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#COVID19 hospital admissions in London seem like they're continuing to fall
I was skeptical about the new variant story early on, here's a short thread in chronological order of things I wrote about it https://twitter.com/joftius/status/1340346560811593728
I was skeptical about the new variant story early on, here's a short thread in chronological order of things I wrote about it https://twitter.com/joftius/status/1340346560811593728
From the beginning I thought the variant was just a genetic marker that correlated with a wave. There have been many waves throughout the pandemic, but for some reason this one was being attributed to viral biology instead of human behavior https://twitter.com/joftius/status/1340680012547186690
Even though the new variant story might be politically convenient, there are other, less political explanations for why such stories arise as well https://twitter.com/joftius/status/1340946847662280704
I thought that a better, social explanation for the December outbreak in London and the south east involved some demographic that wasn't following distancing measures
I didn't know which demo, thought it was bourgeois people at first (now I think teens) https://twitter.com/joftius/status/1341827037896581122
I didn't know which demo, thought it was bourgeois people at first (now I think teens) https://twitter.com/joftius/status/1341827037896581122
I pointed out that if the new variant was really more transmissible we would expect to see its proportion growing in all/most regions, but there were regions that was not happening https://twitter.com/joftius/status/1343602140992954369
Others, including viral biology specialists, started acknowledging that the earliest estimates of increased transmissibility were probably confounded and would get adjusted downward as more evidence came in https://twitter.com/joftius/status/1344969789895225345
I looked more closely at some of the initial evidence about the new variant and found that experts' careful interpretation about not conflating correlation and causation in the preprint was somehow left out of the reporting & popular narrative https://twitter.com/joftius/status/1345482839228358662
The paper about "higher viral loads" with the new variant--which may have just been confounding--was not peer reviewed but it received massive media attention and was one of the few pieces of evidence in the initial government report about the new variant https://twitter.com/joftius/status/1345852185523982336
Thanks to @IrfanDhalla I saw that SAGE has known of evidence as far back as early November that younger people (especially teens) are MUCH more likely to introduce COVID into a household than adults https://twitter.com/joftius/status/1345731341002952705
I explored the explanation where age/school is the key social demographic in a blog post
Earlier age/school based outbreaks in other regions might explain sudden increases in prevalence of previous variants, and slower spread of the new one there https://twitter.com/joftius/status/1345129079926878210
Earlier age/school based outbreaks in other regions might explain sudden increases in prevalence of previous variants, and slower spread of the new one there https://twitter.com/joftius/status/1345129079926878210
In this thread and my previous tweets/posts I'm trying to balance the scales a bit between different approaches to explaining these health outcomes
There are #PolEconData reasons why it's so much harder to find social explanations than biological ones https://twitter.com/joftius/status/1345142631106539521
There are #PolEconData reasons why it's so much harder to find social explanations than biological ones https://twitter.com/joftius/status/1345142631106539521
And there are major policy implications to understanding the causes, and how we can stop the spread https://twitter.com/joftius/status/1346473924406624258
