{"id":26631,"date":"2021-06-25T08:39:49","date_gmt":"2021-06-25T14:39:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/?p=26631"},"modified":"2021-07-21T11:23:53","modified_gmt":"2021-07-21T17:23:53","slug":"possible-variant-breakthrough-etc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/2021\/possible-variant-breakthrough-etc\/","title":{"rendered":"Possible Variant Breakthrough etc."},"content":{"rendered":"

In Coronavirus: Israel reimposes masks amid new virus fears<\/a> the BBC reports Covid rates are rising in Israel. It’s the \u00ce\u201d virus. Somewhat more disturbing, the WSJ<\/a> reports<\/p>\n

About half of adults infected in an outbreak of the Delta variant of Covid-19 in Israel were fully inoculated with the Pfizer Inc.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The latter might seem to suggest possible breakthrough. I mean half are vaccinated! But perhaps not it’s not too bad since most Israeli’s are vaccinated; the article says 85% of adults are vaccinated and 50% of the infected are vaccinated. If I’m doing the Bayesian right, the ratio P[B=V|I]\/P[UV|I]= r P[V)\/P[UV]. with I means “infected”, V means “vaccinated”, UV unvaccinated and r the ratio of P[I|V]\/P[I|UV]. With r=0.5*(1-0.85)\/0.85 ~9%. So vaccinated indiiduals appear to be infected at roughly 10% the rate of the unvaccinated individuals. Go Pfizer!)<\/p>\n

Turning to “etc”. Even the NYT seems to be treating the possibility of lab leak as worth dicussing. See “Where Did the Coronavirus Come From? What We Already Know Is Troubling.”<\/a> Honestly, I think we probably will never know.<\/p>\n

This article seems to recognize a fundamental problem with the “it must be natural” theory which often seems to implicitly suggewst that if that’s the way all the past one happens, then absent clear and convincing evidence, we of must<\/i> believe it’s natural this time. But obviously that’s not so. As the NYT author points out<\/p>\n

Since most pandemics have been due to zoonotic events, emerging from animals, is there reason to doubt lab involvement? Maybe if you look at all of human history. A better period of comparison is the time since the advent of molecular biology, when it became more likely for scientists to cause outbreaks. The 1977 pandemic was tied to research activities, while the other two pandemics that have occurred since then, AIDS and the H1N1 swine flu of 2009, were not.<\/p>\n

Plus, once a rare event, like a pandemic, has happened, one has to consider all the potential paths to it. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like investigating a plane crash. Flying is usually very safe, but when a crash does happen, we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t just say mechanical errors and pilot mistakes don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t usually lead to catastrophes and that terrorism is rare. Rather, we investigate all possible paths, including unusual ones, so we can figure out how to prevent similar events.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don’t have much more for now. So Open Thread.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Coronavirus: Israel reimposes masks amid new virus fears the BBC reports Covid rates are rising in Israel. It’s the \u00ce\u201d virus. Somewhat more disturbing, the WSJ reports About half of adults infected in an outbreak of the Delta variant of Covid-19 in Israel were fully inoculated with the Pfizer Inc. The latter might seem … Continue reading Possible Variant Breakthrough etc.<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[465],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-covid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26631"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26633,"href":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26631\/revisions\/26633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}