UKC

There is talk that the new variant is more lethal, with a 10 to 30% increased chance of dying compared to the other Covid. 
I’m confused though. Areas of London and SE had infection rates peaking at about 1,300 - 1,400. In the November spike, areas of high infection in Grter Manc, Liverpool etc peaked at about 800 yet had higher daily deaths than parts of the SE are experiencing. 
The graphs are from the dashboard today. So far, Wigan has had the highest daily deaths with significantly lower case rate and without the new variant. All four areas have about the same size population. 
My fag packet analysis makes me disagree with ‘the new variant is more lethal.’ I suppose the detail is key. Perhaps it could be: people who get very ill with the new variant have a high chance of dying. Or it may show acute underlying health inequalities. Or less people getting tested because they can’t afford to be off work?
Early days I know, just pondering. 

I don't know the answer for sure. It could be demographics. It could be that Thurrock and Bexley have few care homes.

London had the highest infections in the first wave too - that's well established - but according to that data, in those areas, fewer deaths.

I don't think likely community infection rate is well correlated to deaths in moving from the first wave to the second or third either, because the majority of deaths in the first wave were people who caught it in a care home or hospital. There was also a big variation around the country in the first wave in death rate at different hospitals I seem to remember. Presumably some learnt faster than others what the most effective methods of care were. Or maybe some were doing more testing than others. There are lots of confounding factors beyond what area people live in. Data from the second and third wave should be much more consistent though.

As I understand it, the cause is not "people who get very ill with the new variant have a high chance of dying" because the data shows an increase in risk of death per case, but not an increase in risk of death per hospitalisation. This suggests the opposite cause ie that you are more likely to get seriously ill, but no more likely to die from that point on.

Lots of scientists seem keen to clarify in the media that the higher mortality of the new variant is not yet a certainty.

I understand there is considerable uncertainty at the moment about whether the new variant is more deadly and if it is it's not by much. Bojo was even criticised for mentioning it. Though to be fair to him on this he did only say it may be more dangerous. So I wouldn't expect you'd be able to extrapolate that from geographical data at the moment. Have to wait and see what the scientists come up with.

It's to early to be sure on this - more research needed

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/...

Basically they think there's a 40-50% chance it's more lethal.

There's definitely been more deaths in this wave - over 15,000 in the past 2 weeks alone, but then this wave has likely been higher in terms of cases too.

Dr Campbell seems very worried by the new variant(s),

youtube.com/watch?v=uMSeiNqOfjg&

Chris

Admittedly, I didn't listen to it all, but he seemed to point to the new variant being the cause of the big recent wave and not Thanksgiving, Hanukkah and Christmas (or just the latter in the UK), as a huge issue.

It'll be so hard to compare because we are much better at treating Covid now than in March and April, plus we are vaccinating more and more high risk people all the time. We're now seeing the impact of that on cases here.

You need to compare apples with apples and the available data doesn't do that I think. You need to look at 1000? people in a demographic band and see how many were ruined or killed by the old variants, then do the same for the new one.

It’s notable that the studies covered in the NERVTAG report have access to longitudinal data including variant for a fraction of cases and still have very large uncertainties on the results.  By the time deaths are restricted to those with the variant known and then broken down by variant, age and co morbidity the statistical noise will be quite large.

The spread of the new variant was apparently visible in cases data but I don’t expect the possible range of fatality rate changes to show with the same clarity in the public data.

I've been thinking that a more transmissible virus will likely be more dangerous.

The severity of illness is often linked to the initial viral load one gets. So if you inhale virus laden air and say only 20% of the viruses contained are successful then inhaling a more transmissible variant where say 40% of viruses are successful then the initial viral load is increased leading to a more severe illness.

Obviously this assumes all other factors being equal and in the real world they may not be. However in general terms that seems to make sense.

System malfunction, Mick? Your thread title is not a pun.

The fact that the new variant is (probably) more transmissible is far more dangerous than the risk that it could lead to worse infection. This is because transmission is an exponential effect, whereas severity is a linear effect. Put simply, a small increase in transmissibility leads to a massive increase in cases, which in turn leads to many more deaths despite no increase in likelihood of death given injection.

So worrying about whether it is more deadly is a red herring, the fact it is (probably) more transmissible is already sufficient reason to increase our precautions.