I read this article this morning and it made me uneasy, I've just figured out why. Not linking deliberately although easy enough to find if you really want to 1/n
The article admits that a definitive answer on the origins of the pandemic is probably never going to be available (I agree), and then proceeds as if it were. This is silly 2/n
If there will never be a definitive answer to the question, why act like there will be? In its absence people will pick sides based on pre-existing positions rather than accepting uncertainty. And the thing is we'll be better off in the future accepting that uncertainty 3/n
Whether an origin from an encounter in a cave or an inadvertent leak from a lab, we want to minimize the risks of *both*. It's not either/or. Even if we were certain about where the present pandemic came from an excessive focus of that in future would be fighting the last war 4/n
Here's another thread making a similar point through an extended metaphor (I'm not always down with extended metaphors but this is a good one) 5/n
So I am not going to pretend I know anything specific about the origins of the pandemic. But that won't stop me doing what I can to stop this one, or others in future 6/end

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More from @BillHanage

27 May
I was wondering earlier today if change was afoot in the UK due to B.1.617.2, but @jburnmurdoch's thread is better than anything I could put together. It deserves your time. I do think it misses something out however. Hospitalizations are climbing much earlier than I'd expect 1/n
First it certainly looks like B.1.617.2 has become readily established, and is sweeping in multiple different places suggesting that it is more transmissible even than B.1.1.7, itself no slouch. IMO we can't put this down to founder effects/networks 2/n
(I still don't understand why given what *looks* like high transmissibility it has an MRCA so far back, but it's clearly capable of causing outbreaks like these. That's enough to take it seriously) 3/n
Read 14 tweets
26 May
A few points about "Chicken Pox parties", and why they should never have been part of any serious discussion of pandemic management thejournal.ie/dominic-cummin… 1/n
Like Covid, chicken pox is more likely to lead to severe illness and complications the older you are when you are first exposed. In the UK in the 1990s about 25 people died every year of the infection, 80% being adults ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P… 2/n
It is generally thought that on recovery from chicken pox immunity is lifelong. As a result in the 70s and 80s some people would arrange for their kids to be infected at an age they would be at lower risk of complications. This is not a good idea 3/n infectioncontrol.tips/2015/12/18/its…
Read 8 tweets
25 May
How to start on the problems with this? Herd immunity to SARS-CoV-2 through unmitigated outbreaks comes at an abysmal cost in deaths, and chronic outcomes of infection. Ok we know that now but... 1/?
We knew that *then* theguardian.com/commentisfree/… 2/?
We knew it in the autumn too theguardian.com/commentisfree/… 3/?
Read 8 tweets
16 May
Thinking about the uncertain situation w B.1.617.2 in the UK as the country opens up, this is very good (no surprise, it's @adamhfinn answering the questions). I have a few additional points and a mild point of disagreement 1/n theguardian.com/world/2021/may…
The additional point - it's really not clear what is going on with 617.2. It has certainly been growing, but that doesn't necessarily mean it is (much) more transmissible. It may have merely had more opportunities 2/n
As more contacts and opportunities for transmission arise in the UK, we can expect them to result in more cases. Having said that of course, we need to ask why one lineage rather than another is lucky enough to take those opportunities - maybe it's more than luck 3/n
Read 11 tweets
16 May
Upon seeing this I had to go look for what prompted it. Although that might not have been the intent of the original post, I’m glad I did 1/n
Here’s the preprint. It’s not clear why MIT should feel ‘shame’ (isn’t academic freedom a good thing?) or what it has to do with the prolific aforementioned scientist. arxiv.org/pdf/2101.07993… 2/n
If nothing else, we need to accept that preprints happen, that sometimes they are less good than regularly published work and sometimes they are better. They have a special role in a rapidly changing situation like this 3/n
Read 4 tweets
10 May
There will be a lot of people answering this the obvious way, but what strikes me is that *even now* there’s not enough immunity from prior infection in Sweden to stop this happening.
Whatever else that means, it suggests that population protection through infection induced immunity is not going to happen without bad consequences. The idea might have been defensible at the start when we were more uncertain about severity, it hasn’t been for some time
If people compare per capita mortality in Sweden with elsewhere note that an appropriate comparison is the other Nordic countries, all of which took a very different route, rather than other European countries with their own stories
Read 4 tweets

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