How well are China’s vaccines working?

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China is exporting two vaccines, and although they’re less effective than the gold standard vaccines like Pfizer and AstraZeneca, they do work. Sinopharm is 78% effective and Sinovac is somewhere between 50% and 78%. I’m not sure why the range is so large there. Sorry. And while I’m apologizing, apologies for not having a link on this. It’s from an email newsletter the New York Times sends out. It usually has links. Maybe I’m being particularly dense today.

There’ve been questions about the vaccines, especially after vaccinated people in the Seychelles became infected, but they do seem to be useful. In the Seychelles, when vaccinated people got Covid they had mild cases and recovered at home. It’s not what we’d all hope for, but it’s a lot better than being hospitalized. Or dying. China says it can make 5 billion doses a year. The U.S. has promised to donate 500 million doses of other vaccines (I don’t think they’ve specified which) to poorer countries. Britain has promised 100 million. 

The world’s population–since this is relevant to the discussion–is 7.6 billion. Or it was in 2019. I haven’t counted it since. I did try last month but I lost track somewhere around 5 billion and didn’t have the heart to start over. The vaccine rollout in poorer countries is beyond dismal. The vaccines are going to rich countries and poor ones just can’t get them.

So weigh 600 million against 5 billion, then weigh both of those against the number of countries that can’t get hold of any useful amount of vaccine and it makes the two Sino- vaccines appealing. 

Irrelevant photo: a rose

Not much is known yet about how well they protect against the variants. There seems to be some reduction against the Beta and Gamma variants, but that’s still not solidly established. 

China, having gotten off to a slow start in vaccinating its population, is now working at high speed. 

I had links for all that and have succeeded in losing them. Apologies.

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Early reports are that mixing vaccines–I think they were playing mix-and-match with the Pfizer and AstraZeneca, although the Moderna might have slipped in as well–may make them more effective, and Canada and a few European countries have started doing that. 

 

How times have changed

To boost the number of people getting vaccinated, Washington State is allowing marijuana retailers to offer a free joint to anyone who can show proof that they’ve had either their first shot or second shot. Or both at once. What the hell. If the stuff they’re offering is strong enough, who can count that high?

It also allows other businesses to offer a beer, a cocktail, or a glass of wine. Arizona and New Jersey have done similar things. Other states are running lotteries.

What are they up against in their effort to promote the vaccine? People who think getting vaccinated will cause keys to stick to their faces and forks to–

I stopped listening right about there, so I’m not sure where the forks stick. I’ve heard of food that sticks to your ribs, but we seem to have entered new territory here.  

Whether or not you’ve been vaccinated, plastic forks will not attack you. Covid restrictions allowing, you can go back to the food courts.

Antiviral drug update

If an antiviral drug that’s in late-stage testing works–and that’s not guaranteed–it could stop a Covid infection in its early stages. It could be available by the end of 2021–again, if it works.

With all those coulds in there, that sentence has a lot of wiggle room. Still, as everything we read lately says repeatedly, it could (there’s that word again) be a game changer. 

Cards? Jenga? A football team crashing through the front door and out the back?

The drug is one of several attempts to tackle Covid by treating the infection rather than vaccinating people, so let’s not bother to name this particular one and instead hope one of them comes through. Even the people weren’t cranking themselves up to be afraid of flying forks might accept this.

Or possibly not. It’s gotten so crazy out there that I’ve given up trying to predict where we’re headed.

Indentured labor in the British Empire

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Abolishing slavery left Britain with a problem: How was it going to produce sugar without lowering profits? 

Because of the second part of that sentence, I don’t think paying a livable wage entered into the conversation. 

This was an issue for both planters and theBritish government itself, because sugar was a huge part of the economy. And the monied class that owned the plantations was a huge part of the government. You know the old saying, money talks? Well, it doesn’t have a physical voice, but it does this odd way of amplifying the voices of people with a lot of it.

Last week, if you’ll stretch your minds back to that distant time, now passing almost into myth we looked at the apprenticeship system that, for a while, replaced–and closely reproduced–slavery in the Caribbean colonies. This week, lucky us, we come to indentured labor, which replaced it more widely and for longer. 

Irrelevant photo: geranium

 

Indenture

Britain abolished slavery in 1833 and the first indentured laborers arrived in British Guiana in 1836. They were from India, and Indian indentured laborers were also sent to Fiji, Natal, Burma, Ceylon, Malaya, British Guiana, Jamaica, and Trinidad–to nineteen countries in all. Eventually indentured workers replaced enslaved Africans on plantations throughout the British Empire. 

Was I bullshitting you about the government being involved? Sorry, but no. According to the National Archives, the secretary of state for the colonies, Frederick Stanley, known as Lord Stanley by his nearest and dearest, ordered the scheme.

Scheme, in American English, has an unpleasant whiff of sneakiness, but as far as I can tell it doesn’t in British English. British governments introduce schemes all the time and are happy to brag about them, and this was very much a government project. British colonies–which is to say, plantation owners–had appealed to the government for help and it ordered and approved the plan. The whiff you’re picking up isn’t one of sneakiness but–forgive me if I use an old-fashioned word here–exploitation.

Initially, Guiana’s indentured workers were treated pretty much the way slaves had been–as they were elsewhere, but I happened onto a small stash of detail about Guiana. Their contracts were for five years, and during that time they couldn’t leave the plantations where they worked. They were paid 1 shilling a day. I can’t tell you what a shilling’s buying power was, but the National Archives calls it a pitiful sum. 

Those who didn’t work were left to starve.

If they were found to have breached their contract in any way, they faced automatic penalties: two months in prison and a £5 fine. 

How many shillings in a pound? Twenty. So the fine was more than three months’ pay. 

A special magistrate in British Guiana wrote that the laborers were “with few exceptions . . . treated with great and unjust severity, by overwork and by personal chastisement.” And historian Hugh Tinker wrote that, “the decaying remains of immigrants were frequently discovered in cane fields.” 

Importing contract labour from India was suspended in 1840. They tried importing Europeans but couldn’t find enough willing people, and the plantation owners pleaded with the government for a new supply of labor. Freddy Stanley tried recruiting Chinese workers from Malacca and African workers from Sierra Leone, but again they couldn’t round up enough people and turned back to India, this time under an new act setting out minimum standards for housing, food, clothing, and pay. 

How well those standards were enforced is–in the absence of a source I didn’t manage to find–anyone’s guess. The plantations were a long way from governmental supervision, and that’s assuming that the government officials had the will to enforce standards. 

A hefty proportion of indentured labor involved Indian workers and the sugar industry, but the Transvaal gold mines brought 64,000 indentured workers from China, and in Australia the indentured workers were Aboriginal and from the South Sea islands.

 

A nasty little bit of economic and political information

In 1846, Britain got rid of a tariff that had kept the domestic price of sugar up and prevented non-British colonies from selling sugar cheaper than the stuff produced in British colonies. That lowered the cost inside Britain, making it a popular move, but it also meant that British colonies were competing against sugar produced by slave labor, which put pressure on the indenture system to be more like slavery. Not, I suspect, that plantation owners needed much of a push, but it’s worth mentioning all the same.

Doesn’t studying history make you feel good about your fellow humans?

 

Recruitment in India

Until 1858, India was run by the British East India Company, making it a huge country governed by a corporation from a much smaller country. 

Give yourself a minute to take that in.

Between 1834 and the end of World War I, India was Britain’s recruiting ground for indentured laborers. To put that in human terms, my father would have fought in World War I if his parents had agreed to sign for him–which fortunately for me (and him) they didn’t. It’s not much more than a hundred years ago. 

This is not ancient history. It’s not all that far outside of living memory.

Why was India such a fertile recruiting ground? The simple answer is desperation, poverty, famine. Land that had been in Indian hands had, with the country under British control, miraculously, found itself in the hands of British owners. Famine was no longer uncommon. 

Most recruits were from the lower castes, but not all. 

By way of an example, take the people who worked on the indigo plantations. In the off season, they’d migrate to towns and cities looking for work, and recruiters would pick them up, lie to them about where they were going, the length of the trip, and the work they’d be doing, and get them to sign a contract. Or since most of them couldn’t read, put their thumb prints on one, with no idea what it really said. Then they’d be held in depots until a ship was ready. 

They were called coolies, and if the word didn’t start out as an insult it became one quickly enough. 

Conditions at sea were bad enough that in 1856-57, 17% of the Indian workers travelling to the Caribbean died on the way. In 1870, 12% died on the way to Jamaica and to Mauritius. 

To understand the mindset of the people who established, ran, and profited from the system, consider what the recruitment firm Gillanders Arbuthnot & Co wrote to a planter who was considering using it. Its recruits, it said, had “few wants beyond eating, sleeping and drinking.” It said the Adivasi, the indigenous people of India, were “‘more akin to the monkey than the man.”

In the fifty years between 1860 and 1910, 150,000 indentured Indian laborers went to Natal–now part of South Africa–to work on the sugar plantations. So many indentured laborers went to Mauritius that the Indian community now accounts for two-thirds of the population.

They were promised pay, sometimes land at the end of their contract, and in some cases passage home. What their contracts promised would have varied over time, but one source says that the promises often weren’t met. 

 

Australia

Australia’s history is different but it borrowed the indenture system. Starting in 1863, it brought in some 62,000 South Sea Islanders to work on sugar plantations. Some went by choice and others were kidnapped, coerced, or lied to. Their conditions weren’t particularly different from slaves’. They were kept apart from the rest of the population and their languages were banned. Between malnutrition and exposure to European diseases, some 15,000 died within a year. 

The practice continued for forty years. Then in 1901 most of them were deported–and their deportation was funded by their own pay, which the Queensland government had appropriated.

 

The Kenya-Uganda Railway

Indian indentured laborers built the Kenya-Uganda Railway, and 7% died before their contract was up. Many tried to escape but were recaptured and imprisoned, and some had their contracts doubled to ten years.

Many contracts specified that workers would be returned home, and the majority did return, but some stayed, especially women who–according to one article–had left home after a disagreement with their parents and might not be welcomed back into the family.

 

The end of indentured labor

Throughout its history, the indenture system was under attack by the same people–or the same sorts of people–who’d campaigned against slavery and defended by the same sorts of people who’d defended slavery (including the write the novelist Anthony Trollope, for whatever that shippet of information’s worth). And it was under attack from indentured workers themselves, who went on strike, who fled, who–sorry, what’s the verb for staging an uprising? Uprose? They resisted in whatever ways they could. Unfortunately, although I can find references to all that, they’re light on the specifics.

It also came under attack by Indians from higher castes and classes, who found that in the colonies they were swept into the same category as indentured workers. 

Toward the system’s end, opinion in India was turning against it, and one reason it was ended was to improve Britain’s image there.

Of course–she added cynically–another factor was the sugar industry’s increased reliance on sugar beets instead of cane.

Britain formally abolished indentured labor in 1917, although it carried on for some years after that. The last ship carrying indentured laborers left for Mauritius in 1924.

By then, over a million Indians had been sucked into the system.

Fighting Covid: the useless gestures and the useful ones

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An article in a Canadian medical journal notes that the country’s Covid prevention advice hasn’t caught up with the current knowledge about how the disease spreads. It’s airborne, so the advice, the article says, should focus on ventilation, filtration, and better masks. 

Having recently been at a meeting where before going home we dutifully sprayed and wiped the furniture, even though it’s pointless–

Yeah. How many other people are ending meetings that way? It’s like sanitizing our hands when we walk into a shop. It’s not a useful way to keep Covid from spreading, but it’s basic politeness these days–one of those many meaningless gestures that you do to keep from scaring people.

Irrelevant photo: I wish I could tell you what this is. It’s one of a whole set of large white wildflowers that I’ve never been able to tell apart. They don’t look all that much alike, but somehow I just can’t sort out large white flowers.

A fair number of people seem to think of masks the same way, putting on masks only when other people come in, even though if they have any virus to share the breathing they did when they were alone in the room would go a long way toward sharing it.

At the meeting, we did at least open the windows, keep a decent distance, and wear masks, although not all the masks covered all the relevant body parts. You have to hope people do better with the placement of their underwear. 

As far as I know, Britain’s advice hasn’t caught up with what’s now known any better than Canada’s has.

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Someone I know likes to tell me, with great confidence, that face masks funnel air–along with whatever germs the wearer’s sporting–off to the sides and from there to whoever’s behind the wearer. 

Okay, when I say “likes,” what I mean is “seems to like,” basing that on how often she talks about it. Maybe it’s just that my caution annoys her. I have that effect on some people.

So allow me to smugly report on a new study that measured the leakage from the sides of everyday masks. These weren’t the surgical masks that are made to have a tight fit but the ones civilians buy and, with luck, wear. They reduced the escape of particles–and that would include the Covid virus if it’s present–by an average of 93% They reduce escape from the bottom by 91%, from the sides by 85%, and from the top by 47%.

The moral of this story is that if you’re worried about masks funneling the virus toward you, do not lie on top of a mask-wearer’s head. 

You’re welcome.

The protection’s best when both people are wearing masks.

Covid and kids

During the first half of 2020, no one had reliable information about Covid’s effect on kids. Early reports on the hospitalization rate among kids spanned a jaw-dropping range from 5.7% to 63%. Estimates of its impact ranged from “it’s no worse than the flu” to fears that kids’ immature immune systems would be overwhelmed.

What can I tell you? It was new on the scene and they were working with limited information. 

So now there’s a study of 242,000 kids and adolescents from five countries who’ve been diagnosed with Covid. It compares them with 2 million who’ve been diagnosed with the flu.

What do we now know?

Epidemiologist Talita Duarte-Salles said, “It was a relief to see that fatality was rare, but clearly both complications and symptoms showed the COVID-19 was no flu in children and adolescents.” To translate that (forgive me: I just have to), kids aren’t likely to die of it, but the symptoms and complications can be serious.

We’re switching sources here, so bear with me. I had a very useful article on this that I accidentally deleted and now can’t find, so I’ll slip backwards to a somewhat less useful one that came out in April. It has estimates for the number of kids who had Covid symptoms five weeks after they were diagnosed. 

The percentages clearly aren’t of all kids, and I’m reasonably sure it’s not of all kids diagnosed with Covid. Let’s put our chips on the number of kids who got symptomatic Covid. Five weeks after they were diagnosed, 12.9% of kids between 2 and 11 still had symptoms, as did 14.5% of kids between 12 and 15 and 17.!% of teenagers and young adults. That’s a bizarre set of age categories, since the last one includes one of the earlier ones plus a few other random folks. 

Don’t worry about it. Any statisticians who accidentally read Notes have long since fled.

Another study followed 129 children who’d had Covid and found that 52.7% had at least one symptom four months later.

Some of the individual stories are frightening. They’re typical–they’re rare–but they do happen and it’s important to know that. One nine-year-old developed long Covid that included severe fatigue, sensitive skin, painful rashes, headaches, and indigestion. She lost her senses of taste and smell. Another–also a nine-year-old–had slurred speech, tremors, and brain fog. He became so weak that he had to use first a walker and then a wheelchair.

Again, none of that is typical, but as the epidemiologist said, this is not the flu.

How long does Covid immunity last?

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This is still up for grabs, but the Covid vaccines–or some of them anyway–may not need yearly booster shots. Or may only need them every few years. 

To understand this, you have to know that the body’s immune system is a hierarchy.

Well, no, it isn’t really, but it’s a workable way to think of it. At the bottom are the antibodies, which swarm in and kill things, and they get most of the press because they fly flags and have marching bands and we notice that. But they don’t have long memories, so we have to worry: If the same enemy–in this case, Covid–comes back, will they recognize it?

Above the antibodies, though, are other bits of the immune system–plasma cells, memory B cells, memory T cells–and they have longer memories and they’re the bits of the system that crank up the antibodies, show them pictures, say, “That’s what the enemy looks like,” and send them out to kill and die.

It’s not a nice world out there. Or in here, on the inside of our bodies. 

Irrelevant photo: a poppy

Immunologists also have long memories, and they’ve been busy working out how long Covid immunity lasts, both after an infection and after vaccination. The answer depends on understanding the actions and interactions of all those different ranks. 

They’d also, I’m sure, hate my explanation of how this works.

The unpredictable element in all this is the rise of Covid variants. So far, they haven’t outrun our immune systems or the vaccines, but some variants do slow them down. 

The primary sign that a variant’s gotten faster than the vaccines will be if a whole lot of vaccinated people suddenly come down with Covid. 

I know, that’s not the way we’d like to get the news–a telegram would be better–but like I said, it’s not a nice world out there.

Assorted trials are underway, testing booster shots and testing the effect of mixing vaccines. It will be up to individual countries to decide if boosters are needed, but work’s underway in case they do.

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In the meantime, studies from northern Italy, which was the first part of Europe to be hit hard by Covid, say that immunity lasts at least a year and may last longer, only there hasn’t been time yet to find out. Reinfection is rare. But the experts are still urging people who had the disease to get vaccinated. It will boost their protection and make them more likely to resist variants. 

As for the vaccines, they’re protective for at least a year and possibly for a lifetime. 

Michel Nussenzweig, an immunologist at Rockefeller University, said, “People who were infected and get vaccinated really have a terrific response, a terrific set of antibodies, because they continue to evolve their antibodies,” Nussenzweig told The Times. “I expect that they will last for a long time.”

 

So that’s the good news out of the way. Let’s have some bad news for dessert.

The Delta variant (no I don’t know why we capitalize Delta; I do it because the papers do) is now the dominant U.K. variant. As many as 75% of the new U.K. cases may be Deltas. That’s the variant formerly known at the Indian variant, or B.1.617.2, but India changed its name to Delta and the variant’s followed along behind.

No, you really shouldn’t believe everything I say.

Annoying as the name changes are, it’s a good thing, given the human propensity for stupidity in the form of blaming other countries and peoples whatever goes wrong, that they’ve stopped naming variants after countries. Unfortunately, it’ll take some of us a while to catch up. 

So. Delta variant. Dominant strain in U.K. It seems to carry a higher risk of hospitalization (2.61 times higher) than the Alpha variant, formerly known as the Kent or British (or U.K, or English) variant. 

Sorting out the U.K.’s name is a constant problem, so I look forward to the time when the country changes its name to Alpha. It’ll be much simpler to write about. And since Alpha’s the first letter of the Greek alphabet, it should keep the nationalists happy.

Yay, Covid! We got there first!

Where were we?

The number of hospitalized Covid patients in Britain is small right now, as are the number of cases, but the number of cases is growing slowly. The worry is that this is the start of a trend.

Working against that is vaccination: 73% of the Delta cases are in people who haven’t been vaccinated. Two doses are a good protection, although not as good as against the Alpha variant. One does, though, is 17% less effective against the Delta variant. 

In the meantime, schools and colleges (if you’re American, British colleges stand somewhere between American high schools and American colleges) in England are responsible for a good deal of the spread. 

Why them? Partly because they collect a whole bunch of people who aren’t priorities for the vaccination programs–or even eligible for vaccines–and jam them together. Preferably in badly ventilated rooms where they nod off gently while trying to absorb important information. And also because the government lifted its mask mandate for secondary schools. That did affect primary school students because they were always considered too young to locate their noses and mouths. Adults are, demonstrably, still having trouble with that. 

Why did it lift the mandate? I’m still struggling with that one. The best I can do by way of an explanation is to suggest that they thought it would make people happy. Also possibly because they’re idiots. 

No, I don’t know. But they did, ignoring the complaints of teachers and school staff–or at least of the unions that represent them. 

That leaves repeated testing as the only way to control school outbreaks, and the number of tests (at least in secondary schools) seems to be decreasing. The government’s approved one of the vaccines for teenagers, but as far as I know that’s as far as things have gone.  

Again the number of cases isn’t huge. The fear, though, is that this is the beginning of a wave, not a few little splashes of water against the sand. It’s too early to tell.

 

So what’s the government doing? 

Well, it’s taken Portugal off its list of green countries and added it to the list of amber ones, meaning people coming into Britain from Portugal will now have to self-isolate when they get home. 

Self-Isolation? That’s quarantine on the honor system. Green and amber? They’re traffic lights. You know: Stop, go, look at the yellow light and get confused. 

All this matters because (a) the government made a lot of noise at one point about opening up foreign travel this summer and (b) some of the trashier newspapers made even more noise about it. We all want to be happy, happy, happy, so let’s declare the pandemic over.

In addition to moving Portugal off the green list, the government also moved seven countries from the amber list to the red one, so people coming from them will have to go into serious–and expensive–quarantine. 

But the story the country’s focused on isn’t the seven moves from amber to red but Portugal’s lone move from green to amber. The official explanation for it is that returning travelers risk bringing more variants home. 

So what variants is this preventing? The Delta variant–remember the Delta variant? The one that’s become dominant in Britain? Well, it’s picked up a mutation, one that’s happened before. It was seen in the South African variant (which came along too early to get itself a Greek letter). And that new mutation’s been seen in 12 cases in Portugal. 

It’s also been seen in 36 cases in Britain, so it might make more sense to quarantine travelers from Britain when they arrive in Britain but where’s the fun in that?

The last I heard, the mutation hadn’t been flagged as dangerous, although I wouldn’t say that’s definitive. Public Health England hasn’t tagged it a variant of concern, only a spike mutation of interest.

Actually, I’m in favor of being cautious about everything connected to Covid. The idea of promoting tourism right now is somewhere between stupid and criminally irresponsible. It’s the murky thinking that gets to me. First they crank people up about travel, then they try to keep out a mutation that’s already here. 

 

And what do we call the new mutation?

The new mutation is now being called–at least in Britain–the Nepal variant because the transport secretary, Grant Shapps, called it that in a press conference. Thanks, Grant. The don’t-blame-this-on-other-countries campaign appreciates your support. 

There is some marginal logic to linking it to Nepal, although it’s marginal enough that after I’d spent half an hour trying to explain it I looked at the hole I’d dug and gave up. It was pretty deep by then and I was worried about getting back out if I kept on. I’ve written to Nepal, suggesting that it change its name to Epsilon.

There’s no clear line between a mutation and a variant, so we don’t have to worry much about that.

 

Yeah, but what about the green list?

The countries left on the green list (last I checked) are Australia; Brunei; Falkland Islands; Faroe Islands; Gibraltar; Iceland; Israel; New Zealand; St Helena, Ascension, and Tristan da Cunha; Singapore; and South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands.

But any number of those countries aren’t accepting random British tourists, including Australia, New Zealand, Iceland, and the Falkland Islands. And Israel and Singapore sound less than thrilled about them, although I’m not sure that’s an outright ban. I should’ve done better research but I had to close the computer and feed the cat. As far as I can figure out, though, an awful lot of those green list countries are closed to British tourists.

It doesn’t sound like the list means much, does it? British tourists are welcome to come home from countries they can’t get into. Yes, friend, we’re on the other side of the looking glass here, and if you’ll pass around the slices of cake Alice will be happy to cut it as soon as you’re done. 

Think of the money those non-tourists will save by not going anywhere.

What happened after Britain abolished slavery?

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We’re living through a time when one part of Britain is talking about slavery’s role in making the country a world power and another part is accusing the first part of rewriting history and also of being politically correct and no fun at all. But we’re going to skip over the argument and look at the history itself. 

Britain abolished slavery before its former thirteen colonies and takes some official pride in that, and in the role of its abolitionists, but history’s always being rewritten, otherwise we could have one book on every topic and call it enough. So let’s look at one of the less acknowledged things the British Empire did after it abolished slavery. (That was in 1834, since you asked). Because the story of slavery doesn’t end with abolition. 

Screamingly irrelevant photo: Thrift. I have no idea why it’s called that.

 

The apprenticeship system

When slavery ended, Britain’s Caribbean colonies shifted to an apprenticeship system, which basically said to the slaves, Look, you’re now free, but you’re also so ignorant you need years-long apprenticeships to teach you the ways of freedom. During that time, of course, you’ll work for your former masters and get paid nothing. You don’t know how to handle money anyway. And your former masters will still be your masters, but this is different from slavery because–

Oh, let’s not worry about the details. You wouldn’t understand the subtleties.

Most of the sources I’ve read repeat the system’s rhetoric about getting the slaves used to freedom. It’s the justification was used at the time. One source, though–an academic paper–talks about it as a way for the slaves to buy their freedom from their masters by working forty-five unpaid hours a week for their former masters. That was the behind-the-scenes rhetoric. 

That would’ve been in addition to the money Britain paid slave owners as compensation for having let their property walk free. 

After their forty-five hour weeks, the former slaves could work for themselves or for someone who’d pay them. 

Field slaves would be apprenticed for six years and house slaves for four. 

Why the difference? Not because one group needed more training than the other but because the work of the field slave was more important to the economy. Sugar plantations were central both to the economies of both the colonies and Britain itself. Many a respectable British fortune came from the sugar plantations run by slave labor.

Former slave children under six were freed immediately. 

That’s good, right? 

Well, no, because if you give children under six enough time they become children over six, and as soon as that happened the kids entered into apprenticeships that would last not four years and not six years but until they were twenty-one. 

Many former slaves refused to work as apprentices, at which point the justice system, in the form of local magistrates, stepped in. And who were the local magistrates? People of stature in the community, of course, which is to say planters. Which is to say former slave owners–the people who’d lose money if the former slaves refused to shift quietly into the new system and work for free as apprentices. 

Magistrates could and did impose flogging–a punishment widely used under slavery–or a new punishment, the treadmill, which involved strapping a person to a bar so that their feet had to keep a drum rotating. If they didn’t keep it rolling, it would hit them, hard. A governmental commission sent from Britain to investigate conditions called it an instrument of torture.

Antigua and Bermuda skipped over the apprenticeship system–not for noble motives but because slave owners realized they could make more money by freeing their slaves immediately, paying them a very small daily wage, and leaving them to  feed and house themselves as best they could on the inadequate amount they were paid. Since sugar plantations dominated the economy, other jobs were somewhere between hard and impossible to come by and people were trapped. So slavery ended and–

Have you ever read about wage slavery and rolled your eyes at the overblown rhetoric? Antigua and Bermuda could make a person regret that eye roll. 

 

The end of the apprenticeship system

The apprenticeship system was abandoned early, in 1838, and the former slaves were granted their full freedom. That was due in part to the resistance that former slaves put up, which ranged from “disquiet” and “unrest” to full-scale rioting. Not a lot is written about that–at least not that I found–but at one point St. Kitts declared martial law. Much more is written about abolitionists who shifted over to campaign against the apprenticeship system, and they tend to get the credit for the system’s early end. To historians in Britain, they were more visible than the rebels, and more familiar, and they left a kind of documentation that the rebels couldn’t. 

In Jamaica, where land was going uncultivated, many freed slaves abandoned the plantations and took over what was considered waste land. In other parts of the Caribbean, though, there was no waste land to be had and no alternative to working on the plantations at whatever wage was offered. 

Yes, I do regret that eye roll.

When Covid proximity sensors go wrong

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Wanting to be responsible journalists–and responsible bureaucrats who are responsible for responsible journalists–the BBC bought proximity sensors in January. Thousands of them. They were to protect the newsroom staff during the pandemic. Because not everyone could work from home. Some of them had to show up, so they’d wear these gizmos and if anyone got too close to anyone, they’d scream.

Not the people, the sensors. 

It was a great plan, and it worked: The sensors screamed. Especially when people were recording. You know: “This afternoon in Birmingham–” 

“Nyeee-ah, nyeee-ah, nyee-ah.”

Take two.

“This aftern–”

“Nyeee-ah, nyeee-ah.”

Before long, most people had stopped using them. Not everyone, though, because one started smoking and threatened to set itself on fire. Why? No other sensors were being around to scream at and it lost its sense of purpose and became suicidal. 

Irrelevant photo: strawberry blossoms

A BBC spokesperson said staff were still using them.

Staff members stopped giggling long enough to say they weren’t. 

“We are surprised that a problem with a single electronic device is a news story,” the spokesperson said. 

Her or his proximity sensor said, “Nyeee-ah, nyeee-ah.”

Here at Notes, we aren’t surprised that a single sensor that entered a smoldering, screaming state of despair is a good story. We’ve all been there during this past year and a fraction. At least once. It spoke for us all.

 

Britain wonders if it’s out of the woods yet

June 1 was the first day since last summer that no Covid deaths were reported in Britain for twenty-four hours. But before we celebrate being out of the woods, let’s check in with the scientists peskily pointing to trees and saying, “Woods, people. If we have enough trees, that means we’re in the woods.”

What’s the problem? We do have an effective (although distinctly incomplete) vaccination campaign. We also have a new Covid variant that seems to spread faster than the dominant variant that used to scare the pants off us because it spread more rapidly than the one before it but that we now look back at nostalgically and think of as our old friend. 

Never mind if you didn’t entirely follow that. We can say the new variant’s scary and leave it at that. The day before we had no deaths, the country reported 3,000 new Covid cases for six days running. We hadn’t been at those levels since early April. 

So which way is the country going to tip? Herd immunity? Third wave?

Several experts that the Relevant Authorities don’t particularly want to hear from are sending out warnings. A third wave, they say, is likely. 

Nyeee-ah. Nyeee-ah. 

Martin McKee, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said he thinks the third wave had already started. 

“The current measures are not stopping cases rising rapidly in many parts of the country,” he said. “Unless there is a miracle, opening up further in June is a huge risk.”

Why June? The 21st is the still somewhat tentative target date for the next stage of opening up. 

Ravi Gupta, who’s on the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group–called Nervtag, said, “If things go as I think they are going to go, we will likely end up with a third wave. It will be a big wave of infections and there will be deaths and severe illness.”

All waves, he reminded us, start small. 

My best guess is that the government will open the country up regardless of the warnings, regardless of what’s happening as the date comes closer. Because the business community’s pushing for it. Because there’s money to be made. Because they want to deliver good news. Because they seem to be wired for it. 

I would love to be wrong about this.

 

Renaming the Covid variants

The World Health Organization is renaming the Covid variants to avoid calling them by names no one outside the field can remember (B.1.617.2, anyone?) or after the places they were first identified, which has led people to blame them on the places. So the former Kent (or UK, or British) variant is now Alpha. The former South African variant is Beta. The former Brazilian variant is Gamma. And the former Indian variant is Delta.

It follows from this that the world will have to beat this beast before the Greek alphabet runs out of letters. It has twenty-four. Get with it, people.

Mask mandates and individual liberties

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The number of in-flight clashes between passengers and airline crews in the U.S. increased lately. 

Clashes over what? Masks. Safety instructions. The crews infringing on passengers’ individual liberties and inalienable right to assault flight attendants.

The FAA–that’s the Federal Aviation Administration–logged 1,300 reports between February and some unspecified time, presumably in early May. Before that, it took ten years to collect that many incident reports. So either there’s something in the snack packets they’re handing out or some portion of the population’s gone feral.

What happens to airline passengers who tear their masks off, throw their mashed potatoes, and hurl miniature liquor bottles at flight attendants? They’re fined, and the fines can be hefty. Four people are facing fines of $70,000 each. (They have thirty days to appeal, which is why the wording there is a bit weasley.)  An Alaska state senator was banned from Alaska Airlines flights for “violating [the airline’s] mask policies,” which I think translates to refusing to wear a mask. Or possibly eating it in mid-flight. Because sometimes a person just has to stand up for her liberties. 

In spite of the recent changes in mask mandates, masks are still required on planes and in airports in the U.S. 

Irrelevant photo: Yet another rhododendron. They stay in bloom for a long time. It’s not my fault that I’ve been posting a lot of them.

What else has increased?

The number of British children swallowing magnets has grown  fivefold in the past five years. That probably means five times as many kids swallowed magnets in the past year as swallowed them five years ago, but you can’t trust me around numbers, which is why I’m tiptoeing through the words.

In about half the cases, the kids need surgery because the magnets didn’t find their own way out.

How do we explain the increase? Are magnets more attractive than they were five years back? Are they coming out in new flavors or is someone advertising them to kids on the cartoon shows? Are the kids swallowing one magnet and before they know what’s happened it’s convinced others to jump in and join it? You know what magnets are like.

The most likely answer is None of the Above. Kids are also swallowing coins and button batteries. This is why the relevant experts spend so much time fussing at parents about kids’ nutrition. Get them to eat their broccoli and it’ll distract them from those lovely magnets. If nothing else, they won’t have the time to look through the cabinets and kitchen drawers.

Toys that use magnets are legally required to display a warning, but the thing about kids young enough to swallow them is that for the most part they can’t read. The oldest kid to have swallowed a magnet was sixteen. He or she has an excuse, though: Laws be damned, lots of manufacturers don’t display the warning.

So would a warning stop a sixteen-year-old who wanted to swallow a magnet? All my instincts say no. I was sixteen once. Tell me not to swallow a magnet and I just might’ve swallowed it to prove my point. Whatever my point would have been. It could easily not have been clear to me either.

It’s when kids swallow multiple magnets that the situation, in all seriousness, gets dangerous. So kids, if you’re going to swallow a magnet, please, it’s one to a customer. 

Have you ever wondered why my career in public health messaging didn’t go anywhere?

 

 

And what’s decreased?

A German car parts maker called Mahle is working on an electric car engine that doesn’t use rare earth metals. In other words, this may be a sustainable engine that’s actually sustainable. 

It also doesn’t use magnets. Hands up: Who knew that the current crop of electric cars does use magnets? 

Okay, you’re smarter than me. I didn’t have a clue. If my keys start flying out of my pocket and gluing themselves to cars as I walk past, I’ll know why. 

In addition to being more sustainable, the new design is more efficient and longer lasting. It uses (I’m going to quote here, because I haven’t the faintest fucking idea what they’re talking about) “powered coils in its rotor, transferring power to the spinning rotors using induction, which means they never have to touch and that the motor has no surfaces that will wear out.”

The won’t wear out part I understand completely. Also the not touching part, and the keys not flying out of my pocket part. Also the part about the rare earth metals. Because the thing about rare earth metals is that–well, see, they’re rare. 

Do you ever have one of those days when you feel like you have to explain everything?

The cars should be less expensive than the current breed and the batteries should last longer. They’re expected to go into production in two and half years. And if you feel an itch to explain that business with the rotors, you don’t need to. The truth is I almost understand it, which is enough for me to get buy. It’s just that I don’t trust myself to turn it into anything more reader friendly.

 

And what’s happened that has nothing to do with the arbitrary theme I’ve imposed?

Somebody broke into Arundel Castle, in West Sussex, recently and stole about £1 million worth of goodies before the cops got there.( They tripped a burglar alarm on the way in but were fast enough for that not to matter.) I’m not sure you need to know this, but in case you do, the castle’s in West Sussex and is–for reasons I’m not going to try to understand, never mind explain–the ancestral seat of the Dukes of Norfolk. Which is a whole ‘nother place from Sussex. Maybe it’s traditional among the English aristocracy to sit their ancestral seats in places other than the sites cited in their titles. How would I know? 

What you do need to know is that if anyone tries to sell you a golden set of rosary beads, they might not be as good a buy as they seem. They belonged to Mary Queen of Scots–she was clutching them when she was executed–and will be pretty recognizable. 

 

Indentured servitude and slavery in Britain & its colonies

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Now that discussions about structural racism are more widespread than they used to be, every so often I see someone mentioning that whites were brought to the New World as indentured servants. If you listen carefully, you’ll hear a whisper underneath the argument. It says, “We had a hard time too but we’ve gotten over it. So what’s your problem?”

Sometimes you don’t have to listen all that carefully. The whisper gets a little shouty.

So let’s look at the condition of indentured servants in the American colonies. I know I’m supposed to be doing British history here, but I’m limiting myself to the British colonies, so I don’t even have to cheat. 

Irrelevant photo: a rose

 

Indentured servants in Virginia

We’re talking about the seventeenth century, when indentured servants got to be that way by agreeing to a deal: passage to the New World in exchange for a fixed number of years working for a master–usually between four and seven years. During that time they got housed and fed and clothed and so-forthed. And they got worked–hard, with no choice about what they did or whether they did it. They didn’t get to leave. They didn’t get to choose who they worked for: Their contracts could be bought and sold, and they were. At the end of their contracts, though, they got a freedom package (also called freedom dues–take your choice). 

We’ll come back to that in a minute.

In the Virginia Colony, some half to two-thirds of the settlers arrived as indentured servants. By some estimates, half the European immigrants to the thirteen colonies came under indentures. That needs a time period tucked into it, but I don’t have one. Sorry. That’s what you get for reading a non-historian. 

People agreed to indentures for a variety of reasons. The first was that the passage to the New World was only slightly less affordable than a seat on the space shuttle. (I know; they’re not up for sale, but you get the picture.) 

The second was that at the end of the Thirty Years War England’s economy was depressed and both skilled and unskilled workers were desperate enough to take the gamble. Seven years’ work in exchange for meals and a new start someplace else? Sign me up.

The Thirty Years War? It ended in 1648 and lasted a nice, even thirty years. They’d have ended it sooner but were afraid of being sued for false advertising.

The third reason draws us into the understanding that the choice to enter indentured servitude wasn’t always made freely. A person might have a debt to pay off or be a prisoner who accepted indentured servitude as an alternative to a prison sentence.

The system was perfect for a country–that’s Britain–that was anxious to get rid of undesirables: beggars, debtors, convicts, “disorderly persons,” the defeated soldiers of this war or that. 

And the colonies were hungry enough for indentured servants that people were sometimes kidnapped and sold as indentured servants. Occasional undesirables from other countries were scooped up and indentured as well.

In Virginia, at least, the law gave some protection to indentured servants–or at least to some of them–but if you’d been one you might not have felt particularly protected. Indentured servants faced harsher punishments for breaking the law than non-indentured people did, and their contracts could be extended for serious infractions, which included running away or getting pregnant. 

That last infraction probably only applied to women, and it was perfectly reasonable. You know what women are like about getting pregnant. They’ll do it just to spite people.

On the other hand, if indentured servants survived first the passage and then the number of years they were contracted for, they got that freedom package, which would also have been specified in their contracts. It might have been 25 acres of land, a year’s worth of corn, tools, a cow, new clothes. Not all of those at once, I think–that’s a list of possibilities–but whatever they got might have put them in a better position than the newly arrived immigrant who’d spent everything on his or her passage.

Emphasis on might. That’s one historian’s take on it. Another one I’ve read disagrees. That’s the problem with the past. You can’t go back and check.

 

Categories of indentured servants

Indentured servants who’d entered into their contracts voluntarily were treated better than the ones who hadn’t. They could own property, testify in court, trade. The law offered some protection from abuse, although I don’t know how effective it was, but even so their contracts could be bought and sold without them having a word to say about it. 

The involuntary indentured servant faced a whole different system, although the details would vary from colony to colony. They might be forbidden to leave home without a pass. By way of punishment for running away, their indentures might be extended or their freedom dues reduced. They might be branded. In Maryland, they could be executed. 

At times, suspicious-looking characters who couldn’t prove they were free were arrested as runaways.

Mark Snyder, in his paper on the education of indentured servants in colonial America, counts the experience of indentured servitude as dismal and the success stories of those who served out their indentures as few and far between.

 

Apprenticeship

How was indentured servitude different from apprenticeship? The most obvious difference is that apprentices were children and indentured servants, adults. The apprentice was bound to a master craftsperson and couldn’t leave but was owed an education in the craft. The indentured servant was there to work and presumably knew enough of a craft, whether skilled or unskilled, to be made use of. The two systems overlap, though. Both apprentices and indentured servants were bound by a contract. Both had, at least theoretically, agreed to the deal–or in the case of an apprentice, a parent or some other adult had agreed for them. 

But apprenticeship had set the pattern that indentured servitude followed.

 

Slavery

The first African slaves were brought to Virginia in 1619 (the colony was founded in 1606), and initially the law didn’t have a category for them and they were sold as indentured servants. But they hadn’t entered into a contract–they’d been kidnapped from Africa and then stolen from Portuguese ships by privateers. 

Some of that first group of slaves did eventually become free, but not all. Even the number of people in the group is vague–twenty to thirty. Some fell out of recorded history, but in 1640 one became visible when was sentenced to a lifetime of slavery for rebelliousness. What form that rebelliousness took I don’t know. He was called John Punch, his original name having been hung, drawn, and quartered. Even then slaves were separated from their histories, their languages, and their names.

While they were still (legally speaking) indentured servants, any children they had were born free, but after Virginia’s first slave laws were passed in 1661 a court ruled that children born to enslaved mothers were the property of the slave owner. 

Massachusetts passed its first slave laws earlier than Virginia, in 1641. Massachusetts later became a center of anti-slavery sentiment and organization, but initially it was allowed slavery, as all thirteen colonies did. It didn’t abolish slavery until 1783.

With these new laws, landowners now had a source of labor that didn’t walk free in four to seven years, that didn’t have to be given land and tools and whatevers, and that didn’t have the small legal protections of indentured servants. And whose children were pure profit.

Basically, slavery was more profitable and indentured servitude was on its way out. And since slaves were a visibly distinct group, this quickly became a race-based caste system, which wove itself so deeply into the culture that–at least to many people who weren’t on the wrong end of it–it seemed like the natural order of things.

 

Finding the line between slavery and indentured servitude

Now let’s take a quick look at England in 1659, when Oliver Cromwell was the Lord Protector. [Oops. For a correction that dates and deaths and Cromwells, see below, in the comments.] The king–the one who came before Cromwell–was dead. The king-in-waiting was alive but sulking because he wanted a throne and couldn’t have it yet. And a group of royalist former soldiers had petitioned parliament: 

Four years earlier, they’d been sent to Barbados–an English colony, even if it’s not one we’ve been following–as indentured servants after having taken part in a failed royalist uprising. They complained that in spite of the assurances they were given their condition was, essentially, slavery. They were sold for more than half a ton of sugar each and were put to work in the sugar mills and furnaces.

Parliament debated their petition. One MP argued that indentured servants were “civilly used” and had horses to ride. Most of the work, he said, was done by Black slaves and so (he didn’t need to say) that was okay. 

Another–one of parliament’s leading republicans–argued that the petitioners had been treated barbarously. A third objected to the buying and selling of men, but only when it applied to white ones. That race-based caste system had already taken root. And a fourth reminded the house that the men had all agreed to be sent to the colonies. 

After a day’s debate, nothing was resolved and, in a triumph of parliamentary process, the issue was forgotten. 

When slavery was finally abolished in most of the British empire, in 1834, the freed slaves were not compensated as indentured servants had been. But the slaveowners were, for the property they’d lost.

Britain borrowed £20 million–about 5% of the country’s gross domestic product–for that compensation. According to the Treasury, the country only finished paying off the loan in 2015. 

By 1834, as you will have already figured out, the thirteen colonies had become the United States and gone their–or its–own way. The U.S. didn’t free its slaves until 1863, although in practice freedom was slow in coming and didn’t reach Texas until 1865. As for compensation, some land was distributed to former slaves under an army field order, and the army lent the new landowners some mules, but the program was reversed under President Johnson, who followed Lincoln, and the land was returned to the former slave owners.. 

That was the end of any compensation to former slaves in the U.S. and it’s why Spike Lee calls his movie production company Forty Acres and a Mule. 

The story of indentured servitude continues when British colonies looked around for a source of cheap labor to replace slaves, but we won’t follow it there, at least in this post.

 

Is it safe for vaccinated people to go maskless?

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In the US, the Centers for Disease Control announced that it’s safe for people who’ve been fully vaccinated to dance through the world naked–

Sorry. Not naked. Maskless. Which after a year and more of pandemic feels like the same thing. So this might be a good time to ask, What the hell’s going on? 

Let’s turn to an article in the Conversation that breaks it down manageably. It’s not a long article or a difficult one, and it’s well worth reading, because I’m going to boil it down until all that’s left is a thick syrup.

First, the vaccines we have for Covid are more effective than anyone had the right to expect. Much more effective. But they–or at least most of them–don’t provide sterilizing immunity. (There’s a chance one does but we’re not there yet.) 

To translate that, they don’t stop the virus from entering our systems, they only stop them from getting us sick. That’s less than ideal because it leaves open the possibility that we can pass on the disease.

Irrelevant photo: cornflowers

At the moment, it looks like the vaccines make fully vaccinated people less likely to spread the disease, but the numbers aren’t in yet. They’re outside, running around in the wet grass and refusing to come in for dinner. Or supper. Or whatever you call that meal. And Covid numbers are particularly hard to call home. It has to do with the disease’s habit of spreading while people don’t have symptoms.

Never mind that, though. What we need to know is that it’s hard to make those numbers behave and that scientists are working on it and that dinner’s going to be cold. Nothing’s certain, but a couple of studies hint at fully vaccinated being able to spread the disease–which means they’re able to spread new, more infectious variants. 

That is highly inconvenient but it doesn’t mean that vaccination’s pointless. Vaccination protects the vaccinated person, and it may mean they’re less likely to spread the disease. Less likely isn’t the same thing as incapable of, but it’s an improvement over what we had at this time last year.

The article (remember the article?) ends by saying, “The . . . relaxed guidelines on masking are meant to reassure vaccinated people that they are safe from serious illness. And they are. But the picture is less clear-cut for the unvaccinated who interact with them. Until near herd immunity against COVID-19 is achieved, and clear evidence accumulates that vaccinated people do not spread the virus, I and many epidemiologists believe it is better to avoid situations where there are chances to get infected. Vaccination coupled with continued masking and social distancing is still an effective way to stay safer.”

Boiled down to a thick syrup, that says masks still make sense. 

 

An update on viruses and human DNA

A study published in the Journal of Virology found no evidence that Covid integrates its genetic material into human DNA. An earlier study had found it doing that in petri dishes, but in real life–

Okay, think of this as computer dating. You exchange a few messages with someone, maybe you have a Zoom date. You establish that they can hold a coherent conversation and that they’re not a cat (that’s either good or bad, depending on who you are and what your preferences happen to be). Then you meet and think, I can’t spend an hour with this person, never mind my life. 

That’s what it was like for the Covid virus. In the petri dish, mingling genetic materials looked like a good idea. In person though? 

Nope. 

Some viruses do fall in love with us, and human DNA is a palimpsest of useless bits of genetic material left behind by bugs we danced a couple of numbers with back–oh, it might’ve been as early as when life was simple and we still had hairy bodies. The bits of genetic code don’t make us sick. They don’t make us better. They just sit there remembering old times.

That integration is called a chimeric event. And a palimpsest is something with layers of meaning, buried history, like a canvas that’s been painted over but the old brushwork is still there, under the surface. That bit of not particularly useful knowledge comes to us courtesy of the Cambridge Dictionary. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/palimpsest

For anyone who’s spooked by the idea that MRNA vaccines might integrate themselves into our DNA, this new study should be good news: Covid doesn’t seem to love us. But for anyone trying to figure out why some people test positive for Covid long after they’ve gotten rid of the infection, it may not be good news. Chimeric events had been suggested as an explanation. Take that away and we’re left with the possibility that they might be getting reinfected and the question of whether they continue to be infectious.

 

How to vaccinate 108% of your population

The island of Nauru has injected 108% of its adult population with at least one dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

How’d they do that? They included foreign visitors, coming up with a total of  7,392 people. The island has been free of the virus, but every visitor brought the risk of an outbreak, so this comes as a real relief.

 

Online gamers researching Covid

Thanks to game designers embedding a citizen science project inside a game called EVE online, players are helping researchers learn about Covid and the immune system. The idea is to look at the blood cells of people who have Covid and eventually sort out why some people get severe cases and how Covid makes us sick. 

Thousands of gamers have been looking for patterns in groups of cells and have fed 120 million data submissions into Project Discovery. That amounts to decades of data analysis, and each submission also teaches the program to learn the process so that it can be automated in the future. 

The game’s popular, something I can prove by telling you that I’ve never heard of it.

How’s the new Covid variant affecting Britain?

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If nothing changes before June 21, England will lift all its restrictions on social gatherings. 

Unless, of course, it doesn’t. Because since that date was penciled in, something has changed: We’ve got a new Covid variant and anyone who’s even marginally awake is nervous about it. On the other hand, anyone who’s even marginally in government is nervous about not ending the Covid restrictions. Because the national mythology of the moment is that We’re on Top of This.

With capital letters.

The new variant’s the one that’s devastating India, although it’s up for grabs still whether its impact is because of conditions in India or because of the variant itself. It’s also up for grabs whether it’s turning into Britain’s dominant variant because it spreads more easily or because it’s been lucky. 

Irrelevant photo: bluebells

I’m getting ahead of myself, though. I said England would lift the last restrictions if nothing changes, but the government may already have changed its mind about the parts of the country where the variant’s spreading most quickly. 

Or it may not have.

You have to love this government. It’s a gift to satirists and wiseacres everywhere. 

What’s happened is that the government website changed its Covid recommendations but did it quietly, with none of the usual trumpeting and drumming and press releasing. No one made an announcement. No one told local governments that things were changing. 

No one told local residents. It didn’t even call out the morris dancers. And nothing happens in this country without morris dancers.

You can see already how effective the changes are likely to be.

The website now carries advice for Bedford, Blackburn, Bolton, Burnley, Hounslow, Kirklees, Leicester, and North Tyneside. Stare at that list long enough and you’ll figure out that it’s dangerous to live in a town or city that starts with a B.

But never mind that. What’s the advice? Don’t enter or leave those areas unless you really, really have to. And if you  live in one of them, don’t meet people indoors unless you really, really have to. And get tested. And to get vaccinated. And to keep 2 meters away from people unless you share a kitchen table with them or have included them in that imaginary relationship called a bubble, into which you may or may not be able to fit a kitchen table.

Is that just friendly advice or is it a legal requirement? Initially, it wasn’t clear, but the government’s now said it’s just advice. You should feel free to ignore it if you want, because if the variant causes a spike the government will need someone to blame and there you’ll be, in all your beauty and convenience.  

 

How worried should we be about the variant?

The chief medical officer of Wales says we should be worried. Even though the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines are effective against it, they seem to be less effective than they are against the Kent variant. And they’re noticeably weaker if you’ve only had one dose of vaccine instead of two. 

All of that is to the extent that data’s available. 

The votes aren’t all in yet even on whether the new variant spreads more quickly than the Kent variant–the one we used to worry about because it spreads more quickly than the one it replaced. But this isn’t one of those competitions where the audience gets to vote. We have to wait for the judges and they don’t like to just pick a side and stick with it. They want information. 

You know what scientists are like. Fussy, fussy, fussy. So don’t turn off your TV set just yet.

In the meantime, Public Health England says that 12.5% of the close contacts of a person with the new variant will get infected. For the Kent variant, that was 8.1%. That’s called the secondary attack rate.

No, I’d never heard of it either.

That makes it look like it spreads more easily, but we haven’t gotten to the buts yet. 

  • But they have compared the vaccination status of those contacts.
  • But they have compared how close those close contacts are. 

Once the buts get factored in, the variant may not be quite as transmissible as it looks right now, but the early signs are that we should pay attention to this. Even if it’s not quite as bad as it looks, it could still be pretty damn bad. 

*

One of the things that worries me is that government actions are weighted toward avoiding the kind of serious illness that clogs hospitals and threatens to collapse the National Health Service. I don’t advocate an onslaught of serious Covid, but I’m very aware of the dangers of milder Covid, and of long Covid, and of isolated cases of Covid. I’d like us to avoid them too if anyone’s taking orders, thanks. I’m not happy about avoiding only the worst outcomes.

 

The political side of it all

A screwup in the test and trace system (or the £37 billion test and trace system, as the paper where I found this reminds me) might have opened a door for the new variant when it was still sampling the air in the country and deciding whether to settle here. A coding error meant that information about positive cases didn’t get passed to local authorities, so they couldn’t follow up on them. 

Did that make a difference? We’ll probably never know but it seems like it would. For three weeks, some 700 people, plus the people they shared a kitchen table, bubble, or work changing room with, weren’t contacted, so unless they got actively sick they felt free to float through the world shedding germs.

The number of missing cases was highest in one of those areas starting with a B, Blackburn with Darwen, which has one of the biggest outbreaks, but it also affected other places starting with B, including Blackpool, Bristol, Bath, and York.

Sorry: Byork. 

The government assures us that the screwup only lasted a short time and it handed out large if irrelevant numbers related to the number of people it had traced. 

Go back to sleep. Everything’s fine. 

*

Meanwhile, a government minister is urging people not to go to Spain unless they really, really want to. And I mean really seriously badly want to.

Okay, what she actually said was without an “urgent family reason and so on,” but my version is what people who really seriously badly want to go will hear, because Spain’s lifted its restrictions on visiting Brits and Britain’s put Spain on the amber list of countries–the ones that aren’t recommended but where no one’s going to do anything to stop you going if you really seriously think you have a compelling reason, such as wanting to eat paella. 

When I say no one’s going to stop you, though, what I really mean is that no one’s going to stop you unless the situation changes while you’re there and you come home to find that you have to go into a very expensive quarantine. But no one ever thinks that’ll happen to them. 

*

In spite of the new variant, England lifted its mask mandate for school kids. Interestingly enough, a pre-print report from Public Health England included data on the spread of the new variant in the schools.

In the final edition, that page had vanished. 

Cue accusations of political meddling.

Cue denials of political meddling. 

Cue end of post.