Well, I'm going to start by saying that this isn't the first sensationalist Twitter thread from Eric Feigl-Ding that has crossed my radar. I don't follow him and it's because I think he tends to blow things out of proportion readily, often by emphasizing only part of the evidence or communicating in a way that sounds impressively technical but that is only telling half the story. In this thread there is at least one example--he says that the B.1.1.7 variant will come to "dominate" virus populations around the globe, without really explaining that this means less than it sounds like it means. It just means that eventually this virus variant will be a bigger share of the virus population than other variants. And we've known that for quite some time--it definitely has some kind of fitness advantage.
However, I think that he is touching on some important points--this variant is probably more transmissible. I don't think it is obviously 40 to 80% more transmissible, as he claims--this appears to be exaggeration. As of the day that he wrote that thread, data from Denmark indicated that the spread of the epidemic there was actually slowing, not accelerating. This is probably the result of aggressive lockdown measures that the country took in December, though. The effects of the B.1.1.7 variant are probably not yet realized in the data, even as of the time that Dr. Feigl-Ding wrote this thread.
Now, 50% more transmissible is still concerning, but I think we don't have great data on this right now. The WHO still calls any of the evidence that it is more transmissible "preliminary," and I remain skeptical of a finding that is largely confined to the UK. The Danish experience is going to be informative in this respect, but Denmark has very low numbers overall for incidence as well.
Yes, it is concerning that there is an apparently more contagious variant running around certain countries, but we need to be realistic that every country is different.
The UK has had an extremely inconsistent response to COVID-19, and has suffered for it. Their approach has involved short lockdowns followed by a euphoric public response when those restrictions were lifted--only to see cases spike and the restrictions be put in place again. This has made it somewhat more difficult for me to have faith in the data on transmissibility of this variant, because the best of it comes out of the UK.
Denmark had rather limited disease control measures in place until mid-December, because COVID-19 was still pretty uncommon there. I believe there are still around only 1500 new cases a day in Denmark lately, and about 26,000 total cases in the country. They have about half as many cases per million population as the US, and a quarter as many deaths per million population. For Denmark, getting COVID-19 back down to vanishingly small levels is a goal that is possible in the near term and this virus variant stands in the way of that. If I were Danish, I would find this quite alarming.
In the US, where I know you live, we have very few localities where disease control measures are taken seriously at all. New York City seems to be one of the few places that is managing well in the face of a massive upswing in cases. It is not realistic to compare the US to Denmark or even the UK, because the US has not widely made use of lockdowns or really any disease control measures at all. COVID-19 is out of control in this country. Frankly, I don't know what B.1.1.7 could be doing in the US right now. We don't have adequate surveillance to detect it and we don't have adequate measures to control any form of COVID-19. We need to place COVID-19 in general at a higher level of priority. Once we have some control over the uncontrolled generalized pandemic we should begin to concern ourselves with uncharacterized variants like B.1.1.7.
What Dr. Feigl-Ding most distinctly ignores in his thread is that masking, physical distancing, and staying home definitely still work against B.1.1.7. He provides a great deal of alarmist rhetoric in his thread but not a lot of practical, solutions-minded points about what we should be doing about this. What we should be doing about this is what we always should have been doing--we need a national mask mandate. We need another set of national lockdowns. We need real, tangible support for people affected by those measures. And we need to have a surveillance network in place that can detect variant spread. Even if B.1.1.7 turns out to be only slightly more transmissible, this is true. It was true a month ago and it's true now. If you're personally always masking, avoiding other people, and staying home, you're already doing everything that you can be doing, and everything you're doing will help against whatever variant is spreading locally to you.
I can't say whether you should be alarmed or not; Dr. Feigl-Ding's rhetoric is always alarming, but most people in the US are insufficiently alarmed at the pandemic, so maybe he's doing something good here. The numbers run together and we start to forget the massive scale at which this has grown in our country. COVID-19 is the only thing the government should have been concerning itself with for the entirety of 2020. We continue to ignore it at our peril.
In other words, what I'm trying to say is this: Should you be alarmed? Yes, but you should have been alarmed for months now.
Note that I also wrote carefully! I wrote, "misleading." I did not write, "Incorrect." If you can read it as meaning something other than what (as you say) should be taken from it, it's misleading.
Lee, can you speak to this Twitter thread from the other day? I found it...alarming. https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1346899021621813249?s=21
Well, I'm going to start by saying that this isn't the first sensationalist Twitter thread from Eric Feigl-Ding that has crossed my radar. I don't follow him and it's because I think he tends to blow things out of proportion readily, often by emphasizing only part of the evidence or communicating in a way that sounds impressively technical but that is only telling half the story. In this thread there is at least one example--he says that the B.1.1.7 variant will come to "dominate" virus populations around the globe, without really explaining that this means less than it sounds like it means. It just means that eventually this virus variant will be a bigger share of the virus population than other variants. And we've known that for quite some time--it definitely has some kind of fitness advantage.
However, I think that he is touching on some important points--this variant is probably more transmissible. I don't think it is obviously 40 to 80% more transmissible, as he claims--this appears to be exaggeration. As of the day that he wrote that thread, data from Denmark indicated that the spread of the epidemic there was actually slowing, not accelerating. This is probably the result of aggressive lockdown measures that the country took in December, though. The effects of the B.1.1.7 variant are probably not yet realized in the data, even as of the time that Dr. Feigl-Ding wrote this thread.
The most recent high estimate for transmissibility for it is that it's around 50% more transmissible, as far as I have heard, and it may be substantially less than that. This news story provides a more honest view of the situation in Denmark as of the time of that writing: https://www.thelocal.dk/20210104/how-widespread-is-more-contagious-variant-of-covid-19-in-denmark
Now, 50% more transmissible is still concerning, but I think we don't have great data on this right now. The WHO still calls any of the evidence that it is more transmissible "preliminary," and I remain skeptical of a finding that is largely confined to the UK. The Danish experience is going to be informative in this respect, but Denmark has very low numbers overall for incidence as well.
Yes, it is concerning that there is an apparently more contagious variant running around certain countries, but we need to be realistic that every country is different.
The UK has had an extremely inconsistent response to COVID-19, and has suffered for it. Their approach has involved short lockdowns followed by a euphoric public response when those restrictions were lifted--only to see cases spike and the restrictions be put in place again. This has made it somewhat more difficult for me to have faith in the data on transmissibility of this variant, because the best of it comes out of the UK.
Denmark had rather limited disease control measures in place until mid-December, because COVID-19 was still pretty uncommon there. I believe there are still around only 1500 new cases a day in Denmark lately, and about 26,000 total cases in the country. They have about half as many cases per million population as the US, and a quarter as many deaths per million population. For Denmark, getting COVID-19 back down to vanishingly small levels is a goal that is possible in the near term and this virus variant stands in the way of that. If I were Danish, I would find this quite alarming.
In the US, where I know you live, we have very few localities where disease control measures are taken seriously at all. New York City seems to be one of the few places that is managing well in the face of a massive upswing in cases. It is not realistic to compare the US to Denmark or even the UK, because the US has not widely made use of lockdowns or really any disease control measures at all. COVID-19 is out of control in this country. Frankly, I don't know what B.1.1.7 could be doing in the US right now. We don't have adequate surveillance to detect it and we don't have adequate measures to control any form of COVID-19. We need to place COVID-19 in general at a higher level of priority. Once we have some control over the uncontrolled generalized pandemic we should begin to concern ourselves with uncharacterized variants like B.1.1.7.
What Dr. Feigl-Ding most distinctly ignores in his thread is that masking, physical distancing, and staying home definitely still work against B.1.1.7. He provides a great deal of alarmist rhetoric in his thread but not a lot of practical, solutions-minded points about what we should be doing about this. What we should be doing about this is what we always should have been doing--we need a national mask mandate. We need another set of national lockdowns. We need real, tangible support for people affected by those measures. And we need to have a surveillance network in place that can detect variant spread. Even if B.1.1.7 turns out to be only slightly more transmissible, this is true. It was true a month ago and it's true now. If you're personally always masking, avoiding other people, and staying home, you're already doing everything that you can be doing, and everything you're doing will help against whatever variant is spreading locally to you.
I can't say whether you should be alarmed or not; Dr. Feigl-Ding's rhetoric is always alarming, but most people in the US are insufficiently alarmed at the pandemic, so maybe he's doing something good here. The numbers run together and we start to forget the massive scale at which this has grown in our country. COVID-19 is the only thing the government should have been concerning itself with for the entirety of 2020. We continue to ignore it at our peril.
In other words, what I'm trying to say is this: Should you be alarmed? Yes, but you should have been alarmed for months now.
Note that I also wrote carefully! I wrote, "misleading." I did not write, "Incorrect." If you can read it as meaning something other than what (as you say) should be taken from it, it's misleading.
And I agree that it could be misleading. :) But if it’s just misleading, can they issue a “correction”? This is getting philosophical.