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Coronavirus - the new strain XXI

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Seanm said:
South Africa has done the right thing here: seemingly total and timely transparency in full awareness that the consequences are likely to be discrimination and isolation. The world’s watching: if restrictions aren’t matched - at least! - by support then other countries won’t make the same mistake.

https://twitter.com/tuliodna/status/1463911554538160130?s=21

“Busy day on B.1.1.529 - a variant of great concern - The world should provide support to South Africa and Africa and not discriminate or isolate it! By protecting and supporting it, we will protect the world! A plea for billionaires and financial institutions.”

The UK’s response is likely to be border theatre: both punitive and completely ineffective. Covid celebrities whose first instinct is to call for isolation in this context have learned nothing and don’t GAF.
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It may be as that only solution is a big one - we have to vaccinate the whole world, with a vaccine that stops transmission - we don’t have the vaccine and the world is big and Pfizer want to make a profit.

And if that’s right, what happens politically and economically in the interim, as the transmission stopping vaccine is being developed and then rolled out?
 
mandryka said:
It may be as that only solution is a big one - we have to vaccinate the whole world, with a vaccine that stops transmission - we don’t have the vaccine and the world is big and Pfizer want to make a profit.

And if that’s right, what happens politically and economically in the interim, as the transmission stopping vaccine is being developed and then rolled out?
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Well, on past and present form it looks like being quite grim whatever it is. U.K. has acted very quickly to put, what, 6 African countries on the red list? To lots of clapping and honking from the liberal press. Nothing like closing borders to demonstrate strength and decisiveness.

But what’s the plan here? If it’s as bad as it looks there’ll be no stopping it: the best you can hope for is that you buy some time. But for what, vaccination? We’re already vaccinated!
 
mandryka said:
Numbers -- this is from the latest ZOE presentation. Better results implying better management I guess.

Capture.jpg
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I'm sorry but this doesn't really tell us much by way of who exactly is getting vaccinated.

I repeat my question, why isn't the booster jab being rolled out in exactly the same was as the first dose? Surely the highest at risk people haven't changed any?

Regards

Richard
 
Seanm said:
But what’s the plan here? If it’s as bad as it looks there’ll be no stopping it: the best you can hope for is that you buy some time. But for what, vaccination? We’re already vaccinated!
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If this mutation has jumped the vaccine then no one is vaccinated. We would be back to square one, and if that’s the case it makes sense to learn from successful countries such as New Zealand rather than total cluster&*b*s like Little Brexitland. It obviously makes sense to stop the thing getting in until we understand exactly what it is. Surely the past two years have taught us that. The problem is this government is just so useless and corrupt the border will be porous.

PS I really don’t understand why the the fringe far-left go full-Trump anti-science on borders and masks.
 
Surely the impact of the virus can be reduced if countries do something instead of letting 'er rip. It's a terrible strategy for many reasons and it affects not just people in your country, but across the globe.

Based on total number infected, the top five countries are the US, India, Brazil, the UK and Russia. The UK is in fourth place for COVID cases per 1,000. It's in seventh for total number dead (officially), and 15th for deaths per 1,000. Whatever can be done to limit the spread and impact of the virus, it's fair to say that Boris didn't do it particularly well.

Joe
 
Tony L said:
If this mutation has jumped the vaccine then no one is vaccinated. We would be back to square one, and if that’s the case it makes sense to learn from successful countries such as New Zealand rather than total cluster&*b*s like Little Brexitland. It obviously makes sense to stop the thing getting in until we understand exactly what it is. Surely the past two years have taught us that. The problem is this government is just so useless and corrupt the border will be porous.

PS I really don’t understand why the the fringe far-left go full-Trump anti-science on borders and masks.
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Agreed. I really struggle to work out the logic in wanting to actively encourage the import of a new variant to this or any other country's shores just so as that country doesn't upset another nation over some travel restrictions. Is it really better that all countries welcome it with open arms, give it freedom of the cities all the while uttering the phrase 'Blessed are the fruits' as they all slide inexorably back to where they were in March 2020. No, I don't think it is!
 
Tony L said:
If this mutation has jumped the vaccine then no one is vaccinated. We would be back to square one, and if that’s the case it makes sense to learn from successful countries such as New Zealand rather than total cluster&*b*s like Little Brexitland. It obviously makes sense to stop the thing getting in until we understand exactly what it is. Surely the past two years have taught us that. The problem is this government is just so useless and corrupt the border will be porous.

PS I really don’t understand why the the fringe far-left go full-Trump anti-science on borders and masks.
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Are you seriously calling me a Trumpist while chanting Build the Wall? And again: the science is not cut and dry on this! Looking at discussion tonight epidemiologists and others are very far from being united behind this kind of hair-trigger border closure. If your sense of the science is guided largely by the likes of Pagel then you have a very skewed view of things: these guys are media campaigners first and scientists a very distant second.

I get the logic of acting quickly while we gather info but you have to look at context and at costs and benefits. If it’s really that transmissible then it’s in lots of other places so you need full border closure to buy more than a little time. It won’t be managed effectively. It will have a big impact on the countries in question and will deter other countries from reporting variants in the future.

It won’t fully escape the vaccine because vaccines aren’t on/off like that. There’s no more effective vaccine in the pipeline as far as I know. We are not New Zealand so even if it’s not already here zero-Nu is not an option. So what’s the plan?

Border theatre is the plan!

By the way most “fringe far leftists” in this country have bought into the zero Covid cult. It’s very dispiriting.
 
Thread on likely effects of Nu variant on antibodies - much of it beyond me of course but I get this, and like it:

“Importantly, this does *not* mean Nu variant will fully escape vaccine- or infection-elicited antibodies. @PaulBieniasz @theodora_nyc have shown takes many many mutations to fully escape neutralization (nature.com/articles/s4158…), & there are also T-cells, non-neut Abs, etc. (5/n)”

https://twitter.com/jbloom_lab/status/1464005690775654401?s=21
 
Seanm said:
It won’t fully escape the vaccine because vaccines aren’t on/off like that. There’s no more effective vaccine in the pipeline as far as I know. We are not New Zealand so even if it’s not already here zero-Nu is not an option. So what’s the plan?
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It doesn’t have to fully escape the vaccine before it becomes a great danger, a reduction of of 50% vaccine efficacy will lead to far greater severe illness and long term health complications that will overpower our existing strained health care capabilities in this country, I hope they haven’t mothballed those nightingale treatment centres. MRNA coronavirus vaccines can be designed and engineered in a matter of days but would take months of testing before being able to be scaled up for immunisation purposes.

Keep it out at all costs, and jump on any transmission through an effective track n’ trace system (unfortunately I have very little faith in this), unless we do all we can to limit transmission/infection/mutation we will forever be 2 steps behind this rapidly evolving virus.
 
Tony L said:
PS I really don’t understand why the the fringe far-left go full-Trump anti-science on borders and masks.
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Because they would sooner 'stick it to the man', than protect themselves. There is little practical difference between the far left and the far right.
 
tiggers said:
Agreed. I really struggle to work out the logic in wanting to actively encourage the import of a new variant to this or any other country's shores just so as that country doesn't upset another nation over some travel restrictions. Is it really better that all countries welcome it with open arms, give it freedom of the cities all the while uttering the phrase 'Blessed are the fruits' as they all slide inexorably back to where they were in March 2020. No, I don't think it is!
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A test of how bad this variant is will be how quickly it spreads, just as we saw with Delta in India and then here. I suspect that it has been on the loose for quite a while and the apparent rapid spread is actually discovery rather that 24 hour doubling. It has been found in the Far East too I thought I read yesterday. So it'll be "everywhere" already owing to lax travel arrangements - if you don't do pcr and quarantine then you have no chance to catch it or to slow it down and buy time. LTF is pointless. So it'll likely be in the UK already - sequencing has a 2 week lag. Lets hope a 3rd dose will be sufficient but we need time to vaccinate the 12-15s with a 2 dose, start on the 5-11s and boost the rest of the adults since it's unlikely that Nu will evade vaccines completely. They could have been well on the way wth this of course but haven't they done a great job!
 
Joe P said:
Surely the impact of the virus can be reduced if countries do something instead of letting 'er rip. It's a terrible strategy for many reasons and it affects not just people in your country, but across the globe.

Based on total number infected, the top five countries are the US, India, Brazil, the UK and Russia. The UK is in fourth place for COVID cases per 1,000. It's in seventh for total number dead (officially), and 15th for deaths per 1,000. Whatever can be done to limit the spread and impact of the virus, it's fair to say that Boris didn't do it particularly well.

Joe
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According to Worldometers the UK is in 18th place for Covid cases per million just after the USA. But these are unreliable stats in most countries IMO.
And 30th for deaths per million. Almost as unreliable.
But UK Govt could certainly have done better. If the covert objective has always been herd immunity a new variant might negate that.
 
The Royal College surveyed A&E departments across the UK between 8 and 14 November, receiving responses from 70 of about 230 units.

During that week:

  • 94% of clinical directors said that ambulances had been held outside their buildings at some point before patients could be taken into the hospital
  • 61% said ambulances were being forced to queue every day
  • About half of emergency departments said care had been provided to patients in non-medical areas such as corridors every day
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-59422292
 
gavreid said:
A test of how bad this variant is will be how quickly it spreads, just as we saw with Delta in India and then here. I suspect that it has been on the loose for quite a while and the apparent rapid spread is actually discovery rather that 24 hour doubling. It has been found in the Far East too I thought I read yesterday. So it'll be "everywhere" already owing to lax travel arrangements - if you don't do pcr and quarantine then you have no chance to catch it or to slow it down and buy time. LTF is pointless. So it'll likely be in the UK already - sequencing has a 2 week lag. Lets hope a 3rd dose will be sufficient but we need time to vaccinate the 12-15s with a 2 dose, start on the 5-11s and boost the rest of the adults since it's unlikely that Nu will evade vaccines completely. They could have been well on the way wth this of course but haven't they done a great job!
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PCR is an entry requirement in South Africa and Hong Kong. It didn’t help them!
 
mandryka said:
PCR is an entry requirement in South Africa and Hong Kong. It didn’t help them!
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I meant to the UK, pcr and the ability to sequence is vital but they caved into to pressure from the airlines. This is looking like it probably originated in SA but time will tell
 
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