's recommendation to take a "risk-
| based and scientific approach."
|
| I'm not saying that restricting travel is necessarily the
| right approach (though it probably is), but nothing in your
| comment really strikes me as compelling evidence that it's
| the wrong approach.
| ogogmad wrote:
| I didn't say it was the wrong approach. I'm actually
| exasperated by what the WHO and South Africa are saying.
| They're saying we're not supposed to exercise any
| precaution until they've waited two days to decide
| whether to impose a lockdown against a variant which has
| (with current knowledge) a high chance of evading
| previously acquired immunity. The variant is highly
| transmissible, and infections can grow rapidly in that
| period. This might lead to a reckoning for the WHO.
|
| > Taking a risk-averse approach in a highly risky and
| uncertain situation isn't inconsistent with the WHO's
| recommendation to take a "risk-based and scientific
| approach."
|
| South Africa interpreted the WHO's statements as being
| against imposing travel bans. The first sentence of your
| comment implies you agree that that's what they meant.
| It's either that, or the WHO's statements are meaningless
| verbiage.
|
| This looks like the events of early 2020 repeating.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| It would be great if the WHO was focused on saving lives
| and preventing infections rather than pushing China's
| agenda [0].
|
| [0] https://www.foxnews.com/media/who-china-taiwan-
| interview
| cercatrova wrote:
| Fox News is not a credible news source, they themselves
| termed it as entertainment that no reasonable person
| would take as news.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| That's an interesting opinion.
|
| I linked fox because it was the first link to pop up but
| the same news was picked by several other national and
| international outlets across the political spectrum.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/30/senior-who-
| adv...
|
| https://nationalpost.com/news/world/who-taiwan-bruce-
| aylward
|
| https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8172031/WHO-
| officia...
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-52088167
| pasabagi wrote:
| Ah, fox. Finally, a reputable source!
| crate_barre wrote:
| Where have I heard this story before? Oh yeah, January
| 2020. Here we go again.
| tfehring wrote:
| The prediction market Kalshi [0] is showing a ~50% chance that
| the CDC will designate a variant of high consequence [1] by
| March, up from a ~20% chance 36 hours ago.
|
| A biostatistician friend of mine pointed me to this relatively
| optimistic Twitter thread [2], though this response [3] is much
| more pessimistic.
|
| [0] https://kalshi.com/markets/VOHC-001
|
| [1]
| https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/variants/variant-i...
|
| [2] https://twitter.com/jbloom_lab/status/1464005676842184705
|
| [3] https://twitter.com/theodora_nyc/status/1464257411582148608
| thrower123 wrote:
| Not the slightest bit
| armchairhacker wrote:
| The issue is that worse-case scenario is really bad. If this a)
| has an R0 > 9, b) can evade vaccines, and c) breaks containment,
| I really _can 't imagine_ what will happen. Like I can't
| comprehend what will happen because it's so bad.
|
| First of all, how would we lockdown? _Completely ignoring any
| mental health effects,_ I don 't see how lockdowns are
| sustainable, because of the economic implications and how they
| affect education. How the fuck are we going to produce goods and
| raise children without (minimal, masked) in-person interaction?
|
| But the virus seems so transmissible, that anything below a full
| lockdown will almost useless. The virus could be so transmissible
| that even if people only go shopping and to work, and wear masks,
| it will still spread to everyone. Even if it's not that
| transmissible, I don't see how governments can institute anything
| near full lockdowns without something like martial law, because
| people are _not_ going to want to lock down. So with an R0 > 9
| it's going to spread fast.
|
| Then if the virus is remotely dangerous, hospitals will be
| _significantly_ more overwhelmed. Considering that hospitals had
| to triage from the last two outbreaks - I can 't imagine how many
| people would die.
|
| Fortunately, the worst-case scenario is still very unlikely. The
| virus does seem to be very transmissible. But it also seems like
| vaccines still prevent hospitalization and death, and the virus
| itself might be less deadly. The probability for any mutation to
| completely break resistance from a vaccine / prior infections is
| very, very low.
|
| Lastly, there's still a chance we can contain and eradicate this
| variant. That's why scientists are holding emergency meetings,
| countries are rapidly instituting travel bans and infected people
| / regions will probably be quarantined. We have hindsight that we
| didn't in 2020, and we even have technology to do fast testing
| and contact tracing. So there's a chance that your life may not
| be infected by this variant at all.
| TimedToasts wrote:
| The news has a financial incentive to keep you anxious - just
| look at how many websites you've visited on this bit of anxiety
| alone.
| mrkramer wrote:
| As a layman I see it as FUD. Scientists will draw conclusions not
| journalists.
| marchingtomars wrote:
| Given that the CDC lied to the US & World about the proper
| approach to self-protection (wearing masks), they certainly do
| not have my trust.
|
| I'll take my chances. I will not trust the Federal government's
| dishonest "experts".
| pajko wrote:
| What concerning is that some of the articles tell about many
| reinfections. Natural immunity is said to be stronger as the
| immune system is trained on the whole virus, not just the spike
| protein. So guess what.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| I'm reading everything you're reading, and my takeaway is: it's
| simply too early to be sure. The best thing to do is roughly
| what's happening - take some sensible precautions while we figure
| out what's going on.
|
| My back-of-the-hand barely-estimated odds are something like:
|
| 50% chance it's similar to, a little more prevalent than Delta,
| with similar immune escape. A slightly worse version of the
| current problem. 25% chance it turns out to be way more dangerous
| than Delta for some reason (requires a new vaccine, more deadly,
| way way more infectious etc). 25% chance it ends up being no big
| deal/not worse than delta/less deadly/little to no immune escape
|
| But this is based on how these things have seemed to shake out
| over the last two years, not any sure science. Don't rely on me.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| But we already know what's going on. The medical field cited
| Delta as a problem, and it was. With your numbers of 75% being
| equivalent or worse than Delta, that alone enough to spur
| action. And where are your odds coming from?
| rasengan0 wrote:
| I would not throw away those masks just yet [1]
|
| They're working on it [2]
|
| [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03552-w [2]
| https://www.who.int/news/item/26-11-2021-classification-of-o...
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