Is this as scary as it sounds? - New COVID variant 'real cause for concern'

[Riemann]

@Machine_Elf

the SA variant has mutations in its spike protein that may reduce the effectiveness of existing vaccines.

The UK variant also has mutations in spike. And the a priori expectation is that this may lead to some quantitative reduction in vaccine efficacy, but with a polyclonal response it’s unlikely to make vaccinations completely inneffective.

But that’s such useless journalism in that article. It reports Matt Hancock saying in an interview:

This is a very, very significant problem… it’s even more of a problem than the U.K. new variant.

…but that’s it. Not even any explanation of why he thinks there might be a greater concern with the S. African variant. And no indication that we yet have any data to show that.

Data should be coming out in a matter of days testing serum from immunized and convalescent subjects against the U.K. strain, certainly they will be doing the same experiments with all these new strains.

[eschrodinger]

Boris Johnson says U.K. coronavirus variant may be more deadly
By William Booth

Boris Johnson says British coronavirus variant may be more deadly

England’s chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance, offered an example. He said that among 1,000 men in England age 60 years or older, the original virus would kill 10. The new variant, he said, would kill 13 or 14. That would represent a 30 percent rise in mortality, though it is important to note that absolute risk of death remains low.

[eschrodinger]

Like a speeding car whose brake lines have been cut, the coronavirus variant first spotted in Britain is spreading at an alarming rate and isn’t responding to established ways of slowing the pandemic, according to Danish scientists who have one of the world’s best views into the new, more contagious strain.
Cases involving the variant are increasing 70 percent a week in Denmark, despite a strict lockdown, according to Denmark’s State Serum Institute, a government agency that tracks diseases and advises health policy.

Denmark is sequencing all coronavirus samples and has an alarming view of the...

Very alarming.

Sorry if these are behind a pay wall for you, but it’s where I read them.

[FigNorton]

Denmark’s case number having been sinking like a stone for about a week. What’s the alarming part in the article?

[eschrodinger]

Well, the whole article. It includes the fact that the overall case rate is dropping at the moment, but the variant, which is currently a small percentage of a small number, is growing exponentially despite imposing stricter “lockdown” rules.

Danish officials say that as a result, daily coronavirus cases there could quadruple by the beginning of April. Charts from the public health institute project that in the worst-case contagion scenarios, even with a strict lockdown in effect, cases would skyrocket. Under better-case scenarios — if the variant turns out to be less contagious than thought, or if the country can get caseloads down even further right now — the outbreak would stay more under control while they administer vaccines.

(Snipped)

As of Jan. 17, the most recent day for which data was available, 464 cases of the U.K. variant had been identified in Denmark. The U.K. variant was 2 percent of sequenced coronavirus cases the last full week of 2020. By the second week of January, it had risen to 7 percent.

Worried Danish leaders have tried to explain to their citizens why they need to stay in lockdown, when overall metrics are good enough to suggest the country should have started to reopen weeks ago.

In a long Facebook post last week, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told people to imagine sitting in the top row of Copenhagen’s Parken Stadium, a soccer arena with a capacity of 38,000 people. A dripping tap is filling it up, one drop the first minute, two drops the second, four drops the third. At that rate, Frederiksen said, the park will be filled in 44 minutes. But it will seem almost empty for the first 42 minutes, she said.

[FigNorton]

One variant supplanting another is not necessarily cause for alarm. This has already happened with covid and there are explanations other than a more infectious strain.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02544-6

In April, Korber, Montefiori and others warned in a preprint posted to the bioRxiv server that “D614G is increasing in frequency at an alarming rate”1. It had rapidly become the dominant SARS-CoV-2 lineage in Europe and had then taken hold in the United States, Canada and Australia. D614G represented a “more transmissible form of SARS-CoV-2”, the paper declared, one that had emerged as a product of natural selection.

These assertions dismayed many scientists. It wasn’t clear that the D614G viral lineage was more transmissible, or that its rise indicated anything unusual, they said. But alarm spread fast across the media.

They took “alarming” out for the peer reviewed article.

[eschrodinger]

I’ll take my data interpretation from the experts, though. Do you have a cite for any experts being dismayed over these reports?

[FigNorton]

Well apply some logic. If case numbers are dropping and another strain is becoming more dominant at the same time, how in the world does that make the new version scarier?

[Dr.Drake]

It doesn’t. The new version isn’t scarier because it’s new, it’s scarier because of particular qualities association with it (more contagious, and now some indications that it’s more lethal).

From the WaPo article cited above: “Danish public health officials say that if it weren’t for their extensive monitoring, they would be feeling a false sense of confidence right now. Overall, new daily confirmed cases of the coronavirus in Denmark have been dropping for a month.”

Your posts seem to be grounded in a belief that the new virus is benign, rather than a critical skepticism of the arguments presented.

[FigNorton]

I crunched the numbers and yes, the cases of the UK variant went up despite case numbers being down. So, mea culpa.

[SayTwo]

Looks like case numbers in Denmark and Sweden might have peaked around the same time. For what that’s worth.

[eschrodinger]

Yes, as the article said, and as I stated, the new variant is growing exponentially, even while the case numbers in general are going down. It’s worth reading the whole article if you can. So far, the new variant numbers are low, but exponential growth means those numbers will get very big very quickly.

[FigNorton]

As you you suggested, it is paywalled for me. I’ll have to get to a different computer to read it. Sorry, that’s why I asked about the content.

[Wesley_Clark]

So, I haven’t read every reply yet, but this new variant has an R0 that is 0.4-0.7 higher than the regular coronavirus, 50-70% more contagious and its 30% more fatal.

Generally don’t infectious diseases become less serious and less fatal when they become more infectious? Or because covid has a 1-2 week period where you are contagious but have mild symptoms basically mean that rule of thumb isn’t applicable?

Also when this original virus started I thought the R0 was around ~2.5 or so, now what I’m reading is it is 1.1. But was the 2.5 or so value from before we did all the stay at home orders, masks, etc?

[MandaJo]

@Wesley_Clark

Generally don’t infectious diseases become less serious and less fatal when they become more infectious? Or because covid has a 1-2 week period where you are contagious but have mild symptoms basically mean that rule of thumb isn’t applicable?

It’s a tendency, not an absolute. The Spanish Flu was significantly more dangerous in the second wave than the first, for example.

[Melbourne]

@Wesley_Clark

Also when this original virus started I thought the R0 was around ~2.5 or so, now what I’m reading is it is 1.1.

When you look at outbreaks and count backwards, you still get something like R0 = 2.5 or better or worse. But it’s now realized that for most people, R0=0. The number 1.1 now has something to do with sensible precautions, but also has a lot to do with including the previously undetected cases who don’t infect anybody at all.

You can’t calculate an interesting R0 for community spread using people who are in quarantine where you are driving R0 down to zero. If you take a bunch of people in the community who are found to be infected, go back to their infector, calculate R0 for that person, you get a much higher number than if you take the same group, leave them in the community, and go forward – but that was harder to measure and it took longer to get estimates.

For the new variant, we are still in the “when this started, they thought” phase of the counting.

[Bonum_Legatum]

One of the local TV news stations just issued a recommendation (since the latest variant from England was found in Washtenaw and Wayne counties): Wear two masks, one over the other. (Can’t find a link to the report.) Here is a report on wearing two masks:

Double Masking Is More Protective Against COVID-19. When Should You Layer Up?

[Darren_Garrison]

Its heeeeere!

Coronavirus variant first seen in South Africa identified in South Carolina

[Treppenwitz]

Crossposting from the breaking news thread - a couple of posts detailing plans to tweak existing vaccines in order to protect against emerging new variants:

Coronavirus COVID-19 (2019-nCoV) Thread - 2021 Breaking News

BMJ article: Covid-19: Moderna plans booster doses to counter variants In the first approach Moderna said that it would see whether a third “booster dose” of the current mRNA-1273 vaccine added to the approved two dose regimen would further increase neutralising titres against the emerging variants. In a second approach the company said that it had developed a booster vaccine candidate called mRNA-1273.351 against the emerging South African variant. It said that it was beginning phase I studi…

Coronavirus COVID-19 (2019-nCoV) Thread - 2021 Breaking News

And here’s some more news on possible vaccine modifications to protect against new COVID variants: Prof Andy Pollard, from Oxford University, said tweaking a vaccine was a relatively quick process and would only need small trials before roll-out. There is still strong evidence existing vaccines work well against the mutations that have emerged. Although their overall effectiveness may be weakened a little. Re Pfizer (and Moderna), I found this: As mentioned above, the two mRNA vaccines…

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[Leaper]

So apparently there’s a study that says that the AstraZeneca vaccine outright doesn’t work against the South African variant. Does this mean the world is stuck in its current state until that tweak is developed?