I think the UK is also now assisting South Africa with sequencing. Not sure about Brazil.
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I think we’ve always known this, but this is a good analysis.
110,200 people. Jesus Christ.
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I believe that puts the British 12 month casualties higher than any single year of WW2.
Just a flu.
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Let me know if it stops your personal antennae from growing 
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Almost certainly - does that account for increase in total population? I saw someone say that 2020 mortality rate wasn’t an outlier and attached a table of the last 20 years. In absolute numbers 2020 was easily the highest but even by mortality rate it was the worst for 17 years. 
No, that is just raw numbers.
Still a long way from WW1 totals, which is staggering when you consider the population was even smaller in 1914-1918.
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Good news, it had started to drop over the last few days but now seems to be picking back up again.
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Great…
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It is interesting in an eerie sort of way that the UK variant, the South Africa variant, and the Brazil variant have all evolved some identical characteristics, almost certainly independently.
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Worried about Whitty’s comments that the Brazil & S.A variants may reduce the current vaccines effectiveness…he thinks the UK variant won’t.
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Data from Manaus shows a significant number of re-infections, where the virus has evaded the antibody response. Reports from the South African CDC indicate something similar.
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That supports my perspective.
Too much data is not fit for purpose, rushed or flawed. It’s the same sort of PCR data that has been drawn on to make other conclusions.
It’s like the increased mortality. Absolutely could be real. We should be concerned about it. But equally is it simply a result of the NHS becoming overloaded ?
It’s the difficulties of epidemiology. Correlation vs causation. Trust is undermined as so much of the information is not released to public, the communication came as a leak to a journalist which was then published in S*n. It creates an environment of poor messaging , poor communication, skepticism and lack of accountability.
Messaging is so important in sciences. My old boss lost her job (wasting £10M in R&D digging an ever bigger hole) as a result of doing it poorly. I learnt to do it in stages.
- The question/potential is first communicated. We are fearful of increased transmission, this might be a good product. We need more data but could be important.
- Once we have more data (greater confidence) the direction is communicated. Simply we have data that supports it is significantly worse. This is a real opportunity. This is a problem we must act.
- Once absolutely certain. Double and triple checked everything. You commit of hard numbers. Explicitly stating should not ignore cavets. This is you putting you neck on the line.
That’s exactly how it should have been communicated to government. That’s how the government should have communicated it to the public. Not provisional numbers, or early guesstimate. None of that prevent policy change.
This stops you looking like a fool when you have a messaging of it’s no worse outcomes, then flip. Or a few months down the line when transmission is not as bad as you communicated.
In addition to poor communication a big problem is the rigour that normally applies in science does not exist at the moment. It’s been shortcut for good reason. But with that has been a significant decline in quality. With little or no peer review. A mate of mine is an editor and he told me he has had 5x as many paper submissions than normal. I politely declined to help 
Unfortunately I don’t think anyone in the UK government has a capacity to deal with technicalities or nuance. Develop a communication strategy beyond having a British flag, 3 word slogans, and empty platitudes to front line workers.
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I think it’s worse than that. I think there is now a deliberate strategy to push blame towards the public, highlight and exaggerate instances of rule breaking and turn the public on each other. This, while nurseries, shops, workplaces and more, remain open.
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While I agree that some governments can do better, way better, 2 wrongs do not make one right of course, rule breakings and public ignorance and stupidity need to be continually highlighted and shamed if necessary. That does not take away the government’s inabilities of course but it cannot be a sole responsibility or fault, its all shared.
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It seems UK is on the forefront of vaccination, in terms of percentages of population. Is there any timeline given for the entire population to be vaccinated? Any major setbacks now with those vaccinated? Been hearing some concerning news from elderlies dying in Norway and other news elsewhere although they have been pretty much said to be non related to the vaccine but now as Singapore is going to vaccinate the seniors, my mum and aunties and uncles are all very concerned as you know…they read the papers, and papers only like to report bad news.
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