New COVID Variant in South-East

[umpteennamechanges]

Just seen the breaking news about the new COVID variant in the South East.

Seems to be nothing to worry about on the face of it...but wondering if anyone has / knows of any more info?

@treening

I agree that allowing travel abroad and not enforcing quarantine was a massive, pretty unforgivable error.

Yes. We should have closed the border in January, then we could have had an effective lockdown. We don't have definitive science yet - but we didn't yet in early 2019. Decent world politicians had to take hard decisions in advance of hard science - in an emergency, that's their job.

I think we should close the border now, and make the most of the semi-lockdown we have now. Unfortunately I don't think we will. We really should though.

I will be isolating on the run up as well. But I’m able to. Others can’t.

Not really sure how that's relevant to my point tbh.

If I couldn't isolate I wouldn't be doing it.

YY @treening And yet expect the public to keep on making sacrifices indefinately

@cyclingmad

We should just shut our borders in all seriousness now, other countries who have plus masks etc are leading near normal lifes.

Rather that and holiday in the UK and so be it if I cant fly out for another year

Which other countries are those?

But this variant will back off for Christmas to help protect Al, Matt, Mike et al

Yes Is Matt Hancock still planning to have his FIL over?

Is Gove still planning on his trip to Scotland?
The way the general public have been treated over this while certain quarters get to do what they like is fucking disgusting.

Journos will be watching them like hawks.

Which other countries are those?

Australia
New Zealand

Which other countries are those?

Taiwan, NZ and Oz spring to mind. They'll be sending themselves broke, obviously, but so are we in the UK, anyway. We're an island nation, we should be making the most of that to try to stabilise our infection rate.

@treening well put. There would incidentally be less rule breakers if Dominic Cummings and Robert Jenrick had been sacked.

Link please! is so lazy and a bit pithy. Look for your own link,bbc,google,Twitter.

Presumably new strains can be less problematic, not necessarily worse?

Ireland, Iceland, Malta, most the Carribean, Indonesia.. most the world's island states did not manage to keep Covid out -- either.

Given that NI and the Republic are on the same island, ROI couldn’t have kept it out unless there’d been a joint agreement with the UK to close the borders.

@Lastdanceagain

I'm sick of hearing about people not following the rules. My daughter caught it from a friend she sits next to in school, tested positive, then her other friend tested positive as well as her dad, and then the original girl's dad. No one had broken any rules!

We have moved into tier 3 from having one of the lowest rates in the country, we have not all gone from rule abiding citizens to law breaking Mavericks within 2 months yet here we are.

@Lastdanceagain totally agree. Everyone I know who has had it caught it at work. They weren't breaking rules, they were trying to make a living.

New variant you say? Ooh, a plot twist.

& the track & trace works well 70% of the most contagious gets caught (as opposed to 30% of them not as said by opposition)
I saw a worried man (Hancock) patting down others concern about the whole thing

The track and trace does not work well at all.

Look at what Asian countries have done with track and trace and then tell me ours works well.

I wonder if its anything to do with mink?

@treening
Please note I was quoting & my sceptic face (we may have crossed post)

Oh & the opposition stated concerns about:
funding for people having to isolate
terminal patients not placed higher on the list (actually that might be logistics with vax, & transporting & given to larger groups)
among many other things - I was quite impressed by the thoughtful & thorough arguments & concerns the opposition put up

I recall a specific virus strain that was common in Spain increasing in this country after the summer holiday, no mention on it from the gov. Does this latest strain news just allow the gov a reason to warn people to be extra vigilant over the Christmas period?

People might call me ridiculous but I have been predicting this for months.
I’m no scientist but most people understand that a virus can mutate. We also understand that most viruses thankfully reduce in ferocity over time because if they kill too many hosts then they will also die out. However, for most of this year, humans across the entire world have been acting completely unnaturally - social distancing, massive hand washing, limited numbers indoors etc etc. The main goal of a virus is to spread, so if it is unable to do so, wasn’t it inevitable that it would mutate to overcome the barriers put into place by humans?

@halcyondays

Given that NI and the Republic are on the same island, ROI couldn’t have kept it out unless there’d been a joint agreement with the UK to close the borders.

So we could either do a joint agreement with RO Ireland or put NI in their own tier. If we can lockdown family homes as a social island to fight covid, we can do the same with regions. It wouldn't be a repudiation of NI, anymore so than regional lockdowns proved to be between Scotland, England, Wales and NI in actuality.

NZ had similarly complex issues with isolating pacific islands which are both economically reliant on NZ and at the same time epidemiologically and medically as a population more susceptible to covid. Hard decisions were taken for what was thought to be the least worst outcome.

Some more information here, from the co-developer of Nextstrain (open-source project for tracking of pathogen evolution, University of Bern).
mobile.twitter.com/firefoxx66/status/1338533710178775047