Ewan Birney's Threads | Buzz Chronicles

Now, a more technical tweet thread to give updates on the science - which is moving fast. Again, I recommend following @arambaut, @firefoxx66, @EBIgoldman, @The_Soup_Dragon, @pathogenomenick and @jcbarret along with others to stay on the cutting edge of this

Most important has been the paper by the @CovidGenomicsUK consortium on the new variant, here:

(This is super-rapid pre-print on https://t.co/PHmxAcVUoB - other people will pick over this no doubt - but the openness of the data and quality of analysis from this group means this is super solid, and any updates on discussion likely to happen fast)

Two key take aways from this paper for me:

1. There is a big jump in number of changes - too big to be explainable with the natural progression over time. @arambaut and colleagues point out that similar big jumps have happened in immunocompromised patients treated via convalescent plasma + drugs

Ewan Birney
@ewanbirney

So - that was quite a twitter/media day for me, and welcome to my new followers; 3 threads coming up - introducing myself, explaining my background and COIs (this one); technical aspects of the new strain from my vantage; commentary on what is means for the future

(for the people who know me, skip the rest of this thread!)

A brief tweet portrait of me; I am deputy director general of @embl and co-direct (with Rolf Apweiler, not on twitter) one it's six sites, @emblebi which is based just south of Cambridge, UK.

is the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, a European treaty organisation that does science, similar to CERN. EMBL does molecular biology from high end atomic structural biology to development - and in the future, bridging to Ecosystems.

EMBL is Headquartered in beautiful Heidelberg, Germany and has 5 other sites; Hamburg (Germany also), Grenoble (France), EMBL-EBI at Hinxton (UK), Rome (Italy) and Barcelona (Spain).

Ewan Birney
@ewanbirney

It is somewhat hard to know which strand on England's November lockdown to pick apart - a large number of people in the press (and twitter) are commenting ("hot takes" in the US parlance) - most heat and not so much light.

Yesterday, before the announcement, I tweeted on this here:

An explainer thread (often I feel I am pitching these to journalists as much as anyone else) on COVID this month.
— Ewan Birney (@ewanbirney) October 31, 2020

I'd also recommend @AdamJKucharski's tweet thread on this https://t.co/UN7tTt95dQ and @JeremyFarrar's here

Nobody wanted to see a repeat of the spring, with hospitalisations rising and stringent measures coming back in. But UK isn't in quite the same position as March, so here are some sources for medium-term optimism as we come into a difficult winter... 1/
— Adam Kucharski (@AdamJKucharski) October 31, 2020

I can feel quite a few people processing this, and those people in media positions, via their public personas. It's unsurprising there is concern, angst and questions, even though if you had been following the numbers, SAGE and other debates it was well sign posted

So - in this tweet thread I want to remind people why this is different to March - it *really* is, and then I will do a second thread on things that people bring up which I think are not good arguments

Ewan Birney
@ewanbirney

I am not full sure people appreciate the impact of B117 strain on the course of the pandemic. TL;DR B117 is "a pandemic inside a pandemic" and demands both monitoring and preparation for when it arrives in a location. Vaccination is even more of a priority due to B117.

Context: I am an expert on human genetics and computational biology. I know experts in viral evolution, testing, infectious epidemiology, clinical trials. I have COIs in that I am long established consultant to @nanopore and I am on the Ox/AZ vaccine trial.

B117 clearly transmits faster. This has been clear in a UK context now for over a month, with particularly insightful backtracking of growth of B117 from low levels through October/November; it is true in Denmark; it is true in Ireland.

(Shout out the fast responding science of @CovidGenomicsUK, of the analysis of @jcbarret and @arambaut, of clever genomics-epi models of @MoritzGerstung and @harald_voeh and on it testing / spidey sense of @The_Soup_Dragon)

(In Denmark their excellent genomic surveillance, similar to UK's allows Denmark to know about the growth of B117 from low level in the context of other strains - props to @MadsAlbertsen85 and colleagues; In Ireland it is becoming one of the dominant variants)

Authors Ewan Birney