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Slack / Private Message Drop, p.330 [SLACK_000544] · slack_pm:msg:03477

Date: 2020-12-20 13:35
Type: chat message · slack
recipient: Robert F. Garry, Edward C. Holmes, Andrew Rambaut
speaker: Kristian G. Andersen

Recipients on this medium are inferred from channel membership, not per-message addressing.

Agreed - this is a perfect example where we can't wait for scientific certainty, but need to react immediately anddecisively. No pussyfooting around. Also, I find it hilarious that we find ourselves in 1/"Virologists look at a mutation and assume it is adaptive,evolutionary biologists assume it isn't. Neither are right all the time" :wink:

In context

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2020-12-20 13:32 Kristian G. Andersen open

But yeah - we're not going to be able to completely stop this now - sure, put the brakes on, but we'll likely see this become the dominant lineage over the next few months.
2020-12-20 13:32 Andrew Rambaut open

Best we can hope for is that it isn't more transmissible and gets eliminated by the new lock down measures. A worse case is that the measures knock every thing else out.
2020-12-20 13:33 Kristian G. Andersen open

Yup!
2020-12-20 13:33 Andrew Rambaut open

I hope it turns out we are wrong and it is not transmissible - it is the right decision not to wait to find out I think.
2020-12-20 13:35 Kristian G. Andersen

Agreed - this is a perfect example where we can't wait for scientific certainty, but need to react immediately anddecisively. No pussyfooting around. Also, I find it hilarious that we find ourselves in 1/"Virologists look at a mutation and assume it is adaptive,evolutionary biologists assume it isn't. Neither are right all the time" :wink:
2020-12-20 14:11 Edward C. Holmes open

That is weird. The Australian (from Victoria) cluster didn't take off but the circumstances here are not like US/Europe because there is strong intervention. The lineage that did take off in Victoria a little later did so because it was associated with a super-spreading event.
2020-12-20 14:12 Edward C. Holmes open

As if by magic: [shared file(s): Victoria_trends.pdf]
2020-12-20 14:23 Kristian G. Andersen open

Yeah, I don't think we can compare - Australia has this under control, we don't - I'm sure that with Aussie like control measures in place, N501Y wouldn't have had a chance to take off either.
2020-12-20 14:33 Kristian G. Andersen open

From all of this, I had the most concise question from Biden TF members this morning "should we ban travel from the UK". I guess when it comes down to it, we all need to be able to take all the science and distill it down into a simple yes/no answer. Easy.

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