There's a new [technical briefing](https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/950823/Variant_of_Concern_VOC_202012_01_Technical_Briefing_3_-_England.pdf) out from Public Health England. An especially relevant section is where they track the % B.1.1.7 samples of all samples with 69 and 70 amino acid deletions (which causes the S gene dropout in diagnostic PCR testing) over time. >Week beginning | Per cent VOC of all Δ69-70 > 2020-10-12 | 03% > 2020-10-19 | 15% > 2020-10-26 | 29% > 2020-11-02 | 6...

Nate Silver puts the probability of a Dem trifecta at 60-65%

@nextbigfuture This does not seem like a credible news source.

There's a [new analysis](https://twitter.com/TWenseleers/status/1343575693544796160) out today by biostatistician Tom Wenseleers (not peer reviewed). He predicts ">90% of all infections will be by this strain across the UK by February 1st" and argues that the growth rate of this strain in the UK "translates to selective advantage of 56%-87%." This builds on CMMID COVID-19 working group's 23 Dec [epidemiological/modelling paper](https://cmmid.github.io/topics/covid19/uk-novel-variant.html) that finds the UK strain is "56% more transmissible (95% credibl...

@(EvanHarper) There is a lot to rebut in that article, but at the very least the main claim that "it is a remarkable coincidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was researching Ebola and SARS-associated coronaviruses in bats before the pandemic outbreak" is a demonstrably...odd claim. The SARS epidemic, which largely afflicted China, gave research on coronaviruses an ["enormous infusion of energy and activity"](https://journals.lww.com/pidj/Fulltext/2005/11001/History_and_Recent_Advances_in_Coronavirus.12.aspx) and a Chinese team based at the Wuhan ...

I have extended the time this question is open through the end of August. This question also now has a sister question that pertains to rioting across the entire US instead of a 100km radius. Note that the resolution criteria for this new question require 3x the number of deaths, arrests, or property damage for positive resolution.

— edited by juancambeiro1015

The IFR for 74-year-olds is ~4%.

[Preliminary results](https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/23/842818125/coronavirus-has-infected-a-fifth-of-new-york-city-testing-suggests) from a large serosurvey (to my knowledge, the largest done anywhere to date) completed by New York's state government shows ~21.2% of people in NYC have antibodies against SARS-CoV-2. 21.2% of NYC's population of 8.4mil = ~1.78 mil infected New Yorkers. The [latest NYC fatality data](https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page) is 15,411 deaths. 15,411/1.78mil = IFR of ~0.87%. Ve...

@Linch And....drum roll...it's the right prediction! Great job, team!

"The Food and Drug Administration's staff released a briefing document on Wednesday endorsing Johnson & Johnson's one-shot coronavirus vaccine as safe and effective."

This Nature news article is an excellent overview of studies that try to calculate the IFR. TL;DR: it's probably 0.5-1%

h/t @Jgalt

Aubrey de Grey:

I now think there is a 50% chance that we will reach longevity escape velocity by 2036. After that point (the "Methuselarity"), those who regularly receive the latest rejuvenation therapies will never suffer from age-related ill-health at any age.

There remains a large gap between what New York's Democratic party establishment thinks and what the base thinks: > ["Most New York voters are satisfied with Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s explanation of the sexual harassment allegations made against him and barely a third want him to resign, a Siena College Research Institute poll released Monday morning found ... Critically for Cuomo, only 25 percent of Democrats are calling for him to go."](https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/albany/story/2021/03/15/siena-poll-just-35-percent-of-new-york-voters-want-cuomo...

@ethulin @Jgalt @predictors Sorry about the confusion, for this question we mean the date that the letter is sent to the United Nations. I've changed the resolution language to clarify this — "This would mean that the Biden administration is sending a letter to the United Nations with the intention to rejoin and resolves as the date that this letter is sent."

See my reasoning here: https://twitter.com/juan_cambeiro/status/1343…

Very encouraging [results from a Phase I trial](https://www.iavi.org/images/phocadownload/IAVI-G001-Fact-Sheet.pdf) for an HIV vaccine were recently presented at an HIV/AIDS conference. This trial used a novel approach pioneered by [Steichen et al.](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/366/6470/eaax4380.editor-summary) in which broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAbs) are induced to target conserved regions of the rapidly-mutating and genetically diverse HIV-1 virus. The team behind this approach now expects to do another Phase I trial later in 2021 usi...

"Organizers of this summer’s Tokyo Olympics sought on Wednesday to dispel confusion over whether the Games would proceed as scheduled, after a member of the local organizing committee said he would recommend a postponement of the event because of the coronavirus outbreak...Mr. Mori said that speculation about a possible postponement represented only the opinion of Mr. Takahashi, who apologized for his comments." https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/11/sports/oly…

@(traviswfisher) Since resolution will come from confirmed case numbers as reported by the WHO, it is not up to us whether serology tests count. However, in its [most recent guidance on laboratory testing for COVID-19](https://www.who.int/publications-detail/laboratory-testing-for-2019-novel-coronavirus-in-suspected-human-cases-20200117) the WHO says that serology testing necessitates paired serum samples (in the acute and convalescent phase) for case confirmation, with "the initial sample collected in the first week of illness and the second ideally col...

1968 — a year when widespread protests motivated by issues relating to race took place — was also when the third major pandemic influenza outbreak of the twentieth century occurred.

— edited by juancambeiro1015

@predictors I have added the following clarification, which you can find in the fine print. It should keep with the spirit of this question and allow for a more straightforward resolution. > A "significant reduction in immunity" here is defined as a >=50% difference in the attack rate between strains/variants in seropositive (previously infected) subjects. A potential resolution source might be, for instance, [attack rate data collected from the placebo groups of vaccine trials](https://twitter.com/profshanecrotty/status/1355552010158764036). Such data ...