SteveeRogerr Categories Society
A very personal thread about this story and why I increasingly believe addressing the rot caused by QAnon will be one of the Biden administration\u2019s most important and most difficult tasks. https://t.co/oe1jNGYG4R
— Lauren Camera (@laurenonthehill) January 17, 2021
It doesn't help that the government have, & are continuing to, lie their way through the pandemic.
But that doesn't mean Ag-LFDs are all bad...
A thread 👇
1/
MHRA yesterday ruled that Ag-LFDs should not be used in schools to regularly test contacts of cases to reduce time spent in isolation.
This is a risky approach, & there is no data of the effectiveness (or cost-effectiveness), so this a fair decision.
This ruling, while probably correct & fair, will likely further damage public trust in testing, particularly as the debate rages on with government saying one thing and the MHRA another.
So, I thought it time for me to cut through the noise & ask - What does the data show?
3/
Much of the discourse over the past few months has been obsessing over the ‘poor’ performance of Ag-LFDs.
The principal argument has been that the Liverpool testing pilot showed they only find 40% of infections. But does this figure actually show us anything meaningful?
4/
The Liverpool community testing pilot evaluated asymptomatic testing using Ag-LFDs. They ran a sub-sample of tests of 5689 individuals, from 48 different testing sites, which were swabbed (supervised self-swab) for Ag-LFD and PCR side by side.
https://t.co/W8Rksg3dql
5/

Last night, I received disturbing news, confirmed to me directly by General Perna of Operation Warp Speed: States will not be receiving increased shipments of vaccines from the national stockpile next week, because there is no federal reserve of doses.
— Governor Kate Brown (@OregonGovBrown) January 15, 2021
Folks like @JamesSurowiecki spent time blaming states and municipal governments for not doling out the vaccines quickly enough. Yet forgot that the federal government is in charge of vaccine distribution - and didn't buy enough vaccines to start.
BREAKING: New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city will run out of Covid-19 vaccines by next week due to supply shortages https://t.co/ceeA584zA0 pic.twitter.com/FiNDxYT2qi
— Bloomberg (@business) January 15, 2021
By the way: We knew that the feds, under the Trump regime, would mess this up. It was reported back in December that the Trump regime didn't buy enough of the Pfizer vaccine, even after the pharma offered to supply more.
This is unsurprising, and yet, still tragedy.
So, they announced fake news then? "When HHS Sec. Alex Azar announced this week that the federal government would begin releasing coronavirus vaccine doses held in reserve for second shots, no such reserve existed..." https://t.co/wLZlSsBCPJ
— Garance Franke-Ruta (@thegarance) January 15, 2021
But none of the blame laid at the feet of states and municipalities is shocking, either. Folks have been blaming school systems for not having the resources to reopen school buildings - and for not being able to reopen in the midst of high community spread.
Alas, some spoilsport clarified the misunderstanding. pic.twitter.com/KRgJ0imxun
— My Annoying Opinions (@WhiskyOpinions) January 15, 2021
Reminiscing about my grocery store visits when new to the US. Only kind of shopping I do recreationally. First couple of weeks, I spent hours just hitting different grocery shops and checking out all the foods and randomly buying some that I'd read about or seen on TV.
One of my first instinctive purchases was a turkey drumstick. So huge! Reminded me of those big joints of meat eaten by Jughead or Obelix or Flintstones. I bought it and tandoorified it at home right away in my oven debut. I had never seen an oven before that. Was a bit scared.
I remember the time I came home with a can of spam and my roommate (who was in his 5th year in the US) was like why spam? It sucks! I said yeah, but I have to taste the meat so bad that junk mail is called that. I gamely finished the can. Never bought it again. 😂😂
I visited 1st in 05 and moved in 06 so it was the cable TV, blogs, torrents age. Not exactly a time when US culture was largely unknown to us. I knew it's okra not ladyfinger, eggplant not brinjal, 1 oz is ~ 30g, 1 lb ~ half kg etc. But some blind spots remained. Some for years.
Let's see what we can see in the focal S:E484 build!
Phylogenetics (what I do - making 'family trees' from virus genetics) can be very informative to see how different variants are spreading, and how cases
There are two variants circulating predominantly in Brazil:
- 20B/S.484K seems to be older & more widespread. It has (among others) a mutation at position 484
- 20J/501Y.V3 is smaller & detected recently. It has mutations at 501 *and* 484.
2/10
https://t.co/Cw5u2kuATa

The variant predominantly in the UK (501Y.V1 / B.1.1.7) and the variant predominantly in South Africa (501Y.V2) also both have 501. 501Y.V2 *also* has the 484K mutation.
Why are there concerns about these mutations? You can read more at https://t.co/wVE7ubYBoy!
3/10

The view below is from an analysis focusing on sequences with a mutation at 484. It shows all the samples in the 2 variants (20B/S.484K & 20J/501Y.V3) & how they're related. More closely related = closer together (very, very roughly).
4/10

We can colour these samples by region to see where they're from. As we expect - most are in Brazil! A few are in Argentina (also red).
5/10
https://t.co/Cw5u2kuATa

We all did this as kids: Walk up a see-saw, you keep going fine until you cross the fulcrum then WHAM! It flips.This is what happens in nature when resources are used up faster than they are replenished. All goes fine until nearly half are used up. All who study biology know..2/
This flip is a population crash. It is natural. Important to know: the crash comes after the point where more resources are being used up than are being replenished. There is a period of overshoot. The crash comes some time after overshoot. Can that happen to humans? 3/

According to Joseph Tainter (1988) there have been three:
Ancient Rome
Mayan Civilisation
Ancestral Puebloans
Modern society is exhibiting all the signs (Club of Rome 1972) 4/
https://t.co/ND85PXV9MB

All of this is well-known by scholars. But somehow it does not seem to have sunk in with citizens in general. The urgency. So let me say it again in a retweet-worthy way 5/