HB7

We have been here before, but you have failed to provide evidence proving the faster transmission. You have said you can't look at only new cases, deaths and hospitalisations. You need to look at healthcare, health and vaccines.

Firstly, the cases, deaths and hospitalisations all disagree with the so-called science on this - yet you have decided that you don't think it's 'that simple' - where I think it just doesn't fit the narrative, and you are trying to find other ways to prove something that is not there.

Secondly, let us take a look at lockdowns, restrictions, health, healthcare and vaccines.

As of right now, South Africa has given first doses to approx. 0.5% of its population, so vaccines play no role in this argument: https://www.economist.com/graphic-de...ross-the-world
Further on this point, there is no where near enough evidence of how vaccines work against the South African variant.

Regarding health and health care, is this comparable to the UK? Surely we can say the UK has an equal or better healthcare system then South Africa. The UK is after all, a first world country, so in general, you'd expect at least an equal footing there. Yet our numbers here are not even comparable to South Africa when we compare. Looking at health, one way to look at these is obesity rates. We rank 36, South Africa 30 - so once again, comparable enough.

If we know look at restrictions, these have been eased significantly over the past few weeks: https://www.sanews.gov.za/south-afri...-alert-level-1
Yet, we still see a decline in cases and deaths. It is fair to say the UK has had one of the harshest, toughest and longest lockdowns in the world - and that's fine, but South Africa has had no where near that type of restrictions. So again I ask you: if transmission is higher than the original strain - how do we explain the huge drop in cases (95% in 2 months)?

You have accused me of not "doing real science" in the past. Real science is dependent on large scale data. It is based on time. This strain has been in circulation for about 4 months. In the country that it has been found, they have performed better in every aspect compared to the whole of Europe and the UK and you are still saying "the science backs you up"? I think the numbers and evidence speak for themselves.

KARFA

Occam's razor comes to mind.

paulaf

Think HB7 won that debate.

KARFA

No. I think Mark Twain did.

alex67500

Actually cognitive dissonance is ringing very loud in this thread. If there weren't a few interesting posts in the middle of the noise I'd have unsubscribed a while back.

My only advice is that the trolls shouldn't be fed too much, calorie control is key in fighting off covid.

IAN-UK

... but that requires rational thought

cauchy

This is not going unnoticed, and these diktats are especially obvious to those with family abroad. Indeed, over a million immigrants have left the UK over the past year (https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...-exodus-brexit). Dig through the data and you'll see it's nearly 1 in 7 employed, non-UK born migrants that have left the UK.

Last month, I had the misfortune to end up on an NHS ward: it was the day Matt Hancock threatened 10 years in jail for an incomplete passenger form. The nurse was from Portugal, and all he could say was that he was looking forward to returning to work in Lisbon as soon as he could. It's the same story up and down the country, and the government will only admit to it when it's too late.

Kgmm77

The evidence might speak for itself, but I’m not sure it supports your theory.

It might be worth having a look at the median age profile in South Africa vs Western Europe. It is dramatically lower. Given we know age is by far the biggest risk factor in COVID deaths, if you normalised for age, I’m not sure the difference in death rate is that material and South Africa suddenly doesn’t look such a great outcome.

That doesn’t even take into account issues with data accuracy. Excess deaths in South Africa have consistently run at 300% of the total COVID registered deaths (c140k vs 50k to date) indicating substantial under reporting. That’s a substantially higher excess death rate than even the UK, with a slightly smaller and massively younger population. And given the U.K. performed worse than the EU, the comparison there is even more stark.

Bottom line: South Africa’s performance is nowhere near as positive as you think it is.

13901

It is indeed a good article, so I'm copying-pasting the information there in this thread or, since we saw The Dig yesterday, in this here thread:

Bottom line: Pfizer's OK for the Brazilian and UK version, maybe for the ZA. AZ, maybe on the Brazilian, probably not for the ZA. It'd be great to have more data, especially on the AZ that seems the flimsiest of the lot, but you can't rush science I guess.

There's also, I think, a cautionary tale to tell. In December last year, after Boris and the Hankiebot made that announcement of the 'UK' variant, the whole of Europe blocked flights and curtailed limits pretty massively. I remember a friend going to Italy to see his wife giving birth and missing the event because of 14-day quarantine and triple testing. Despite that, according to the Italian answer to the Financial Times (it's also pink-ish) the Kent variant is now predominant in the country, with an average of 50% of cases and peaks of 75% in Lombardy and even 93% for tiny Molise, 100 points to anyone who has been there or knows where to find it...

To my uneducated eyes it feels as if blocking off this virus is borderline impossible. We can reduce the likelihood of variants coming through testing and hotels but unless we do a full, complete, total shutdown from abroad (and even in that case there can be fallacies, see Australia) it'll come in. Track & Trace is, I'm sorry, a failure. It can't be anything but a failure if it can't even talk between UK nations...

8420PR

As far as I am aware, the only real world data we currently have is:
- In protection against moderate to severe COVID-19, the J&J vaccine was found to be 72% effective in US and 57% effective in SA, with the difference assumed to be caused by the prevalence of the SA variant. (source: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/worl...l-b917930.html)
- The often quoted results of the AZ vaccine trial in South Africa caused the SA Government to cancel all AZ vaccines just days before the vaccination campaign was due to start.

All the other studies were conducted in laboratories with blood samples.

I can see how these variants have the small* potential to put us into lockdown again next winter. I can also see that reducing the movement of people into the UK will delay the time when these variants become established in the UK. I cannot see the endgame though, unless we really will make and keep the border so watertight that nothing gets in.

Scots_Al

I won’t pretend to have the strength, energy or interest to follow the detail of the studies into the SA variant. But, even if you were to accept the argument that the data is as yet incomplete, or dubious, surely the sensible approach is still to adopt a precautionary approach? If you wait until it is proven to be more transmissible or harmful to take action, then it’s almost by definition too late.

13901

That would be the safe thing to do but... how?

I mean, suppose for the sake of argument that 10 cases of the South African variant are found in... I don't know, Richmond. Is it enough for me to go over to Kew Bridge and build a palisade overnight?

8420PR

Austria did exactly that in a Tyrol town due to the SA variant, where between Feb 12th and March 3rd if you wanted to leave the region a negative PCR test had to be shown. Source: https://www.thelocal.at/20210222/tyr...ons-extension/

At the moment they are vaccinating all adults in the impacted area ASAP, using the Pfizer vaccine with lots of scientists and clever people looking at the results.

HB7

Aha, I'm surprised it took so long for the "data accuracy" argument, which in my opinion is pretty poor. Every time another country is doing well, or your argument is not supported, we blame it on data accuracy! Because it is only in the UK where numbers are 100% accurate?

The death rate is affected by age, but if you actually read my post, it is about the rates of cases and deaths. Age has nothing to do with cases. In fact, younger people are more active, so would increase the case load if anything.

So before you quickly rush to prove me wrong, read my post and get your facts straight. And stop bashing other countries for purported incorrect data or lack of accuracy which is based on absolutely baseless claims some love to push.

KSVVZ2015

Hancock referred to the "red list" and the "amber list" today in another ode to the likely traffic light system coming.