I want to publicly state that I think there's a 70% chance that the "British strain" is ≥30% more transmissible.

Over the last few years, I've made 886 predictions on many kinds of events. Here's a figure showing how accurate my predictions are. (w/ 50% confidence intervals)

It often feels weird to start publicly worrying about something before anyone else around you has.

Well, here's me publicly worrying about it now! Maybe one or two people reading this will now find it easier to tell others that they're worried about this strain.

And even if you think there's only a small chance the new strain is more transmissible, it could be an absolutely gigantic problem if it were, so it's still really worth planning for that situation.

Oh, and Merry Christmas.

I have updated this prediction upwards from 70% to (a touch under) 85%, mostly as a result of reading this excellent thread by @juan_cambeiro , who I believe is very good at forecasting! https://twitter.com/juan_cambeiro/status/1343403303460364289?s=20