Dec 10, 2023·edited Dec 10, 2023Liked by Oliver Johnson
Excellent, informative, balanced article, as always. I'd be interested if maybe one day soon (and yes I know you are very busy with the day job!) you could put some thoughts together about how significant this JN1 business is. I'm trying to read between the lines of the stuff that other sensible people like Paul and Meaghan have written, and I am having difficulty figuring it out. I know it is growing quickly, but what does the data tell us so far, including from the ONS and hospital figures? Is this another 2022 thing like omicron, or just another wave like we have seen over the last 12 months? Or do we just not know yet?
No worries! Somebody just asked a similar question on Twitter, so I might cut and paste what I said there about comparisons with original omicron "I don't think there's much of a parallel to be honest: like I say original BA.1 omicron doubled every 2 days or less, whereas JN.1 is probably more like a week. So I think that while it's likely put us into growth already, I'm expecting something more comparable with recent waves"
I think 2023 has overall been pretty calm, so if I say JN.1 may have the biggest growth rate of anything we've seen this year then it may sound worse than it is. But I think there are some people who get very excited by every single variant, so if you see someone freaking out then you can always see how they reacted to "Kraken" (XBB.1.5) - which turned out to not have a huge effect here - to see how well-calibrated they seem to be.
Dec 10, 2023·edited Dec 10, 2023Liked by Oliver Johnson
Yes - I believe such people suffer from what is technically known as Feigl-Ding syndrome. Thankfully, repeated exposure to it has given me a degree of immunity.
Off the top of my head, that suggests for constant R and constant protective measures, it ahould be possible to produce a plot of relative Impact against Infection Time, which prima facie (a) would allow a Hot Take as to whether to be more or less concerned about a new Variant based on Infection Time, and (b) show the Worst Case Infection Time, as there will be reductio ad absurdum effects at both extremes🤔
Yes, I think that's true in principle, though in practice I think big shifts in infection time are reasonably rare (so it may be that 2-3 days is something close to the limit). Plus of course we never get to know the infection time exactly (it's not like people light up red when they get infected or something) and have to infer it second-hand, so there's probably a limit to the precision of any of these calculations.
Excellent, informative, balanced article, as always. I'd be interested if maybe one day soon (and yes I know you are very busy with the day job!) you could put some thoughts together about how significant this JN1 business is. I'm trying to read between the lines of the stuff that other sensible people like Paul and Meaghan have written, and I am having difficulty figuring it out. I know it is growing quickly, but what does the data tell us so far, including from the ONS and hospital figures? Is this another 2022 thing like omicron, or just another wave like we have seen over the last 12 months? Or do we just not know yet?
No worries! Somebody just asked a similar question on Twitter, so I might cut and paste what I said there about comparisons with original omicron "I don't think there's much of a parallel to be honest: like I say original BA.1 omicron doubled every 2 days or less, whereas JN.1 is probably more like a week. So I think that while it's likely put us into growth already, I'm expecting something more comparable with recent waves"
I think 2023 has overall been pretty calm, so if I say JN.1 may have the biggest growth rate of anything we've seen this year then it may sound worse than it is. But I think there are some people who get very excited by every single variant, so if you see someone freaking out then you can always see how they reacted to "Kraken" (XBB.1.5) - which turned out to not have a huge effect here - to see how well-calibrated they seem to be.
Yes - I believe such people suffer from what is technically known as Feigl-Ding syndrome. Thankfully, repeated exposure to it has given me a degree of immunity.
Hahahahahahaaaa
Off the top of my head, that suggests for constant R and constant protective measures, it ahould be possible to produce a plot of relative Impact against Infection Time, which prima facie (a) would allow a Hot Take as to whether to be more or less concerned about a new Variant based on Infection Time, and (b) show the Worst Case Infection Time, as there will be reductio ad absurdum effects at both extremes🤔
Yes, I think that's true in principle, though in practice I think big shifts in infection time are reasonably rare (so it may be that 2-3 days is something close to the limit). Plus of course we never get to know the infection time exactly (it's not like people light up red when they get infected or something) and have to infer it second-hand, so there's probably a limit to the precision of any of these calculations.