Covid-19: New variant 'raises R number by up to 0.7'

They don't want you to leave their premises. That's why.

I fear that by February most cities will be going through what we here in NYC faced last April.

The problem now in the UK is the winter pressures are at their worst, we haven't even seen the impact of Christmas relaxation yet, and we've just exceeded the peak number of covid inpatients seen in the first wave. We're going to start seeing hospitals closing to new admissions soon (diverting to other nearby hospitals) as they hit full capacity.

The time to build up our response capacity was this summer. We spent trillions of dollars to buy time, but didn’t spend a comparably small amount of money to actually prepare for this winter.

In short, it’s too late. Current shortages of health care were completely predictable and avoidable.

> is it more infectious through touch, by breathing it in, or when viral particles reach your eyes?

I think a better mental model of transmissibility is to think of what concentration of viral particles is needed to trigger the reproduction. It seems that there is some early indication that the new variant binds more easily to human cells (N501Y mutation) so a lower concentration of particles is needed, and also infected hosts distribute more particles (higher viral load).

An actual expert on viral transmission please chime in.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variant_of_Concern_202012/01#T...

With 50k infections a day, say the true number is 100k, in 3 months only about 1.5% of the UK popularion get infected, not really significant for her immunity numbers.

There's a vague evolutionary argument that the less deadly for the host a parasite is the more widely it can spread and thus the more evolutionarily successful it will become. But there is no mechanism that guarantees the inverse — that an increase in infectiousness will be accompanied by a decrease in lethality. From the molecular biological perspective, the molecules responsible for viral spread and the molecules responsible for the damage that the virus does to its host (or that the host does to itself when attacking the virus) are likely to be quite different, so there is no reason for a change in one to be accompanied by a change in the other.

For the COVID though, IIUC there’s 4-day asymptomatic phase where most of transmission occurs, followed by 2-week symptomatic phase, and it is thought to be unique. So it’s not clear if normal rules of thumbs apply to it.

> So how do we get this bigger picture? That’s where what researchers call “excess death” data come in. Simply put, excess deaths are the difference between the number of deaths that were expected to occur during a given time period and the number of deaths that actually occurred.

I suspect some deaths are being mis-attributed to C19 (for example that gunshot story). While other things are probably being undercounted.

1. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cdcresponse/accomp...

Let's take the UK as our population. If a vaccine is 60% effective and we administer it to everyone in the UK, then about 60% of the UK's population will gain immunity to COVID. Another Y% of the population will have immunity to COVID already, even if the vaccine didn't work for them. Then the question is, is Y + 60 > X, thereby achieving herd immunity?

You can see that if a vaccine is 95% effective, it's more likely to be above the herd immunity threshold of X%. Current estimates for X are about 70%.

So, expect them to cut symptomatic cases by 90% among people that get the vaccine, and to add up to (60% * the percentage of people that get the vaccine) to the herd immunity progress bar.

The vaccines will likely cut total deaths by less than 90%, because vaccines tend to be less effective on more vulnerable people, and of course, less than 100% of the population will get it on time.

We could get lucky, and they could cut deaths of immunized people by more than 90%; no one knows yet. However the dosing screw up in the Oxford study inadvertently showed it is much less effective on old people.

The new variant speeds up the clock, which means more people will catch COVID before receiving the vaccine. It’s an exponential curve, so if the current R value is 1 (optimistic), and with new lockdowns and the new variant it’s 1.7 (taking the doomsday “add 0.7” from the headline), then cases will increase ~1.7x every two weeks. There are 18 two-week periods between now and fall, when Fauci says we’re likely to return to normal. 1.7^18 is ~14,000x.

There have been 83M confirmed cases globally according to Johns Hopkins, 83M * 14K >> the population of the earth, so the vaccine will be rounding error if the headline and Fauci’s warnings are correct. (It will allow frontline health workers to keep working, but that’s about it, and the hospitals will still be overrun).

If we assume the roll out takes 6 months, and the new variant increases R value by 0.3 (in range according to the article), then 1.3^12 = 23x. There’s some time lag while the new virus is mostly in the UK, and more stringent measures could reduce 1.3 by a little bit. In that scenario, the vaccine will still save many people.

I suspect the second scenario is more realistic.

The advantage of the Oxford vaccine is it can be stored at room temp. The Pfizer vaccine is largely being rolled out at large teaching hospitals - which means we can't get to the elderly and infirm, without risking exposure to them by bringing them up to the hospital. The Oxford vaccine would allow GP surgeries to give out the vaccine, as well as do home visits.

I'll admit that I don't know the maths behind whether a 60% reduction (which I think would multiply R rate by 0.4) will completely mitigate the increase in R by the new variant (multiply R by 1.74). It's all about a tipping point and getting the R to stay under 1, but as I pointed out above - it's difficult to compare studies using different methodologies.

With this new variant, and the fact that we need some pretty incredible amount of people immune at once, maybe say 80%, wouldn't this mean that we need to be vaccinated 4-5 times a year?

How is this feasible, even for the richest countries?