much as i hate to credit that ball bag, he is slightly right.
the U.K. has one of the most active serology programmes. we are sequencing and identifying covid strains far more actively than just about anywhere else in the world right now. we identified the ‘british’ strain in kent, originally, in september ... you know, the county that connects us via freight, tunnel and sea to europe.
it’s likely all over europe already but they haven’t been looking for it. places like the netherlands have barely been testing for covid, let alone sequencing it and driving vaccine development, for the whole year; you have to be severely sick there before they even test you. germany already admitted yesterday that they’ve identified it there as far back as early november. where’s the worldwide bans on germany? it sets a slightly bad precedent when a country that shares its scientific information openly and as quickly as possible is then penalized for it and dubbed a ‘plague island’. a country who couldn’t afford the economic hit or international isolation might think twice about doing the same ...
the undeniable problem is that our tier system is ineffective and enough people just don’t give a shit about the restrictions anymore. i’m willing to bet a decent chunk of that ‘increased infectivity’ is behavioural in nature and not tied to any mutation causation.
Last edited by uziq (2020-12-30 00:21:43)