Read on Twitter
I would bet money that the “new strain” of #SARSCoV2 is just selecting on the outcome & promoting a narrative that shifts blame from non-stop failures at the highest levels
My initial response to stories about the “ #NewStrain,” before I even knew it was going to be the excuse to justify changing their mind again about lockdown, looking more correct by the day https://twitter.com/brunobrussels/status/1340623233368944640?s=21
I'm looking for the best evidence I can find for either hypothesis
As far as I can tell, the evidence for increased transmissibility is its increase in proportion of cases since ~late October. See the animation here (press play) https://nextstrain.org/groups/neherlab/ncov/S.N501?c=gt-S_501,69&dmax=2020-11-26&dmin=2020-05-17&f_country=United%20Kingdom&p=grid&r=country
As far as I can tell, the evidence for increased transmissibility is its increase in proportion of cases since ~late October. See the animation here (press play) https://nextstrain.org/groups/neherlab/ncov/S.N501?c=gt-S_501,69&dmax=2020-11-26&dmin=2020-05-17&f_country=United%20Kingdom&p=grid&r=country
The best alternative explanation, IMO:
1. Seeing any strain grow rapidly is just the same as tracking a wave of infections
2. This particular strain coincided with the winter wave, kept spreading in Nov cuz lockdown was ineffective (activity stayed higher than April-May)
1. Seeing any strain grow rapidly is just the same as tracking a wave of infections
2. This particular strain coincided with the winter wave, kept spreading in Nov cuz lockdown was ineffective (activity stayed higher than April-May)
This is the same problem that occurs with scientific study of "human nature"
We have powerful "lenses" to view (high-dimensional) biological correlates of behavior. Biology seems more "scientific" than social science, so we privilege its explanations https://twitter.com/joftius/status/1328028726647545856
We have powerful "lenses" to view (high-dimensional) biological correlates of behavior. Biology seems more "scientific" than social science, so we privilege its explanations https://twitter.com/joftius/status/1328028726647545856
The New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (NERVTAG) which warned the gov about #COVID20 #NewStrain has several virologists, epidemiologists, physicians, a sociologist, a psychologist, and that's all great but...
no statistician?
no statistician?
The @CovidGenomicsUK consortium has like a thousand physician contributors and ONE (1) statistician...
If only there was a field of expertise that specializes in understanding the limitations of interpreting data, but alas.
The method that tries to separate fitness from confounding (clustering by phylogeny before doing logistic regression AFAIK) is described in a short talk starting around 2:37:00 here
This method seems to be where the "70%" number comes from
The speaker also says that it's early for the current variant, there's not enough data, and that using the same method on a previous variant (left plots) he predicted that one would outgrow others but then it leveled off
The speaker also says that it's early for the current variant, there's not enough data, and that using the same method on a previous variant (left plots) he predicted that one would outgrow others but then it leveled off
