The countries that do the most sequencing (who also have a significant number of cases) is Denmark (10.9% of positives are sequenced) and the UK(5.61%). The Danish data makes me slightly hopeful: 1. the virus has been found in Denmark. 2. But the numbers are surprisingly small, 9 confirmed cases by 20-12, 3. The Danish government have not released statements regarding its effects on vaccines. 3-1. Denmark made such an announcement as soon as any evidence above baseline existed for cluster 5, so the lack of announcement is more significant than one might otherwise think. 4. Case numbers are not going up in Denmark
Can’t update on #4. Of course a rapidly growing new strain will have a negligible impact on total numbers early on; it’s a question of whether it will dominate the total numbers in a few months.
I think a good indicator of whether the strain is picking up is Ireland which recently has done a good job containing the virus but is close to UK and they closed traffic between them only recently i.e. too late. If you eyeball this Our World in Data chart (sorry, can’t embed pics im comments) you could guess that Ireland is about 10 days behind UK. For other countries like France or Germany, it is too early to say. I expect to see a clear signal (if there is one to be seen) by mid-January.
One thing that makes this disease hard to reason about is the high k. That is, most people infect a very small number of people but some people infect large numbers. When case numbers are less than a thousand we should’t expect a strong signal regardless of the underlying infectivity of the new strain. This is evidence against it being significant but I fear its not very strong evidence.
The countries that do the most sequencing (who also have a significant number of cases) is Denmark (10.9% of positives are sequenced) and the UK(5.61%).
The Danish data makes me slightly hopeful:
1. the virus has been found in Denmark.
2. But the numbers are surprisingly small, 9 confirmed cases by 20-12,
3. The Danish government have not released statements regarding its effects on vaccines.
3-1. Denmark made such an announcement as soon as any evidence above baseline existed for cluster 5, so the lack of announcement is more significant than one might otherwise think.
4. Case numbers are not going up in Denmark
Can’t update on #4. Of course a rapidly growing new strain will have a negligible impact on total numbers early on; it’s a question of whether it will dominate the total numbers in a few months.
On 2: This reports that Denmark has found 33 cases of the new variant, out of 7800 analysed between Nov 14 and Dec 14. Source: https://www.ssi.dk/aktuelt/nyheder/2020/statens-serum-institut-udgiver-opdaterede-tal-for-den-engelske-covid-19-virusvariant, English reporting: https://www.thelocal.dk/20201224/denmark
Update can be found here https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Qtett2vv34jhBZkCw/data-about-the-new-coronavirus-variant-b-1-1-7-from-denmark
I think a good indicator of whether the strain is picking up is Ireland which recently has done a good job containing the virus but is close to UK and they closed traffic between them only recently i.e. too late. If you eyeball this Our World in Data chart (sorry, can’t embed pics im comments) you could guess that Ireland is about 10 days behind UK. For other countries like France or Germany, it is too early to say. I expect to see a clear signal (if there is one to be seen) by mid-January.
One thing that makes this disease hard to reason about is the high k. That is, most people infect a very small number of people but some people infect large numbers. When case numbers are less than a thousand we should’t expect a strong signal regardless of the underlying infectivity of the new strain. This is evidence against it being significant but I fear its not very strong evidence.