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Comment by ppf | Hacker News Reader

>"since the situation is in flux and information is still trickling in"

>I won't find you the data that doesn't exist yet.

Right, so not exactly something that you can base much on (yet). I could also make very similar arguments about the AZ vaccine, as a younger person.

Declaring your statements to be "basic evolution" does not make them true.

>How that milder variant is doing now? Compared to, let's say, the British one, or the Brazilian one?

The article was talking about the British one. I am also in the UK, and not dead. Yes, it was written soon after the initial outbreak, because Covid-19 mutated quite quickly. Using some similar fuzzy evidence, it would seem that "long Covid" sufferers are primarily people who caught Covid in March/April 2020.

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> The article was talking about the British one.

I checked again and it doesn't seem so. It's about mutation D614G which was the mutation that caused first wave of the pandemic globally in the spring 2020 and probably beginning of second wave in the autumn before it was overshadowed by British variant B.1.1.7

It was milder and more easily transmissible than the original virus variant that was detected in China and that's what the article you cited is about.

B.1.1.7 appears to be both more easily transmissible and more deadly than D614G.

> Right, so not exactly something that you can base much on (yet).

Because the situation is constantly changing you can't postpone reasoning and decisions till solid data is available. If you did that you'd always be wrong because you'd reason and operate on solid data that is stale.

You need to take into account the preliminary data and adjust your reasoning and decisions as more data comes in.

> I could also make very similar arguments about the AZ vaccine, as a younger person.

How would that look?

> Declaring your statements to be "basic evolution" does not make them true.

Content of the statements does. Check them with your favorite evolutionary biologist or virologist.

> The article was talking about the British one.

So the data from last August seem to be imprecise because more recent data shows that British variant is certainly not less deadly than the original one.

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/03/10/health/coronavirus-varian...

> Using some similar fuzzy evidence, it would seem that "long Covid" sufferers are primarily people who caught Covid in March/April 2020.

That would be great if British variant at least didn't give people long covid. My country is in the peak of third wave, the first one caused overwhelmingly by British variant so it's a bit too soon to tell.

>> I could also make very similar arguments about the AZ vaccine, as a younger person.

>How would that look?

You really can't see the parallel? "There's data coming in that suggests the AZ vaccine is deadly to a small but significant population, so while we wait for more data, we're going to halt its use".

>Content of the statements does. Check them with your favorite evolutionary biologist or virologist.

The onus is on the person making the statements to back them up. What you've said on the subject sounds very reasonable, but I can't find anywhere else.

As for your linked article on the British variant B117:

"Dr. Julian Tang, honorary associate professor and clinical virologist at the University of Leicester, said in a statement that he is "still not yet very convinced by these results" from the study."

Because they can't yet control for winter conditions affecting health.

> You really can't see the parallel? "There's data coming in that suggests the AZ vaccine is deadly to a small but significant population, so while we wait for more data, we're going to halt its use".

But there's no data like that. And even preliminary observations estimate danger of causing clotting by AZ at less that is caused by air travel.

> What you've said on the subject sounds very reasonable, but I can't find anywhere else.

I'm sorry to hear that. Could you list exactly which statements I made that tou feel lack scientific backing and I'll try to do my best to find scientific or educational materials on the subject to back them up.

> "Dr. Julian Tang, honorary associate professor and clinical virologist at the University of Leicester, said in a statement that he is "still not yet very convinced by these results" from the study."

I agree that the evidence is not yet as strong that the effect can't be attributed totally to other factors.

It's just strong enough for some people and for some it is not. Only time will tell.

However economic damage from lockdowns doesn't seem to be any more clear cut case when you compare economic impact of pandemic on countries that didn't do a lockdown like Sweden with the countries that did.

He's not engaged in an honest discussion, he's trapped in the fallacy that you can fight a novel virus with only concrete data about that virus validated over long periods as opposed to just making fairly rational assumptions with incomplete information.

He's been wrong the whole time, and leaders that have behaved in the way he is endorsing (i.e. most of them) is the cause of the dire straights most of the world has found themselves in.

You can validate his wrongness very easily based on past statements, his statements here will be proven wrong in short order as well, but their wrongness is already obvious to anyone with an interest and access to Ontario ICU data.

Research shows that B117 variant is not more severe. Only more infectious: https://www.sciencealert.com/english-strain-of-coronavirus-i...

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