U.K/S. Africa Variants More Contagious?

[Archimedes]

I keep reading about how the U.K. and S. Africa strains are more contagious and could lead to a spike here. If that is true, how come new cases in both of those countries is declining even faster than it is in the U.S. The data shows new case counts in both of those countries dropping like falling rocks. If they were so much more contagious, wouldn't their case counts be a leading indicator for us, given these strains were prevalent there before they got to the U.S.?

 

[N4teTheGreat]

Not sure about S. Africa but isn't / wasn't the UK is a pretty aggressive lockdown in response to the new strain?

 

[Archimedes]

Not sure about S. Africa but isn't / wasn't the UK is a pretty aggressive lockdown in response to the new strain?

No more so than we are here. The U.K. has had the same problem getting people to comply with restrictions than we have. If these new mutations were real threats, I would expect cases to be rising there, or at least slowing the decline, but that is not happening in either of those countries. In the U.K. the seven day trailing average new case rate is down 70 percent over the past four weeks. South Africa is down 85 percent over the same period.

 

[vaara]

Vaccinations might provide one explanation. Slowdowns in testing might provide another.

 

[Archimedes]

Can't be either. Neither country is much, if any, farther ahead of us in the vaccination rollout and there's no reason either one would be testing less. Their deaths are also dropping like a stone, even faster than the U.S. I really can't understand how they can be concluding that those variants are more contagious when the very countries they originated from are seeing massive declines in spread. I'm surprised that nobody in the media has posed this obvious question to Fauci and others.

 

[Climber]

I think that a sizeable portion of the people who are anti-mask have already been exposed, the rest of the people are still practicing better behavior.

I think that, more than anything else is helping the numbers drop.

 

[Blankpage]

History has shown what’s seems obvious to some turns out to be wrong. Maybe it’s not so obvious.

 

[Dr_SLO]

I keep reading about how the U.K. and S. Africa strains are more contagious and could lead to a spike here. If that is true, how come new cases in both of those countries is declining even faster than it is in the U.S. The data shows new case counts in both of those countries dropping like falling rocks. If they were so much more contagious, wouldn't their case counts be a leading indicator for us, given these strains were prevalent there before they got to the U.S.?

To date, the data on increased transmissibility of the new variants is pretty weak. If you have the time, check out this latest edition of TWiEVO. They speak extensively about the variants and discuss the current data and how that fits into the evolution of SARS-CoV-2.

 

[Archimedes]

To date, the data on increased transmissibility of the new variants is pretty weak.

That's what I suspect, but I'm just surprised that there isn't more discussion about this among key leaders, given these variants are one of the primary issues/concerns at the moment.