Thread by @derafeynman

A conjectural 🧵 trying to connect the following aspects:

. the scenarios described by the new document of UK’s Sage on the “prediction” of possible paths for new VOCs:
assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/upl…

. and the concept of “The Attention Scarcity Danger Area” of @tomaspueyo .

1/19

https://twitter.com/derafeynman/status/1355423194610601984

“The Scary Virus Paradox” in a nutshell: non extremely-deadly but highly transmissible viruses have caused more deaths. “This is obviously caused by society's reaction: the deadlier a virus, the scarier, and the more society acts in unison against it, like for Ebola or SARS.”2/19

https://twitter.com/tomaspueyo/status/1355214343714058244

@tomaspueyo also introduced the “Attention Scarcity Danger Area”. To save space, I will just refer to it as ASDA.
Notice that this is not an inherent biological property of a virus, but the manner that society deals with it.
3/19

It is important to recognize that, if the ASDA is expanded or shifted in order to cover deadlier and more transmissible viruses, the negative effects of the virus in humanity will be enhanced. 4/19

Now consider an evolution trajectory of a virus that mutates in the direction of being more deadly, more transmissible and larger immune evasion. BTW: we should also have long-covid in mind in this scenario. 5/19

It is clear that the combination of expanding the ASDA + the emergence of VOCs that are more transmissible, more harmful in general and with large immune escape, would be maybe the worse scenario possible. But how likely is this scenario. Let’s hypothesize 👇 6/19

I have no expertise whatsoever to speculate on the evolution of the virus. However, let’s consider the scenarios described by the new document of UK’s Sage on the “prediction” of possible paths for new VOCs:
assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/upl…
7/19

The document describes four possible scenarios assuming that eradication will be unlikely. It’s important to bare in mind that elimination is different than eradication, and elimination would slow down the evolution pace of the virus.
8/19

The first scenario is a very severe VOC (high impact) with a likelihood of “realistic possibly”.

We know that in complex systems we should avoid High-Impact-Low-probability events. This scenario is even worse! It’s a high-impact and maybe not so low probability event.

9/19

Scenario two is a VOC that evades current vaccines and it’s considered to be a realistic possibility. 10/19

Scenarios three and four are bellow. Note that a less virulent variant in the short term is classified as unlikely. No space for wishful thinking here!
11/19

We know from complex situations with possible severe outcomes, that one should take High-Impact-Low-Probability events seriously. Scenarios 1 and 2 are high and medium impact with realistic possibilities! Hence, those are the events that we should focus.
12/19

Now, let’s come back to the situation where the ASDA of @tomaspueyo is expanded and scenarios one and two of SAGE occur. It’s clear how nasty this would be. Is it likely to happen?
13/19

We can easily argue that at least in some countries (e.g. UK and the Netherlands) the ASDA is expanding. This is caused by several factors, such as fatigue and bad communication strategies. This expansion will only favor the emergence of SAGE’s scenarios one and two.
14/19

What will happen from now on will depend on the importance that society puts on containing the virus and its biological evolution. The society behavior will work either as a booster or a break for the virus evolution.
15/19

If we manage to slow down the biological evolution by actually increasing our awareness of the possible future paths of the virus, we might able to win this battle with technology in the future (e.g. new generation of vaccines). No idea how far this future would be. 16/19

For now, we should aim for elimination by using vaccines + basic NPIs (e.g.masking, ventilation and TTI). The counterfacts could result in a bleak future. Success here depends on managing to raise society’s awareness. It´s all about the “Attention Scarcity Danger Area”! 17/19

If you excuse me for some poetic license here ;-) :

It’s about the memes defining the trajectory of the genes!
It’s the memetics steering genetics or about their synergies.

18/19

Finally, a link to an excellent thread on endemicity 👇

And apologies for the typos!

19/19

https://twitter.com/DGBassani/status/1420133050399264771

*typo on tweet 17 :*counterfactuals