Strain B1.1.529

[Exfarmer]

I've had it & the signals no better yet!

Yes same here

 

[Bootneck]

I actually agree with you. No point letting fear ruin the rest of your life, even if you are a cancer sufferer, like several of my friends. It is important to live on while we can, and make the best of it. And this is actually what 'getting on and living with it' looks like at this moment in time.

In some parts of life you can and will choose your mitigations, if any, and in other parts you won't choose, because the public health authority has advised that you unreasonably increase the risk to friends like the cancer survivors.

For example, my church denomination, on consultation with the PHA, voluntarily reinstated mask wearing in services last night. No one gains financially from that in any way. No healthy person is likely to be delighted about that change, but my cancer friends likely will. And that's what living with this looks like for the time being. Along with other well known mitigations, it's hoped that it increases the safety of sharing in the experience for my cancer friends, and is relatively little sacrifice for the strong/foolhardy.

The companies making and supplying masks obviously make money from that ridiculous decision.

 

[BrianV]

Covid: Dozens test positive on SA-Netherlands flights​

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• Coronavirus pandemic

IMAGE SOURCE, REUTERS
Sixty-one people who arrived in Amsterdam on two flights from South Africa have tested positive for Covid-19, Dutch officials say.
They have been placed in isolation at a hotel near Schiphol airport.
They were among some 600 passengers held for several hours after arrival while they were tested for the virus.
The Dutch authorities are carrying out further testing to see if there are any cases of Omicron, named on Friday as a variant of concern by the WHO.
The variant was first reported to the World Health Organization in South Africa on 24 November.
In the last few hours many countries around the world have restricted travel from the southern African region.
Meanwhile the Netherlands is one of several European countries struggling to contain record numbers of infections.
A partial lockdown will be extended on Sunday, with all hospitality and cultural venues forced to close between 17:00 and 05:00, at least until 19 December.

'Kept waiting for hours'​

The flights by Dutch national carrier KLM from Johannesburg arrived at 10:30 and 11:00 local time (09:30 and 10:00 GMT) on Friday.
The Dutch government had by then already restricted travel from the region because of the new variant and arranged for the passengers to be tested and isolated.

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Think we can safely assume the new variant is here & spreading, the Dutch acted quickly, our lot advise travellers to self isolate once they get home after travelling on buses & trains, kind of makes us look like complete idiots doesn't it!
Not only that they have until Sunday before they have to go to a hotel, you can safely assume flights back are fully booked!

 

[Charlie Gill]

It's landed.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1464596203170156546

 

[DrWazzock]

Institutions too slow and unwieldy to stop it. Not necessarily the fault of institutions it’s just the nature of the beast. Though quite why so many people need to be flying back and forth is beyond me. Nothing changes.

 

[milkloss]

Although vaccines can be adapted reasonably quickly it takes a long time before they are approved for use, which unfortunately is likely to be too late for some.

Approved for use? The approvals process isn’t the same for these emergency vaccines and it may take many years to find the truth.

heard of many soccer players collapsing in the pitch lately?

 

[DrWazzock]

Travel bans that aren’t immediate are pointless really. Probably already well established here now. Been over a fortnight since first detected in SA. So was probably around there for a month. Hopeless. Just get used to it.

 

[BrianV]

Approved for use? The approvals process isn’t the same for these emergency vaccines and it may take many years to find the truth.

heard of many soccer players collapsing in the pitch lately?

A few, how many cases of long covid do we hear of, if the vaccine was the cause then god help them if they caught the real thing!

 

[Goweresque]

There's no evidence yet it can swerve any immunity we may have

Nobody can travel unless fully jabbed, so if the O variant hasn't evaded the vaccine's protection against infection, how exactly is it spreading around the globe? Its not the un-jabbed jumping on planes and spreading it..........

 

[le bon paysan]

Nobody can travel unless fully jabbed, so if the O variant hasn't evaded the vaccine's protection against infection, how exactly is it spreading around the globe? Its not the un-jabbed jumping on planes and spreading it..........

Thought the passenger in Holland with Omicron was unvaccinated?

 

[Charlie Gill]

Nobody can travel unless fully jabbed, so if the O variant hasn't evaded the vaccine's protection against infection, how exactly is it spreading around the globe? Its not the un-jabbed jumping on planes and spreading it..........

Sadly we don't have any vaccines that prevent infection.

Some possible good news though:

New Covid Variant Omicron: South African medical association says Omicron variant causes 'mild disease' | World News - Times of India

Rest of World News: JOHANNESBURG: The new Omicron variant of the coronavirus results in mild disease, without prominent syndromes, Angelique Coetzee, the chairwoman of th.

m.timesofindia.com

 

[essex man]

Sadly we don't have any vaccines that prevent infection.

Some possible good news though:

New Covid Variant Omicron: South African medical association says Omicron variant causes 'mild disease' | World News - Times of India

Rest of World News: JOHANNESBURG: The new Omicron variant of the coronavirus results in mild disease, without prominent syndromes, Angelique Coetzee, the chairwoman of th.

m.timesofindia.com

That's not news

 

[Charlie Gill]

That's not news

It is to some.

 

[7610 super q]

2 cases in the UK now. FFS. Ban air travel permanently.

 

[BrianV]

Don't worry Bozo's on the case right away, it's now so serious that you now have to have a PCR test two days AFTER you arrive in this country, you might wonder whether it wouldn't be better to have that PCR test before you arrive here but what do we know?

 

[Goweresque]

Sadly we don't have any vaccines that prevent infection.

Some possible good news though:

New Covid Variant Omicron: South African medical association says Omicron variant causes 'mild disease' | World News - Times of India

Rest of World News: JOHANNESBURG: The new Omicron variant of the coronavirus results in mild disease, without prominent syndromes, Angelique Coetzee, the chairwoman of th.

m.timesofindia.com

It would make sense that new variants would become more infectious but less virulent over time, as thats the usual viral evolutionary path. If we are lucky that is what we will get, for now.

The problem is that we have vaccinated in the middle of a pandemic, which all the text books say you shouldn't do, as you can alter the evolutionary path of the virus, in ways we would not want it to go. It is possible, nay probable, that the new variants emerging now are being driven by the evolutionary pressure to evade the spike protein vaccines. Hence why the O variant has a considerable number of changes to its spike protein, 6 I believe. Its the vaccines that have driven those changes to emerge. If you block the advance of a rapidly mutating virus using one particular element of the virus it will soon evolve new way of defeating that block.

I said at the beginning of all this that the vaccines would not work, in the medium to long term, because a coronavirus can mutate faster than you can develop, produce and inject new vaccines. Apart from which, the principle of Original Antigenic Sin means that your immune response will forever be dominated by the first infection, which for most people is the vaccine version of 'infection'. All subsequent vaccine boosters based on new variants will only produce a weaker immune response.

I'm afraid we have been dealing with this epidemic on political timescales, ie the next few months up to a year. Beyond that politicians don't want to know. Offer them a 'solution' that works for a year to 18 months but has significant risks longer term and they'll grab it, they can't see beyond their noses. Nor indeed can most of the public. Everyone wants a magic bullet, a pill or a jab and it all goes away. Reality isn't like that, and the decisions we have taken as a society in the short term will have consequences that we cannot avoid in the longer term. The decision to vaccinate everyone (or at least as many as possible) with virtually identical vaccines in the middle of the pandemic will be one of those decisions.

 

[Dave6170]

Would they have had to isolate the strain to be able to test for it? Pretty quick that isn't it?
I wonder what more they can come up with to control us?

 

[essex man]

It would make sense that new variants would become more infectious but less virulent over time, as thats the usual viral evolutionary path. If we are lucky that is what we will get, for now.

The problem is that we have vaccinated in the middle of a pandemic, which all the text books say you shouldn't do, as you can alter the evolutionary path of the virus, in ways we would not want it to go. It is possible, nay probable, that the new variants emerging now are being driven by the evolutionary pressure to evade the spike protein vaccines. Hence why the O variant has a considerable number of changes to its spike protein, 6 I believe. Its the vaccines that have driven those changes to emerge. If you block the advance of a rapidly mutating virus using one particular element of the virus it will soon evolve new way of defeating that block.

I said at the beginning of all this that the vaccines would not work, in the medium to long term, because a coronavirus can mutate faster than you can develop, produce and inject new vaccines. Apart from which, the principle of Original Antigenic Sin means that your immune response will forever be dominated by the first infection, which for most people is the vaccine version of 'infection'. All subsequent vaccine boosters based on new variants will only produce a weaker immune response.

I'm afraid we have been dealing with this epidemic on political timescales, ie the next few months up to a year. Beyond that politicians don't want to know. Offer them a 'solution' that works for a year to 18 months but has significant risks longer term and they'll grab it, they can't see beyond their noses. Nor indeed can most of the public. Everyone wants a magic bullet, a pill or a jab and it all goes away. Reality isn't like that, and the decisions we have taken as a society in the short term will have consequences that we cannot avoid in the longer term. The decision to vaccinate everyone (or at least as many as possible) with virtually identical vaccines in the middle of the pandemic will be one of those decisions.

It's just populism nothing to do with controlling virus.
Once you accept that, everything they do makes sense

 

[Charlie Gill]

It would make sense that new variants would become more infectious but less virulent over time, as thats the usual viral evolutionary path. If we are lucky that is what we will get, for now.

The problem is that we have vaccinated in the middle of a pandemic, which all the text books say you shouldn't do, as you can alter the evolutionary path of the virus, in ways we would not want it to go. It is possible, nay probable, that the new variants emerging now are being driven by the evolutionary pressure to evade the spike protein vaccines. Hence why the O variant has a considerable number of changes to its spike protein, 6 I believe. Its the vaccines that have driven those changes to emerge. If you block the advance of a rapidly mutating virus using one particular element of the virus it will soon evolve new way of defeating that block.

I said at the beginning of all this that the vaccines would not work, in the medium to long term, because a coronavirus can mutate faster than you can develop, produce and inject new vaccines. Apart from which, the principle of Original Antigenic Sin means that your immune response will forever be dominated by the first infection, which for most people is the vaccine version of 'infection'. All subsequent vaccine boosters based on new variants will only produce a weaker immune response.

I'm afraid we have been dealing with this epidemic on political timescales, ie the next few months up to a year. Beyond that politicians don't want to know. Offer them a 'solution' that works for a year to 18 months but has significant risks longer term and they'll grab it, they can't see beyond their noses. Nor indeed can most of the public. Everyone wants a magic bullet, a pill or a jab and it all goes away. Reality isn't like that, and the decisions we have taken as a society in the short term will have consequences that we cannot avoid in the longer term. The decision to vaccinate everyone (or at least as many as possible) with virtually identical vaccines in the middle of the pandemic will be one of those decisions.

Interesting but haven't all the variants of concern appeared either prior to vaccines being available or apparently from regions with extremely low vaccine availability/take up?

 

[bobk]

Nobody can travel unless fully jabbed, so if the O variant hasn't evaded the vaccine's protection against infection, how exactly is it spreading around the globe? Its not the un-jabbed jumping on planes and spreading it..........

Wrong , you can travel with a pcr test within 72 hours