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Yaneer Bar-Yam Profile picture
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20 Dec, 5 tweets, 2 min read
New strain of more rapidly spreadiing COVID in UK has now become dominant in London and south. Viruses mutate and can become worse. This is what my 2006 paper on pandemics was about->evolution of more rapidly spreading variants. COVID is not done with us. Strong action needed now
Here is the paper

We consider..long-range mixing and find a transition to global extinction...Our results are relevant to..global transport of infectious disease.

necsi.edu/longrange-inte…
More bad news:

Here is the South Africa 501.V2 variant that is dominating there, which indicates it is also more rapidly spreading, and reported to be more severe including in young people.

jamaicaobserver.com/latestnews/_Se…
SARS-COV-2 and SARS-COV-1 (SARS) are very similar in structure and binding to ACE2 receptor but differ in the spike protein. SARS is much more fatal, so SARS-COV-2 has room to become worse.

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More from @yaneerbaryam

Yaneer Bar-Yam Profile picture
21 Dec
UK reported 27,249 cases yesterday, lower than the day before, yet the 7-day average climbed to a new high of 29.1k. Today, they report a new high of 35,928. For this new variant that's raging in parts of the country, the chief medical officer warned it may be more contagious. Image
London and several other regions go into a new lockdown starting today, which will last over the Christmas holidays. Several European countries begin to ban flights coming from UK, including Netherlands and Belgium.

Italy's decline is slowing down recently as cases fluctuate around 15k per day. it will enforce the strictest level of countermeasures nationwide over the Christmas. Image
Read 4 tweets
Yaneer Bar-Yam Profile picture
20 Dec
UK is now going to be shut off of most it not all international travel.

Take advantage!

Empower and support communities to do strong prevention, case identification, testing, isolation and quarantine, nonessential internal travel bans, and use a Green Zone Exit strategy.
And yes: Europe should do the same. This variant is already there, somewhere.

Get ahead of it. Be proactive.
Threat Assessment Brief: Rapid increase of a SARS-CoV-2 variant with multiple spike protein mutations observed in the United Kingdom

Note: This is more on target with instructions to get ahead of it and check whether vaccination works for it.

ecdc.europa.eu/en/publication…
Read 4 tweets
Yaneer Bar-Yam Profile picture
20 Dec
More on the virus variant in the UK

Key points:

•It is already documented in 60 local authorities, including Wales and Scotland

•It is strongly associated with locations of increasing rates of covid-19

1/
bmj.com/content/371/bm…
But these points are not well thought out;

Don't say
•Mutations that make viruses more infectious don’t necessarily make them more dangerous.
👉What they mean is we don't know yet if it is more dangerous for an infected person, for people it is more dangerous.

2/
Didn’t we learn that reassurance based on absence of information isn’t a good idea in a pandemic? Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Read 5 tweets
Yaneer Bar-Yam Profile picture
20 Dec
Let’s talk virus mutations as in UK & South Africa that can transmit more rapidly

Attached is a simple model of hosts (green) and virus (red). The virus mutates, brighter shades are more rapidly spreading. It makes sense rapidly spreading variants become dominant over time

1/
But watch again. The brightest ones actually go extinct over time. Why? Because they kill off their hosts and run out of hosts to infect. This is because of local extinction of the hosts.

But what happens if we add long range transportation?

2/ Image
Each image shows what it looks like with a bit more long range transportation. The virus, escaping local extinction, becomes progressively faster transmitting (shifting colors).

But, the last image is just before everything goes extinct, host and pathogen together.

3/ ImageImageImageImage
Read 14 tweets
Yaneer Bar-Yam Profile picture
20 Dec
It might be useful to think about this variant as a totally new virus starting out in London. Nations of the world, do you want this variant in your country? What is your strategy?
Read 5 tweets
Yaneer Bar-Yam Profile picture
20 Dec
Denmark reported a new high of 4,508 cases, an 11% increase from the record set just one day ago. Recently Denmark is among the fastest growing countries worldwide at a 6.5% per day for three weeks.
As cases in South Africa surge recently, Lesotho, the country encircled by South Africa, is reporting a new outbreak. Yesterday they reported a new high of 146 cases, from a daily average below 10 just 10 days ago.
India’s total cases surpassed 10 million, yet the accumulating speed is much slower than during its peak. Both its daily cases and death tolls are at the lowest level since July.
Read 4 tweets

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