One interesting coronavirus metric I’ve been tracking is mobility indexes. I know it sounds tin-foil-hat-y but I don’t trust western media coverage on Russia or China and so to gauge the situation in those countries I’ve tried looking at data rather than opinion.
The Citymapper app has a “CityMapper Mobility Index” which shows what percentage of a given city is moving compared to a pre-March peg. It’s been interesting to see Moscow and St.Petersburg back to almost 100% capacity.
If you look at yesterdays' stats, Lyon (#1) and Paris (#2) are respectively at 97% and 90% of usual mobility. Yet the number of confirmed cases in France, over the last 15 days, went from 293 024 to 404 888.
This index won't tell you wether it's safe to move around or not, just what people are doing and what authorities are allowing.
I may be wrong but it seems that the number of confirmed cases isn't a great indicator either because we've been testing a lot more so it's expected that we're getting more positives. What matters is the number of people who die or get seriously ill, isn't it?
I feel dumb here, but isn't "high mobility" being correlated with "high cases" kind of what you'd expect in a regime where the number of cases had previously been low, and then began to spread again?
I think it must be. It's kind of interesting the data. You can see London shutting down around when I left and now can see Paris and Lyon as the most back to normal which maybe explains why there are a lot of new cases there now.
I’m skeptical of this metric because the data seems to come from app usage and excludes auto traffic as a transit focused app. In SF I would peg the movement well above 8%. Maybe this app is mostly used by Euros and tourism is the gap...
Sitting in Germany this makes me really wonder how things are going to change in winter. The parks have been exploding with people because with most of the indoor spaces closed, or only accessible with masks, this became one of the only ways to spend free time. Restaurants are now available as well, and people are back at work in a more limited way, but parks are still the dominant form of recreation in Berlin as far as I can tell.
How is this going to change when it's not so pleasant to sit or walk outside anymore? I have the feeling that either case counts are going to rise, or mental health is going to become a bigger issue (even more so than it usually is at this latitude in the winter time).
But is ‘city mobility’ a lead indicator of ‘rising new COVID cases’, or a lag indicator of ‘declining active COVID cases’? I could make the hypothesis for either (or both), so are you using it to track improvements in a city or prepare for worsening conditions?
So I’ve said it’s interesting to see that both those cities are “back to almost 100% capacity” - almost being an operative word - from end of august to now Moscow has been @ 70-90% consistently, and St Petersburg has actually had 80-100+% in that time.
I also see people jumping to conclusions around taking this to mean it’s now safe there, I never said, nor implied, that.
Well, assuming that metric is a reliable indicator, that presumably just indicates the perception of the vaccine amongst the population is positive; it says little about the actual success of it.
And what happens if the vaccine turns out to be a dud? How will that mobility then be positive, given the spread? And what about the damage to trust both in Russia and internationally for vaccine announcements after a failure there?
I've obviously no idea about whether or not the vaccine works.
The problem is - by international norms - neither do those deploying it, and yet they are.
The Russian case numbers seem a bit unusual to me. How they have been between 5 and 10k cases for so long without either driving it down further or having it get out of control.
Russian fatality rate is probably somewhat lower in US / Europe, but it's only because our elder citizens (the most vulnerable group) have patriotically died long before reaching the age at which they become vulnerable to the virus.
There was an interesting study about Germany, that r0 went below 1 even before the nation wide shutdown because people started reducing their own mobility quite heavily. I can't find the source though.
But mobility index by itself doesn't tell you anything about the number of infected people. Without reliable statistics on coronavirus cases in the area you can't tell if the mobility is high because the infection is contained, or because nobody cares/knows. And there are reasons to doubt official stats on corona cases in Russian cities.
> I know it sounds tin-foil-hat-y, I don’t trust western media coverage on Russia or China
That's not tin-foil-hat-y at all. Of course Western media isn't going to paint a too rosy picture of traditional "adversaries" compared to their own countries.
Look at how the situation in Belarus has all but eclipsed the protests against police brutality in the US. Even in Wikipedia's front page list of ongoing events! Apparently everything must be fine back home now.
Snatching people from the streets, turtur and arrests without trial or seeing a court. Sending the opposition to forced exile.
That's just objectively worse than the shit going on in the US.
But I do feel the US is getting there. This new war on crime the is planning, his sending federal agents to democratic states and basically calling parts of the population enemies is very worrying.
So, I could totally believe that this is mostly a political gesture, and Russia is doing this mostly for propaganda purposes. But, honestly, even given that, I found the tone of the article to be biased and speculative, in an anti-Russia way. FUD should not be the main component of an article in a medical journal. Give us some facts about the situation, or if you don't have any facts to give, write a shorter article.
The second paragraph contains a link to the phase 1/2 results that the vaccine creators published in the same journal. Because of unexpected patterns in the data in those results, there are doubts about their veracity, which is consistent with the idea that the institute is cutting corners in the trial. If it turns out that they did make up the results and the vaccine is more dangerous and/or less effective than expected, the journal will be known as complicit in the backlash that ensues not just against this vaccine, but against all others as well. So the journal wanted to temper their implicit endorsement made by publishing the original article, and this is the result.
That's just it. We don't have many facts about this vaccine other than it was rushed. Many folks are probably going to hear 'a vaccine has been created' and think it's a panacea. This article seeks to correct that by pointing out what we don't know about the trial (which appears to be a lot).
It's a two-component vaccine using two different adenovirus vectors. Hence "traveling companion" and "v(irus/ector)". Plus, of course, the name is a reminder of Soviet space achievements.
On August 11th, 2020 the Russian government announced the world's first release of a vaccine against COVID-19, referring to the vaccine as "Sputnik 5" (Gam-COVID-Vac) to reflect Russia's previous victories in the Space Race. ([1])
What's weird to me is this emphasis on being first. Most of the media trumpeting that there will be some huge advantage to being first seems wrong and misplaced. Even if you manage to create a vaccine, you still have to manufacture and convince everyone it is effective. Rollout is likely to be pretty slow and uneven. This will take months.
In the meantime, other vaccines will be created that work just as well. The vaccine might be manufactured faster and be distributed more widely.
Create a vaccine isn't planting a flag or even reaching a specific destination. Creating a vaccine is travelling a known distance in similar types of cars. There's only so fast you can go.
My take on this emphasis on being first: it's a reflection of how we view society as a competition, in business, warfare, and interpersonal relationships. To be "first to market", to have "first-mover advantage", is to demonstrate competence and superiority. Planting a flag on the moon was, partly, such a move.
There's some truth to it, I believe, but the mentality is seemingly applied too broadly, to areas where there aren't any advantages - other than maybe reputation (which could be considered a real advantage).
I agree with you that the apparent focus on "me first" is misplaced, when the effort to create a reliable vaccine is a global concern. The emphasis should be on its efficacy, in solving the immediate problem together.
Well, their previous 'Sputnik', the Google alternative (sputnik.ru) failed miserably, so they're trying another one. And besides Chinese vaccine was first.
There are some risks wroth taking and some that are not. The problem with risks in an emergency is they can make things worse. Emergency officers are often killed when they choose to risk going faster than the speed limit - even though they have sirens on to warn everyone they are taking extra risk for an emergency.
I thought airline pilots and marines trained specifically to avoid taking unnecessary risks in an emergency. They rely on playbooks, checklists, training.
There are also other tools left in the Arsenal before throwing Hail Mary passes — like, everyone could wear masks.
I'm no anti-vaxxer, but I cannot tell what's worse: a little known virus that hit us like an unexpectedly motile wall of bricks, or a rushed vaccine. I'd rather be exposed to neither, so I'll keep on keeping away from people until this thing blows over.
Wartime would be such time - scarcity of resources in combination with lack of alternative measures.
As long as simple measures like wearing masks, keeping your distance and minimising risky activities are sufficient, there is no rush.
It's also not as if COVID-19 is a zombie apocalypse or some primarily airborne and highly infectious variant of Ebola that threatens to wipe out huge parts of the population within weeks or months.
In this instance, cutting corners is equivalent to not gathering data, and acting on the premise that what you want to be true is true.
Which is another way of saying: when there are massive consequences, is not the time to proceed on wishful thinking.
Because, as TFA pointed out: if you give people an ineffective vaccine, they will act as though they have an effective vaccine, and likely increase spread.
If you give someone a vaccine that has more antibody-mediated enhancement than protective effect (or at least, just a significant proportion of), you may do more harm than good as well.
And once you've deployed the vaccine to the general population, you've significantly impaired your ability to resolve questions about the above.
When stakes matter, and consequences are large and long-lasting, isn't the time to make blind leaps of faith.
Overstating it? Folks are not all behaving responsibly as it is, so nothing new there. Deploying in larger numbers, then measuring the result is gathering data too. There are massive consequences to the plague as it is.
This same person says "the difference between doing things correctly and not doing things correctly is a matter of a few months".
First, this is not a matter of "correct", it's a matter of "allowing people to voluntarily take additional risk on a vaccine similar to a phase III trial which we let people do already".
Second, A "few months" is huge. Like a vaccine working a few months earlier would be the biggest global event of 2020. He must be in quite the nice position if the pandemic going an extra "few months" is no big deal.
Let’s say a vaccine is safe — you still have to know if it’s actually effective. That’s one of the things measured in these trials. We can’t just say, whoops, and mail a new dose to everyone. So, the risk isn’t just the safety. It’s about not squandering the precious resources that have been pulled together to manufacture distribute untold numbers of doses of a vaccine.
That stood out to me as well. There's a real opportunity cost to not moving more deliberately: those few extra months represent several hundred thousand lives lost. Could a vaccine be worse than that? Of course if the answer is yes, then that would be horrific -- you wouldn't want to vaccinate hundreds of millions of people and then discover that you've unintentionally shipped Thalidomide 2.0. But at the same time, the probability of such risks should be balanced against the certainties of what will happen without a vaccine.
Anybody who says that this is a simple or easy calculation frankly has no idea what they're talking about.
If it's a vaccine that does anything other than exactly what it's supposed to is going to erode public trust in any future vaccines that might actually work.
Unfortunately these kind of calculations clash with ethics. You can’t take actions that cause people to die, even if they prevent more other people from dying.
COVID has leapt from the realm of science and reason into fear and hysteria.
If we 'saved' 1 million elderly people from dying of COVID, and they instead died over a period of time from vaccine side effects, those effects would be impossible to quantify via a binary PCR test and so would be ignored.
Additionally if people were vaccinated, but still died, we could at least say 'oh well, we tried'.
Rushing out a vaccine and giving it to people near the end of their natural lives is a completely legitimate decision to end this hysteria and get back to normal life.
I’m not an expert on this, but my guess would be: it’s logistically very difficult to produce the required number of doses. They’ve been gearing up all over the world to get ready. So, I would think that you really don’t want to spend those resources on a vaccine that’s either 1) not safe, or 2) not as effective as you thought it was.
When the risks of cutting these corners are significantly outweighed by the risks of getting to a vaccine slower.
With due respect to the many losses from Covid-19 - the numbers are not huge. 0.012% of the world's population has died from Covid over a period of about half a year. The annual death rate of all other causes in the world is 0.77%, or (normalizing to half a year) about 33 times as high.
So, Covid is a serious pandemic but not terrible enough to risk significant corner-cutting in vaxine development - as I see it.
> On the other hand, it is entirely possible that Russia will hold off vaccinating its general population until it has received favourable results from the phase 3 trial. In which case, the announcement of the approval of Sputnik V might amount to a political gesture, rather than a serious attempt to circumvent the standard process of vaccine development.
Yes, it really was mostly a political gesture. General inoculation isn't planned for until Jan 1st, 2021.
As far as I understood, from the bureaucratic point of view this was some kind of temporary approval needed to include risk groups in phase 3 trial, which could be a good thing given the general urgency of the situation. And then, yes, Putin made a political gesture out of this implementation detail.
Let’s hope under the covers things are progressing in the typical prudent manner. Even so, I worry about the extra pressure on phase 3 trials for a vaccine that’s already been announced publicly.
There are two vaccines on the final stages of development in Russia. One from Gamaleya center (Moscow), another from «VECTOR» facility (Novosibirsk).
From my (layman's) point of view, Gamalaeya's vaccine is somewhat hurried in development. Also, Gamaleya is known for its lobbying power. In the past, it approved and popularized a number of controversial drugs like Kagocel and a few of «-feron» drugs.
VECTOR's vaccine, on other hand, looks more trustworthy.
> Post-registration clinical trials involving more than 40,000 people in Russia will be launched in a week starting from August, 24. ... The vaccine has received a registration certificate from the Russian Ministry of Health on August 11 and under emergency rules adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic can be used to vaccinate the population in Russia. Mass production of the vaccine is expected to start in September 2020.
It feels like it's "under emergency" marketing and it is still ongoing phase 3 trials. I hope they have enough sense to not mass vaccinate everyone in a month or two.
> On the other hand, it is entirely possible that Russia will hold off vaccinating its general population until it has received favourable results from the phase 3 trial. In which case, the announcement of the approval of Sputnik V might amount to a political gesture, rather than a serious attempt to circumvent the standard process of vaccine development. The FDA has stipulated that a vaccine against COVID-19 should be at least 50% effective. Sputnik V might well meet this criterion. But until the phase 3 trial is completed and the results are made available, it will not be possible to make any judgement. “It is certainly not advisable for any vaccine to be used in an uncontrolled way before it has been through proper testing to determine whether the immune response it produces is actually protective, and there are no unexpected adverse events”, stressed Openshaw.
No one has production capacity to vaccinate everyone in a month or two. So yes of course, they said only healthcare workers and teachers are going to get it this month, and not all of them. Will it be actually voluntary, as promised, or some new absurd process? You never can tell with Russian government.
Yeah, it could easily be mandatory. You must get the vaccination to work in health care. You must get the vaccination to be a teacher. You get the gist. We have this here with hepatitis B vaccine. Why not with this vaccine? They definitely could do this.
Readit News
The Citymapper app has a “CityMapper Mobility Index” which shows what percentage of a given city is moving compared to a pre-March peg. It’s been interesting to see Moscow and St.Petersburg back to almost 100% capacity.
This index won't tell you wether it's safe to move around or not, just what people are doing and what authorities are allowing.
Because it shows Moscow and St P at 79 and 88%. Around the same as Brussels but lower than Paris and Lyon.
How is this going to change when it's not so pleasant to sit or walk outside anymore? I have the feeling that either case counts are going to rise, or mental health is going to become a bigger issue (even more so than it usually is at this latitude in the winter time).
Thanks for upgrading my thinking!
Modeling positivity with mobility would be interesting.
The latest (70%ish) is at the bottom. There has been hardly any change since the vaccine was introduced in the middle of August.
To be fair, it is not a well-designed UX (unusual for the superb CityMapper).
https://citymapper.com/cmi/moscow
So I’ve said it’s interesting to see that both those cities are “back to almost 100% capacity” - almost being an operative word - from end of august to now Moscow has been @ 70-90% consistently, and St Petersburg has actually had 80-100+% in that time.
I also see people jumping to conclusions around taking this to mean it’s now safe there, I never said, nor implied, that.
And what happens if the vaccine turns out to be a dud? How will that mobility then be positive, given the spread? And what about the damage to trust both in Russia and internationally for vaccine announcements after a failure there?
I've obviously no idea about whether or not the vaccine works.
The problem is - by international norms - neither do those deploying it, and yet they are.
Russian fatality rate is probably somewhat lower in US / Europe, but it's only because our elder citizens (the most vulnerable group) have patriotically died long before reaching the age at which they become vulnerable to the virus.
https://google.com/search?q=russian+covid+vs+excess+mortalit...
That's not tin-foil-hat-y at all. Of course Western media isn't going to paint a too rosy picture of traditional "adversaries" compared to their own countries.
Look at how the situation in Belarus has all but eclipsed the protests against police brutality in the US. Even in Wikipedia's front page list of ongoing events! Apparently everything must be fine back home now.
That's just objectively worse than the shit going on in the US. But I do feel the US is getting there. This new war on crime the is planning, his sending federal agents to democratic states and basically calling parts of the population enemies is very worrying.
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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korabl-Sputnik_5
In the meantime, other vaccines will be created that work just as well. The vaccine might be manufactured faster and be distributed more widely.
Create a vaccine isn't planting a flag or even reaching a specific destination. Creating a vaccine is travelling a known distance in similar types of cars. There's only so fast you can go.
There's some truth to it, I believe, but the mentality is seemingly applied too broadly, to areas where there aren't any advantages - other than maybe reputation (which could be considered a real advantage).
I agree with you that the apparent focus on "me first" is misplaced, when the effort to create a reliable vaccine is a global concern. The emphasis should be on its efficacy, in solving the immediate problem together.
There are also other tools left in the Arsenal before throwing Hail Mary passes — like, everyone could wear masks.
Wartime would be such time - scarcity of resources in combination with lack of alternative measures.
As long as simple measures like wearing masks, keeping your distance and minimising risky activities are sufficient, there is no rush.
It's also not as if COVID-19 is a zombie apocalypse or some primarily airborne and highly infectious variant of Ebola that threatens to wipe out huge parts of the population within weeks or months.
Which is another way of saying: when there are massive consequences, is not the time to proceed on wishful thinking.
Because, as TFA pointed out: if you give people an ineffective vaccine, they will act as though they have an effective vaccine, and likely increase spread.
If you give someone a vaccine that has more antibody-mediated enhancement than protective effect (or at least, just a significant proportion of), you may do more harm than good as well.
And once you've deployed the vaccine to the general population, you've significantly impaired your ability to resolve questions about the above.
When stakes matter, and consequences are large and long-lasting, isn't the time to make blind leaps of faith.
First, this is not a matter of "correct", it's a matter of "allowing people to voluntarily take additional risk on a vaccine similar to a phase III trial which we let people do already".
Second, A "few months" is huge. Like a vaccine working a few months earlier would be the biggest global event of 2020. He must be in quite the nice position if the pandemic going an extra "few months" is no big deal.
Anybody who says that this is a simple or easy calculation frankly has no idea what they're talking about.
If we 'saved' 1 million elderly people from dying of COVID, and they instead died over a period of time from vaccine side effects, those effects would be impossible to quantify via a binary PCR test and so would be ignored.
Additionally if people were vaccinated, but still died, we could at least say 'oh well, we tried'.
Rushing out a vaccine and giving it to people near the end of their natural lives is a completely legitimate decision to end this hysteria and get back to normal life.
With due respect to the many losses from Covid-19 - the numbers are not huge. 0.012% of the world's population has died from Covid over a period of about half a year. The annual death rate of all other causes in the world is 0.77%, or (normalizing to half a year) about 33 times as high.
So, Covid is a serious pandemic but not terrible enough to risk significant corner-cutting in vaxine development - as I see it.
0. https://cattiviscienziati.com/2020/09/07/note-of-concern/
Yes, it really was mostly a political gesture. General inoculation isn't planned for until Jan 1st, 2021.
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I'd wait until Vector's stuff is ready if I were living in Russia.
It feels like it's "under emergency" marketing and it is still ongoing phase 3 trials. I hope they have enough sense to not mass vaccinate everyone in a month or two.
> On the other hand, it is entirely possible that Russia will hold off vaccinating its general population until it has received favourable results from the phase 3 trial. In which case, the announcement of the approval of Sputnik V might amount to a political gesture, rather than a serious attempt to circumvent the standard process of vaccine development. The FDA has stipulated that a vaccine against COVID-19 should be at least 50% effective. Sputnik V might well meet this criterion. But until the phase 3 trial is completed and the results are made available, it will not be possible to make any judgement. “It is certainly not advisable for any vaccine to be used in an uncontrolled way before it has been through proper testing to determine whether the immune response it produces is actually protective, and there are no unexpected adverse events”, stressed Openshaw.