Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by gns24 2007 days ago
Founder effects don't explain why this new strain took over as the dominant strain in London.

Even if we suppose the chance of it being as bad as suggested is only 50%, we should panic now, rather than waiting until we have solid proof and risk having a public health disaster.

Personally I suspect the UK didn't panic in its announcement and that this situation had been under surveillance for some weeks.

1 comments

The confidence intervals go as low as 37% and as high as ~120%. That's a load of uncertainty.

Also the latest document by PHE highlights also the limitations of the current data behind modeling (PCR negative for the S gene, but positive for the others). At this point the good questions haven't been answered yet.