Covid-19 pandemic

[Kowalski]

The streets of London are paved with chips

If you asked me I'd blame the austerity-led budget cuts.

[Kowalski]

There's another press conference at some point today, apparently.

[Diable Rouge]

EMA approves Pfizer.

[Diable Rouge]

The current UK ban map:

[San Bernardhinault]

There’s a place here that does fries on a burrito.

The "California Burrito". It's a San Diego speciality: Carne asada, fries, guac, pico, cheese, sour cream. Basically someone decided to put carne asada fries in a burrito. You rarely get rice or beans in a burrito in San Diego, unless you go to Chipotle, or actually order a bean burrito.

[Hot Pepsi]

Interesting. I figured it was a Pittsburgh thing because they put fries on sandwiches.

I got my burrito without fries.

[The Red Max]

The London Pizza is a "thing" in the North East - margherita pizza with chips on top.

That's nothing... in Scotland (predominantly Glasgow) we have "The Pizza Crunch"
Margherita pizza, battered & deep-fried. Chips optional.
We'll batter & fry anything up here.

[Jimski]

Blimey, our local ward is now at 663.7 per 100k in the last week. In a tier 2 area. Ulp.

[Balderdasha]

Guatemala has now reported more deaths than China, 4,688, and over 132,000 cases.

[Balderdasha]

Eritrea has reached more than 800 cases.

[Balderdasha]

Slovenia is doing badly. It's reached a death rate of 1,144 deaths per million population, the third highest in the world. Was this where they tried to test the entire population?

Slovenia didn't last long in third position. Italy has just overtaken it with a death rate of 1,146 deaths per million population.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

Crisis? What Crisis?

https://twitter.com/CallMe2Dads/status/1341071944200929281?s=19

[Kowalski]

A quote from here regarding Saturday's comments about the new Covid strain being XX% worse.

““There is certainly a feeling that the UK government presented things for domestic politics without thinking fully of what effect it will have in other countries,” said a senior western European diplomat."

[ad hoc]

If the UK government has known about a new more virulent strain of Covid ravaging the country since September and decided not to do anything about it or tell anyone that's really fucking bad right? And will be seen as such. By everyone

[S. aureus]

Has anyone claimed they knew about this in September? Mid-November possibly, though more likely early December (https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020...emains-unclear).

[ad hoc]

I understood that interviewed on TV yesterday a scientist said they'd been tracking this new strain since September

[S. aureus]

It was first detected in September, but I don't think that anyone knew it could become an important strain (as opposed to just another one, there are lots of them) until much more recently.

[S. aureus]

But I'm not an expert.

[Fussbudget]

Has anyone claimed they knew about this in September? Mid-November possibly, though more likely early December (https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020...emains-unclear).

Who do you mean by 'they', scientists or politicians? The article you link to says it was first identified on 20 September.

Edit: sorry you've just answered that

[Fussbudget]

The whole 'is it actually more infectious' question mystifies me, maybe I'm missing something. According to ONS data (helpfully put on the chart below by a bloke off Twitter), the new variant has been present in all English regions since at least September but only started growing exponentially in London, the East and the South East a few weeks ago.

https://twitter.com/avds/status/1340453462635646976/

That doesn't point to it being more infectious, does it? Otherwise why wouldn't it grow as fast in the other regions, especially considering how bad the situation was in most of the North during that period.

But if it isn't more infectious, what the hell is happening in London at the moment?

[San Bernardhinault]

There was an article linked a page or two back that pointed out that the early part of a strain's life creates messy data so it's hard to know what the hell's going on. But there are things about this strain that suggest it might be more transmissable. I think there's very little to suggest that it is more harmful once caught.

All that said, if there's a risk that there's a much more transmissable strain, the right thing to do is to have a more extreme lockdown.

And, frankly, Britain is in such a mess right now, any excuse to force a stricter lockdown is probably welcome and the right thing. I wish they did the same over here despite us not really yet having the English Disease.

[S. aureus]

Could be pure chance (speculating here) - we know a significant amount of covid spread is through super-spreader events, ie one person infects many people at once, rather than more here and there, so if in one region a particular strain happens to be the lucky one that is involved in these super-spreader events then it will be amplified more than another strain that isn't (which will be repeated as the more of a strain there is then the more likely that it will be in the next such event).
I think the evidence points to people and environment being more crucial than individual strains of covid itself to trigger such an event, but I'm not certain of this.

[Diable Rouge]

https://twitter.com/NextIrishGE/status/1341142509859299328

[elguapo4]

I hope when this is over I never see Holohan ever again, I'm beginning to actively hate that man.

[Uncle Ethan]

Watching from afar the patience of the population with this absolute clusterfuck of a government is very odd.