Comment by pmoriarty | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pmoriarty | Hacker News Reader

As has been pointed out in an earlier article about the "new strain"[1]:

"Let's not be hysterical. It doesn't mean it's more transmissible or more infectious or dangerous."

That there are new strains of COVID-19 has been covered over, and over, and over, and over again on the This Week in Virology podcast[2] (which usually has 4 to 6 virologists on it every week discussing COVID-19 news), and they've always had the same message:

New strains naturally arise all the time as the virus mutates, but there is no evidence that these mutations make the virus more transmissible or infectious. Nor do they make the illness more severe nor otherwise affect clinical outcomes, nor make treatment any less effective.

People just love to talk up the discovery of new strains, thinking that coronavirus mutations are like flu mutations (which actually do require new vaccines every year), but they're not.

Coronavirus strains are kept an eye on by scientists for the purpose of tracking the spread and origin of the disease, and there'll always be one strain that will be more common than others, but it doesn't mean it's something we have to fear any more than any other strain.

[1] - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55308211

[2] - https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/

That's old news, unfortunately. The latest data suggest that it is significantly more transmissible. "Up to" 70% more, according to the UK government's press conference. This is big.

Luckily, it doesn't seem to be more dangerous in terms of hospital admissions.

Statement from Chris Whitty, UK's chief medical advisor to the government: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/statement-from-chief-medi...

NERVTAG's early analysis suggests the new variant could increase R by 0.4 or greater. Although there is considerable uncertainty, it may be up to 70% more transmissible than the old variant.

Maybe I’m too cynical, but it sounds like the new strain is an excuse to explain why the U.K. PM, who until a day ago was publicly not putting any restrictions on Britons, and especially Londoners for Christmas, is now suddenly reversing himself.

> but there is no evidence that these mutations

Parroting NN Taleb: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Haven't we learned from coronavirus that we need to use the precautionary principle in the face of new information that is not fully understood. I don't know where you are from, but I locally heard a string of "there is no evidence of" starting in about January of 2019. There was no evidence that the virus would leave China (it did). No evidence that shutting down travel from infected areas would help (see Vietnam). No evidence of community transmission (it has happened in most of the globe). No evidence that masks help prevent transmission (appears to reduce transmission rates).

I am starting to think as soon as someone asserts "there is no evidence" for something related to the coronavirus, it is a foregone conclusion.

In any case, nobody can assert with absolute certainty that the coronavirus cannot mutate into a more severe or more transmissible virus, especially in the face of a the long human history of being (literally) plagued by mutating viruses.

A critical mutation is a possibility and we should be extremely cautious and vigilant against it. Even if we erroneously overreact 10 times to false mutations, the 11th time might be the one the matters. And the cost of those 11 overreactions will be much less than the cost of letting it go wild.

Parroting Christopher Hitchens: what is presented without proof can be dismissed without proof

Mutations that have a real impact on the RNA of the virus are incredibly rare. Most random mutations and errors replicating don't produce any meaningful change in the virus and you have to get very unlucky for a deadly mutation to happen.

We should stick to scientific rationalism even if it has limits. There has been too much opportunistic fear-mongering and questionable decision making playing advantage off the back of a natural virus.

This thing obeys the laws of physics, kills people in a particular pattern and can be managed with scientific tools we have had forever. There is simply no need for everybody to be hysterical yet again, when the science of the virus can be so easily spelled out for the masses.

But noo, we have to have a boogeyman to build a network of cultural changes. This particular mechanism of hijacking a natural disaster for control is embarrassingly transparent.

> can be managed with scientific tools we have had forever

The most important ones aren’t even particularly scientific. If you’re feeling ill, stay home. Wash your hands. Don’t hang around elderly or other vulnerable.

But these are simple and require no exceptional growth of state power and usurping of the right of free people to exercise their labor.

All these pro-labor types have no problem making scientists, politicians, etc. your effective boss.

Rich people deciding they must micromanage their doltish compatriots.

And once we isolate these ‘vulnerable and elderly’ people, who will care for them? Robots?

> Parroting Christopher Hitchens: what is presented without proof can be dismissed without proof

This is nonsense that assumes an antagonistic purpose to a discussion, and not actually an attempt to reach a higher understanding.

Isn‘t this the burden of proof under a different name? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_(philosophy)

Is this a thing that is discussed in philosophy, except that Christopher Hitchens recently claimed it to be?

A burden of proof applies to law, by convention, but not to the truth of a situation.

If I say "513x217=111321", it's true whether I prove it to you or not. My statement of it does not obligate me to prove it.

If I say there's gold buried at certain coordinates, that's also true independent of whether I prove it. The point is that the quote is a heuristic that works because most of the by the time you hear that claim, most of the statistical work has been done, hidden in the premise in a way that skips your intuitions a bit (the kolgomoroff comolexity of my phrase is a lot higher than yours, even though they're of about the same length, even though the number of bits needed to verify each is about the same).

>that's also true independent of whether I prove it.

This is so different from my point that I'm not sure how it relates.

I am confident there is literal treasure near to where I live, because I've seen very convincing evidence of dredging from multiple sources. In my mind, it is proven. But, I'm not acting on that because I don't find it worthwhile.

On the other hand, if a stranger told me there was a police traffic stop in a particular direction, I'd probably take a detour - even if there was a complete lack of proof.

Proof doesn't guide my action at all - I don't require a burden of proof in order to act.

Burden of proof is a legal concept, not a philosophical one.

You're acting based on your priors and new evidence. You have a high prior for police stops existing in general, and a low one for people randomly lying about it, so a stranger saying there's one that way is compelling evidence to you. You have a high prior on the existence of treausure nearvy, but a low one of the existence of treasure worth the effort of finding, so me telling you you could get rich quick isn't compelling evidence to you.

This no longer has anything to do with 'burden of proof', which I continue to reject as a concept (maybe you are agreeing with me?).

I'm saying you're taking as if it were some sort of ontological model or normative rule of discourse, when really it's a verbalisation of a heuristic you've already admitted to using. You're using something like 'burden of proof' as an algorithm, even if you consciously reject it as a verbal tool.

That's not a 'burden of proof'.

Yes, and the same applies to that.

> But noo, we have to have a boogeyman to build a network of cultural changes. This particular mechanism of hijacking a natural disaster for control is embarrassingly transparent.

It might be a side-effect in many local politics right now (never let a good crisis to waste), and many of them act incompetent (or maybe they're always incompetent but now we see it clearer when they're in the spotlight), but I don't think that was the point GP was making. It also assumes a conspiracy of actors that want to change the world by "building a network of cultural changes..." (Occam's razor)

The 'conspiracy', i.e. the organised group, is the media coupled with a grassroots authoritarian ideology that pays it to keep reporting as 'pleases' it. Just lots of individuals and institutions acting according to their memes and incentives, no (non-obviously existing) cabal needed.

What you’re saying boils down to, we should assume that something will happen, and therefore act to deploy our limited resources to defend against this thing, just because it isn’t theoretically impossible.

Such an approach is guaranteed to massively fail and in doing so cost a lost of money and lives. It’s bad public policy because it is financially ruinous and leads to a greater number of deaths.

Here’s the logic: We know that resources (time, focus, money) can be wasted if they are spent on things that are not effective. We also know that resources are finite. There is only so much time, so much money, and so many different things that you can try to accomplish at once. Therefore, limited resources must be deployed efficiently — towards the most effective interventions — if we want them collectively to achieve the greatest effect.

This means dangers that are scientifically exceedingly unlikely to occur should perhaps not be entirely ignored but should not be driving major policy decisions.

The issue here is not an absence of evidence. There is an abundance of evidence that coronavirus mutations are fundamentally different from influenza mutations.

> I am starting to think as soon as someone asserts "there is no evidence" for something related to the coronavirus, it is a foregone conclusion.

I know that this is a joke, but it does rhetorically undercut your main point a bit. Hindsight is 2020 and resources are limited, if you let speculation without evidence rule the day you'll be drowning in potential problems, most of which will never materialize.

Nobody is saying "just ignore the new strains", they're saying "there is no reason to panic about new strains given the evidence", yes the evidence could change but that can be true of anything; you might wake up tomorrow to find out that new evidence suggests cell phone use increases risk of dementia, but there is no good reason to go around living your life like this might actually be true.

> In any case, nobody can assert with absolute certainty that the coronavirus cannot mutate into a more severe or more transmissible virus, especially in the face of a the long human history of being (literally) plagued by mutating viruses.

Well, the coronavirus won't mutate into Ebola, if that's what you're afraid of. And viri as deadly as Ebola aren't particularly successful as they tend to kill their host before spreading sufficiently (HIV is quite nefarious in that respect and I'd think close to worst case).

Humankind is in no danger of extinction from this virus or any other known. The old and infirm need to take precautions, as well as those tending to them. The rest of us have other things to worry about. Stop the fear mongering.

Just a note on the precautionary principle: you can only apply it if you’re sure the action you’re taking does not cause harm. An example where this could be the case is enforced community mask wearing - it could introduce new vectors for transmission, for example.

Re "there is no evidence": this is due to a mismatch between the medical profession's use of the words "no evidence" and everyone else's.

To a standard human, "no evidence" means "there is no evidence".

To a medical professional, "no evidence" means "there is insufficient evidence for us to be certain".

The clash of terminology is very unfortunate, and it prevents one from discussing probabilities at all. A statement from the WHO is either that something is "certain" or that there is "insufficient evidence at this time", even if there is sufficient evidence for one to conclude something with 80% probability.

While this is true generally, please bear in mind that the numbers in the UK do seem to be somewhat concerning. I don’t have actual values yet, but from the announcements from the various UK governments it seems to be the case that the case rate in London has almost tripled in the past 18 days, and 60% of current cases are this new strain.

The response in the UK has been pretty rapid and strict, and this has been justified by the governments on the basis of monitoring of this new strain. It’s unlikely (of course not impossible) that this decision would be taken without some decent evidence backing it up.

Indeed. And there is also the evidence from Kent (where it seems likely this new strain originated), where case numbers were increasing despite Tier 3 restrictions (all pubs and restaurants closed, etc)

We should acknowledge that this new strain is different [1] in some ways:

> The B.1.1.7 lineage carries a larger than usual number of virus genetic changes. The accrual of 14 lineage-specific amino acid replacements prior to its detection is, to date, unprecedented in the global virus genomic data for the COVID-19 pandemic. Most branches in the global phylogenetic tree of SARS-CoV-2 show no more than a few mutations and mutations accumulate at a relatively consistent rate over time.

It's certainly still not proven that it's definitely more infectious than the other strains. But it's a bit of a stretch to infer from previous experience here, given the quantitative difference.

[1] https://virological.org/t/preliminary-genomic-characterisati...

yes, obviously things mutate, but all your other information in this comment is out of date - the current information is the strain they're talking about is 70% more infectious.

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