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That Times article is a very sobering read. When discussing the pandemic with family and friends I often hear that governments had a very difficult job in unprecedented circumstances and they had a very “delicate balance” to work out. I usually think to myself bullshit at that point. It isn’t unprecedented there having been numerous pandemics in the past. They had conducted national exercises in anticipation of such a pandemic then failed to learn from them. They had the good fortune to witness how things panned out in other countries for 2 months before it reached us. There was no delicate balance. The metrics of infectious disease transmission are well understood. The scales were always skewed towards making money. A lose-lose management style. Fortunately for me I live in a part of Great Britain where they did what was required, closed borders, self isolation if you now leave and return, lockdown for a short period and now we have no coronavirus except for people who travelled away (who have to isolate on return). As a consequence we have no social distancing, no masks and everything is open. The UK gov didn’t have to look too far for examples of how it should have been done.
Off topic.
I noted how google tracking was mentioned in that article.Steph, Duck, nothinguptop etc,, take note – ET; above:
– “Fortunately for me I live in a part of Great Britain where they did what was required, closed borders, self isolation if you now leave and return, lockdown for a short period and now we have no coronavirus except for people who travelled away (who have to isolate on return). As a consequence we have no social distancing, no masks and everything is open.“
ET, thank you, this is the sort of testimony that needs to be promoted. And congratulations on your Green Zone.
Cambridge Uni paper, partly about the new variant:
Recurrent emergence and transmission of a SARS-CoV-2 Spike deletion ΔH69/V70
– “In addition, we report a sub-lineage of over 350 sequences bearing seven spike mutations across the RBD (receptor binding domain) […] in England. These mutations have possibly arisen as a result of the virus evolving from immune selection pressure in infected individuals.”
So these variants are arising because government policy is giving the virus hosts – each infected person gives it billions of new cells to replicate in, each one a new breeding ground and multiple chances to adapt. Viruses don’t and can’t evolve outside of hosts. Our government is cooperating with the enemy, selling us out to the virus, because we are merely workers and shoppers; replaceable and expendable. And the virus is making good use of our government’s generous donation of our own living bodies.
From the same paper, another battle won (along with ET & Dr Edd’s Green Zones), in the war that all the most neoliberal countries are losing:
– The country with the highest proportion of N439K+ ΔH69/V70 versus N439K alone is England; however, in Scotland, where early growth of N439K was high, there is an inverse relationship with 546 versus 177 sequences for N439K and N439K+ΔH69/V70 respectively (as of November 26th). This is attributed to an extinct lineage – Y439K first established in Scotland but went extinct alongside several other lineages due to a national lockdown.
And when we lose, we can lose quite badly. From that paper’s introduction:
– “We present data that ΔH69/ΔV70 increases Spike-mediated infectivity by approximately two fold”
Δ in this case means “deletion”; it is not part of the name of that part of the sequence. The deletions double the infectivity.
From the full PDF:
– “We are concerned by the finding of a sub-lineage of over 350 sequences bearing seven spike mutations across the RBD […] in England. The finding of a long branch to this cluster of cases suggests viral evolution may have occurred during a chronic infection.”
Chronic means lasting a long time. The significance of the long branch is its lack of ancestry; none of the intermediate steps have been found in the wild, so this long branch developed, change by change, in an environment isolated from the wild, such as a single person.
Of course another instance of an environment isolated from the wild is a biolab, but papers that suggest lab escapes are, I’m told, unlikely to get past peer review; “too political”. Not that lab escapes are particularly uncommon or anything; remember that the first SARS got out four times; twice from the same lab…
I tried to follow the link that was posted to Dr.Jim Meehan’s Evidence Based Scientific Analysis of Why Masks are Ineffective, Unnecessary, and Harmful but that page on his website has been removed. I was able to follow some links quoting from it.
“Unlike the public wearing masks in the community, surgeons work in sterile surgical suites equipped with heavy duty air exchange systems that maintain positive pressures, exchange and filter the room air at a very high level, and increase the oxygen content of the room air. These conditions limit the negative effects of masks on the surgeon and operating room staff. And yet despite these extreme climate control conditions, clinical studies demonstrate the negative effects (lowering arterial oxygen and carbon dioxide re-breathing) of surgical masks on surgeon physiology and performance.”
There is no additional oxygen added to room air in theatres in UK. They are positive pressure environments and the air is filtered of dust etc with high cycling rates. They are hardly “extreme.” I’d really like to see the clinical studies where they found lowered arterial oxygen and carbon dioxide re-breathing from using surgical masks. If this were a thing I am sure that the thousands of theatre nurses, dentists, surgeons etc would be concerned about it. I have never heard of this and have never experienced deleterious effects apart from the trivial annoyance.
“Surgeons and operating room personnel are well trained, experienced, and meticulous about maintaining sterility. We only wear fresh sterile masks. We don the mask in a sterile fashion.”
Fresh sterile masks? What a laugh. In UK hospital theatres (and Australia) masks are in boxes in operating theatres and changing rooms. They are not sterile, just socially clean from the box. I’d be intrigued to know how Dr.Meehan sterilises his face because as soon as he puts a mask on his face sterile or not it is no longer sterile. Because you cannot sterilise your face/head short of sticking you head in a bucket of betadine for 10 minutes. Impractical.
“Lowered arterial oxygen” – that means lowered oxygen in the bloodstream, doesn’t it? Surely, that’s very unlikely from a mask; bodily homoeostasis would simply increase the breathing rate to compensate, or the urge to tear the mask off would become unbearable. That, or we’d have people fainting in winter from wearing scarves.
“If you take a barrel of sewage and add a spoonful of wine, you get sewage.
If you take a barrel of wine and add a spoonful of sewage, you get sewage.”There’s a lot of it about.
There have been mink running wild in Essex since at least 1962:
https://www.google.com/search?q=mink+in+essex
I saw one at Ingatestone station a couple of decades ago.
Host-mediated lung inflammation is present and drives mortality in critical illness caused by Covid-19. Host genetic variants associated with critical illness may identify mechanistic targets for therapeutic development.
Here we report the results of the GenOMICC (Genetics Of Mortality In Critical Care) genome-wide association study(GWAS) in 2244 critically ill Covid-19 patients from 208 UK intensive care units (ICUs). We identify and replicate novel genome-wide significant associations, on chr12q24.13 (rs10735079, p=1.65 × 10-8) in a gene cluster encoding antiviral restriction enzyme activators (OAS1, OAS2, OAS3), on chr19p13.2 (rs2109069, p=2.3 × 10-12) near the gene encoding tyrosine kinase 2 (TYK2), on chr19p13.3 (rs2109069, p=3.98 × 10-12) within the gene encoding dipeptidyl peptidase 9 (DPP9), and on chr21q22.1 (rs2236757, p=4.99 ×× 10-8) in the interferon receptor gene IFNAR2. We identify potential targets for repurposing of licensed medications: using Mendelian randomisation we found evidence in support of a causal link from low expression of IFNAR2, and high expression of TYK2, to life-threatening disease; transcriptome-wide association in lung tissue revealed that high expression of the monocyte/macrophage chemotactic receptor CCR2 is associated with severe Covid-19. Our results identify robust genetic signals relating to key host antiviral defence mechanisms, and mediators of inflammatory organ damage in Covid-19. Both mechanisms may be amenable to targeted treatment with existing drugs. Large-scale randomised clinical trials will be essential before any change to clinical practice.
This is an important new paper from an international collaboration showing the importance of genetic factors in the pathogenesis of severe Covid-19. 5 genes were identified that could protect or increase susceptibility to severe disease. This may help guide specific targeted therapy that may enhance or suppress the function of these genes and thereby improve the management of these patients. I guess it could also mean that it could predict whether someone has a higher chance of developing severe disease.
Clark
Consider this directed to you :Sage expert rebukes Matt Hancock by saying ‘people should leave the virology to scientists’
George Martin
George Martin
Tue, 15 December 2020, 0:54 pm GMT
Britain’s Health Secretary Matt Hancock hosts a remote press conference to update the nation on the covid-19 pandemic, inside 10 Downing Street in central London on December 14, 2020. – London is to move into the highest level of anti-virus restrictions, the health minister announced Monday. The British capital from Wednesday will go into "tier three" restrictions, which force the closure of theatres and ban people from eating out at restaurants or drinking in pubs, the Health Secretary Matt Hancock told parliament. (Photo by Tolga Akmen / POOL / AFP) (Photo by TOLGA AKMEN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
Matt Hancock announced changes to the tier system on Monday. (Getty)A health expert has made an apparent dig at Matt Hancock after the minister caused widespread alarm over the discovery of a coronavirus mutation.
Hancock announced a raft of further coronavirus restrictions on Monday and said the new strain of the virus may be behind soaring infection rates across parts of England.
But Calum Semple, professor of outbreak medicine at the University of Liverpool, said on Tuesday that more information was needed on the COVID variant and urged people to “leave the virology to the scientists”.
“Ignorance killed the cat; curiosity was framed.”
“A little knowledge may be a dangerous thing, but ignorance is fatal.”
What’s up, SA? I could stop commenting on the science of SARS-CoV-2, but doing so wouldn’t stop Duck, nothinuptop or Paul Barbara etc. The corporate media’s treatment of scientific matter is appalling; by treating science as almost entirely a matter of authority, “my expert versus your expert”, “journalistic balance”, it has confused and disempowered the public, alienating us from science, discouraged us from assessment of evidence, until a large minority has ended up thinking it’s all incomprehensible, and could be a vast conspiracy. I hope and try to reverse that a little bit.
If you disagree with any of my interpretations of papers cited here, post your disagreement, we can discuss it and readers can decide for themselves. I readily admit to taking the side of caution with this very new and apparently very unusual virus.
I live in south east England where the new variant is spreading; near Chelmsford actually, where infection numbers are going through the roof. I imposed lockdown behaviour to my own life as soon as I found out yesterday, before Hancock or Whitty had said anything – I consider that to be my social responsibility. I have been warning my friends. In this, as in the climate and ecological crisis, the government has broken and continues to break the social contract. The government lacks legitimacy to govern, for it serves money over and above the people, and so we the public owe it no allegiance.
I do not intend to “leave the virology to the scientists”, no more than I’ll let Duck post conspiracy theory unopposed. I have already stated my position that we all do science every day, when we shake the sugar tin, or when we flip a light switch to find out whether it’s a power cut that’s preventing the computer from starting. Equally I oppose insulating the public from the dangers we face. Authority can never be trusted, and never should be trusted; therefore it must be scrutinised, and that requires learning enough to do so.
So what’s up, eh?
SA, It’d take me months to learn enough technical terms to understand the first two thirds of your quote at 16:38; I have tried to make my technical quotes comprehensible to everyone. Two things come across; there is some hope of new treatments from this genetic study, and SARS-CoV-2 has been found to affect yet further parts of the immune system.
They found that both low and high gene expression of certain genes was associated with severe disease. Basically by using drugs to either supress or promote the proteins these genes code for or perhaps stimulating or supressing the gene expression itself might help in treatment. I shouldn’t hold my breath though, they would still have to identify any suitable drugs and trial them.
Glossary :D: Gene expression is the process by which information from a gene is used in the synthesis of a functional gene product.
Clark
My post above was said tongue in cheek. I have no desire whatsoever to discourage you or anyone else from commenting, it is great that people take the interest to find out for themselves and understand what is being said.
My second apology is that I have not said much about the paper from Edinburgh, that was laziness on my part, will try harder next time, and thanks to E.T. who has explained it very well.ET and SA, thanks.
No, I don’t wish to discourage anyone from commenting either, and I regret that Steph has stopped discussing, apparently not just with me, but with everyone. However, I do wish to prevent the disinformation from proliferating; it is, after all, a matter of life and death.
” However, I do wish to prevent the disinformation from proliferating; it is, after all, a matter of life and death.”
It is important to analyse this because this is the cause of the misunderstanding. Each person perceives the world and analyses information in a different way. There is usually a consensus and a spectrum of facts and truths from those that are axiomatic to those that maybe have a 50% chance of being right or wrong. One man’s (or woman’s) disinformation is another man’s truth in this spectrum. If your thoughts belong to the 99.9% consensus then you are more likely to feel vindicated that your beliefs are closer to the ‘truth’. This of course is more likely to occur in things like politics or other social ‘sciences’, but is less likely to apply to real sciences which are more verifiable but also more obscure to the layman, but also with instances of being falsified.
This is unfortunately how doubt is sown and how conspiracy theories can thrive to give the impression that the consensus is flawed and that the spectrum of ideas is equally valid. They base their theory on things like the fact the the earth was flat was the accepted truth and those that argued for a round earth were a minority, or that until 1880 when Laveran discovered Plasmodia as a cause of malaria, that prevailing thoughts were that it was caused by foul air arising from swamps. But the current situation is very different because facts can be verified much quicker now.
The major problem with Covid-19 is that it has both popularized and politicized science and there is a muddle between science and its application and interpretation through the different prisms. This is what gives rise to this wide spectrum of Covid deniers and trivializer’s trying to equate the faulty application of scientific findings with political actions and tarring them with the same brush.Perceptions can also be deceptive because they are personal interpretations and for the person who is suffering from delusions, are real, even if they appear to be easy to dismiss for others. I am not saying that Covid deniers are deluded but they possess a sense of fixed perception that easily converts all happenings as a proof to confirm their beliefs and perception. That is why it is difficult to indulge in fruitful conversation sometimes with doubters. But importantly, direct challenges, including emotionally loaded ones to their beliefs is unlikely to produce any positive effects and must be resisted in my opinion.
I have read through this thread again over the last 2 or 3 days. I am gonna make some observations for what it’s worth.
I think it’s best to avoid assigning motivation to people who post except in very clear circumstances. If you say or promote opinion x then you want horrible thing to happen doesn’t encourage discussion but rather counter insinuation and thus derails the train of posts. You cannot really know people’s motivations so best to stick to facts in your argument.
Also assuming insult where it wasn’t really intended. You say you care about x therefore you are insinuating I don’t care about x. This isn’t helpful either. Better to explain that you can care about both aspects.
Restricting free movement and association is a political quagmire. It has and will have effects on folk. It is important to keep a weather eye on it even if you feel the restrictions are valid under the circumstance.
Steph related a story about her elderly neighbour with dementia who sadly died during lockdown. The lockdown had a huge effect on that person’s last days and an ongoing effect on those family surviving him. I am not so sure that was the best thing for that particular man and perhaps more thought would have allowed visits to that household. I am reminded of my respect for people who refuse aggressive cancer treatments because of how they can impact what life remains. In this case the covid threat may have been the lesser evil to restricting family visits.
On conspiracy theory. It’s a term often used by MSM and politicians to deride people and obscure truth. If I discuss media bias or deliberate obfuscation such as say chemical weapons in Syria or big tech data collection I often get called conspiracy theorist by my own fecking family. It is a loaded terminology. Best to be careful and judicious with it.
– “On conspiracy theory. It’s a term often used by MSM and politicians to deride people and obscure truth.”
Yes, this is true; many terms are abused this way, eg. “hacker” to mean criminal, “Anti-Semitism” to discredit those who criticise Israel. Abuse of such terms is a major aspect of propaganda. But there is such a thing as conspiracy theory, and it has a recognisable structure. I haven’t come up with a definition, but I can describe it, and common behaviours of its adherents: see my comment November 13, 2020 at 02:38 and the one that follows it, and the comment that shows where Yeadon invoked conspiracy theory to popularise his pseudo-scientific assertions because he knew they’d be rigorously refuted in any scientific forum – start from the link and follow my argument down the page.
ET and SA, you both treated Yeadon’s arguments as if they were science. They are conspiracy theory disguised as science, intended to trash science and raise suspicion of both the scientific process and the scientific community. You really do the public a disservice by treating them seriously at all.
People have little difficulty recognising political or religious arguments, but they don’t recognise conspiracy theory, and they need to.
Anyway, my heart isn’t in this; I feel too negative. Humanity probably has no future, because human ingenuity at ignoring and denying facts will ensure that we will damage the biosphere so much that civilisation will collapse. So why should I even bother?
Look, Steph was cheating; she probably didn’t mean to, but bad examples to follow vastly outnumber good ones. Her objection was to social restrictions, but she therefore tried to discredit the statistics, the facts. And herein lies humanity’s problem; wishful thinking, eg. we don’t want to change our lifestyles, so most of us pretend that global warming isn’t happening. As a species, we are insane:
Jonathan Cook – I Am Greta isn’t about climate change. It’s about the elusiveness of sanity in an insane world
“ ET and SA, you both treated Yeadon’s arguments as if they were science”
I don’t think I did. I looked at what he said because he is a trained scientist and unlike the main COVID deniers he uses scientific methods to construct an alternative narrative. It is not quite the pseudo science used but rather a distorted selective interpretation of science which outwardly can be more deceptive and more dangerous. Another I think also dangerous are the signatories of the Great Barrington declaration.
https://www.who.int/news/item/14-12-2020-who-information-notice-for-ivd-users
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Steph
So this is a caution from the WHO that you can have an increased false positive rate as the number of positive cases, or the incidence, of infection is low. This is not surprising and is nothing new. The WHO caution is just pointing out a very well known fact and asking laboratories to be aware of this problem and to make sure that they do not get false positives. Many labs carrying out this tests have a high degree of stringency and would already be doing the procedure according to the caution. So Steph, if you have a point to make, then please make it directly.
Whilst I have your attention, I think that trying to prove that there may be problems with diagnosis at this level and also trying in other ways to reduce confidence that the problem is a real one by this constant attitude of micro criticism is what is upsetting. The general point for discussion is, do you believe that SARS COV2 is a serious threat or not? The minutiae then of saying that the figures are inaccurate because of this or that is a very separate matter. So let me ask you again: do you think the virus is a real threat or not? This is irrespective of whether you think that the response to the virus, and the measures taken are appropriate or not.And Steph
I welcome your comment on this news item
“Northern Ireland hospital forced to treat patients in parked ambulances as Covid-19 cases surge”
Apparently many ambulances were seen in the hospital grounds and patients were treated in the ambulances because the hospital was full. Do you think these patients probably had false positive tests for SARS cov2?
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