With more than 100 confirmed cases in the northern beaches COVID outbreak, rumours are swirling about the identity of patient zero, writes The Sauce.
It’s the rumour that refuses to die.
It isn’t Bryan or Rachel – so who is Patient Zero?
All sorts of theories have been popping up regarding who was the patient zero who began the latest COVID-19 cluster, with even a couple of high-profile actors suspected.
WELL, YES, THAT’S HOW THINGS WORK: People started breaking Covid rules when they saw those with privilege ignore them.
People won’t believe it’s a crisis when those who are telling them it’s a crisis aren’t acting as if it’s a crisis.
It is foolhardy, indeed downright irresponsible, to have spectators at cricket and tennis matches this summer
The basic imperative for controlling an epidemic wherein the inhalation of aerosolised viral particles can cause much illness and death, is to stay away from each other.
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A firefighter from Sydney's North Shore was diagnosed with coronavirus this week.
The man is one of seven new locally acquired cases — six of which are linked to the Avalon cluster, which is now at 122.
"A number of those cases were found to be positive very late on in the isolation process, day ten or day 11," Premier Gladys Berejkliian told a press conference.
Shaw: Hunt for patient zero focuses on Belrose Hotel after Sydney firefighter tests positive
Inside the desperate ongoing search for the worrying 'patient zero' who started Sydney's Covid outbreak - and how they may never be found
Mystery continues to surround patient zero of Sydney's growing coronavirus cluster as health officials scramble to track down the original source.
NSW Health contract tracers still don't know what sparked the outbreak, 13 days after the first case was recorded on Sydney's northern beaches
he coronavirus, which surfaced in a Chinese seafood and poultry market in December 2019, has spread to nearly every country, upending life and derailing the global economy. The virus has killed more than 1.6 million and sickened more than 76 million over the last year. The World Health Organization has declared the situation a global pandemic. Several world leaders, including President Donald J. Trump and Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain, contracted the virus during the uphill battle to mitigate its spread within their borders, proving even the most powerful could fall to the virus’ grip. In early December 2020, nations began the race to secure vaccines and a few Western countries began administering shots to its most vulnerable populations, in an effort to bring the virus under control. Here’s a timeline of the outbreak over the past year…”
Masks and mandates: How individual rights and government regulation are both necessary for a free society – Professor Martha Ackelsberg is political theorist – she studies how communities are organized, how power is exercised and how people relate to one another in and between communities. Through talking to friends, and thinking about the protests against COVID-19-related restrictions that have taken place around the country – she concluded that many people do not understand that individual rights and state power are not really opposites. The laws and policies that governments enact set the framework for the exercise of our rights. So, inaction on the part of government does not necessarily empower citizens. It can, effectively, take away our power, leaving us less able to act to address our needs.
How NSW lost control of the virus. Yet Scott Morrison said that NSW was the ‘gold standard’ in infection control.
When Covid was detected in Sydney’s northern beaches area, the peninsula was locked down strongly by the Berejiklian government. While that cluster seems to have been contained, outbreaks elsewhere around Sydney have thrown some curious decisions into the limelight.
The think tank behind Australia’s changing view of China Australian FInancial Review
Whatever kudos Gladys Berejiklian has won from handling the pandemic, it's diminishing Malcolm Farr
You’re Infected With the Coronavirus. But How Infected?
CHINA’S BIO-ECONOMIC WORLD WAR: Communist China Lied; Millions of Human Beings Died.
The Chinese Communist Party’s COVID-19/Wuhan virus disinformation campaign (cover-up) rates as 2020’s biggest Big Lie. By any measure, especially body count, the CCP committed 2020’s most consequential and deadliest falsehood
Via Alex T:
I was going to write a long blog post on the new strain but Zeynep Tufekci has written an excellent piece for The Atlantic. I will quote from it and add a few points.
One of the big virtues of mRNA vaccines is that much like switching a bottling plant from Sprite to 7-Up we could tweak the formula and produce a new vaccine using exactly the same manufacturing plants. Moreover, Marks and Hahn at the FDA have said that the FDA would not require new clinical trials for safety and efficacy just smaller, shorter trials for immune response (similarly we don’t do new large-scale clinical trials for every iteration of the flu vaccine.) Thus, if we needed it, we could modify mRNA vaccines (not other types) for a new variant in say 8-12 weeks. As Zeynep notes, however, the vaccines are very likely to work well for the new variant. It’s nice to know, however, that we do have some flexibility.
The real worry is not that the vaccines won’t work but that we won’t get them into arms fast enough. We were already going too slow but in a race against the new more transmissible variant we are looking like tortoises.
A more transmissible variant of COVID-19 is a potential catastrophe in and of itself. If anything, given the stage in the pandemic we are at, a more transmissible variant is in some ways much more dangerous than a more severe variant. That’s because higher transmissibility subjects us to a more contagious virus spreading with exponential growth, whereas the risk from increased severity would have increased in a linear manner, affecting only those infected.
Here’s a key example from epidemiologist Adam Kucharski:
As an example, suppose current R=1.1, infection fatality risk is 0.8%, generation time is 6 days, and 10k people infected (plausible for many European cities recently). So we’d expect 10000 x 1.1^5 x 0.8% = 129 eventual new fatalities after a month of spread. What happens if fatality risk increases by 50%? By above, we’d expect 10000 x 1.1^5 x (0.8% x 1.5) = 193 new fatalities.
Now suppose transmissibility increases by 50%. By above, we’d expect 10000 x (1.1 x 1.5)^5 x 0.8% = 978 eventual new fatalities after a month of spread.
…the key message: an increase in something that grows exponentially (i.e. transmission) can have far more effect than the same proportional increase in something that just scales an outcome (i.e. severity).
I argued that the FDA should have approved the Pfizer vaccine, on a revocable basis, as soon as the data on the safety and efficacy of its vaccine were made available around Nov. 20. But the FDA scheduled it’s meeting of experts for weeks later and didn’t approve until Dec. 11, even as thousands of people were dying daily. We could have been weeks ahead of where we are today. Now the epidemiologists are telling us that weeks are critical. As Zeynep notes holding back second doses looks like a clear mistake and the balance of the evidence also suggests we should move to first doses first:
All this means that the speed of the vaccine rollout is of enormous importance.
…Meanwhile, the United States was reportedly planning to hold back half the vaccine it has in freezers as a hedge against supply-chain issues, and some states may be slowed down by murky prioritization plans. Scott Gottlieb—the former FDA chief and a current board member of Pfizer—has argued that the U.S. should also go ahead with vaccinating as many people as possible right now and trust that the supply chain will be there for the booster. Researchers in Canada—where some provinces decided to vaccinate now as much as possible without holding half in reserve, and will administer the booster with future supplies—estimate that this type of front-loading can help “avert between 34 and 42 per cent more symptomatic coronavirus infections, compared with a strategy of keeping half the shipments in reserve.” (Note that this strategy, which is different from the one the United Kingdom just announced it will adopt in prioritizing the first dose, does not even necessarily involve explicitly changing booster timing protocols in order to maximize vaccination now; it just means not waiting to get shots into arms when the vaccines are currently available.) These were already important conversations to have, but given the threat posed by this new variant, they are even more urgent.
Perhaps most critically, the FDA should approve the AstraZeneca vaccine if not as part of Operation Warp Speed then on a right to try basis. We need every weapon in the arsenal. How many times must we learn not to play with exponential matches?
Addendum: See also this excellent Miles Kimball post, How Perfectionism Has Made the Pandemic Worse.
Among the more popular philosophical pieces related to the pandemic were a pair of guest posts: “Thinking Rationally About Coronavirus COVID-19” by Alex Broadbent (Johannesburg) and “Further Philosophical Considerations about Covid-19: Why We Need Transparency” by Stefano Canali (Leibniz U. Hannover). In regards to the pandemic’s effects on the academic institutions philosophers work and study at, of particular interest were “Next Year’s ‘Extra Brutal’ Philosophy Job Market: Alternatives & Short-Term Opportunities?” and the follow-up, “Much Fewer Academic Philosophy Jobs Advertised This Season,” both featuring analyses by Charles Lassiter (Gonzaga). Readers were also concerned about PhD programs ceasing admissions in light of the pandemic, and whether faculty should be required to teach in person. You can check out other posts related to the pandemic here.