Is the new strain very serious?

[MerinoFroggie]

I'm thinking the new strain must be very serious and governments are withholding the information for now until after Christmas so we can have somewhat of an OKish Christmas day. I feel they will drop a bombshell after Christmas and maybe even introduce a harder and harsher lockdown like in wuhan.

It must be serious for the government to implement a quick lockdown, and cancel travel and ban Christmas. It must be serious for the eu countries to start closing of the UK where the new strain is higher. A lot of the eu never closed off from each other earlier in the pandemic when it was kicking off. Some places did close off and some had travel restrictions and as soon as possible there was travel red, orange, green light map within the eu and Europe.

It must be serious.

If its very serious why don't they tell us now and screw Christmas. There will be people breaking guidelines all around but it might shake people up and make them sit up straight and behave and follow the guidelines on travel and contacts.

So Hancock had to come out and say 'hang on lads stop going to the pub, there's a Worse one out there'

@sadie9

Why do you think no other country in Europe except the UK has postponed starting it's vaccination programme until AFTER the biggest holiday season of the year?

What do you mean? Why do you think they did

I think the UK pushed ahead with their vaccination programme because Boris and No.10 wanted to be seen as the first in the world, etc, we make our own rules, no one tells us what to do.
But the lack of involvement in a unified response to Covid across neighbouring countries may have lead to a relaxation of people's fears of Covid in the UK - due to the news that everyone would be vaccinated very soon. Which is not the case.

www.newscientist.com/article/2263077-what-you-need-to-know-about-the-new-variant-of-coronavirus-in-the-uk/

@Lockheart

Stop spreading conspiracy and fear.

Have a word with yourself for fucks sake.

Or you could stop being a prick, dismissing others' legitimate concerns. Get over yourself.

@Cam77

Why are the airports still operating? Yesterday we had 1000s from the U.K. flying to Dublin. But even from today people will still be allowed to travel to Belfast and thereby onto Dublin spreading it all around the island of Ireland.

And then from Ireland people will travel to the rest of Europe. CLOSE ALL THE AIRPORTS IN EUROPE ffs. China has had an international travel ban since February ffs. with mandatory - government controlled and enforced - two week hotel room quarantine for the very, very few incoming flights. At this stage it simply looks like China cares more about the health of their citizens than we do in the West do. There simply is no other explanation left.

It's not just a UK variant. It's all around Europe, one thing that the UK is good at it (or at least historically, after this shitshow plus Brexit who knows!?) is sequencing which is also why we're clear on the spread.

It's already through Europe. Even the 48 hour lorry bans etc by other countries are shutting the door after the horse has bolted. They've also known about this strain since November, it's more likely that it became increasingly clear that mixing at Christmas was going to be disastrous but Boris and crew needed to claim there had been a new development, not just that they were very very late to this particular party...

From the New York Times and the scientist Muge Cevik has repeated this in her tweets:
"British officials said the variant was as much as 70 percent more transmissible — is based on modeling and has not been confirmed in lab experiments, Dr. Cevik added.
“Over all, I think we need to have a little bit more experimental data,” she said. “We can’t entirely rule out the fact that some of this transmissibility data might be related to human behavior.”

A consultant friend of mine who works at GSTT has told me a national lockdown will kick in very soon, and likely to last until March. This new strain is very serious, and hospitals in London have been full for a few weeks now. They have no spare beds but the bigger issue according to his text is "a lack of trained and healthy and willing to work staff, or enough isolation facilities within the NHS". I presume from what he says that this is why the Nightingale is not in use. It can't be used if there aren't the front line staff available to treat patients.

Seems to me that those on the front line are burnt out and frankly fed up. A mutant strain will filter through to the rest of the country in no time. There is no way a vaccine rollout can happen quick enough to prevent this.

If its very serious why don't they tell us now and screw Christmas. There will be people breaking guidelines all around but it might shake people up and make them sit up straight and behave and follow the guidelines on travel and contacts.

Baffling to me that you even need to ask this given how late we were to lockdown earlier this year, and how reactionary this govt has been in general. I'm hearing Boris knew of this strain weeks ago, and yet up until a few days ago, he was allowing families to mix over xmas.

Not a scientist, but from what I've read, the intensity of the disease can be related to the amount of virus load you receive. That makes sense. Monkeys don't normally get human smallpox, but it's been proven that if you give them a large enough load, then they will catch it.
So it sort of makes sense that this new variant, being more easily transmitted, will produce a more severe illness. Probably by a magnitude of 0.7, which is how much more it is transmissible.
So, I think we probably need to take this very seriously, because I don't think our hospitals can take another 70% of patients.
So, wear a fucking mask and don't be a cock everyone!

The new strain will be all over Europe. They just don’t know it yet.

We have just found it earlier

I have always said we are going to have to learn to life with this virus and not fight it. It will sweep through.

@Smallgoon agree and think this is why it is shameful that we aren't prioritising frontline health care workers first. It's for their sake but also for us all - no point protecting the over-80s if there's noone to treat them or the rest of us when so many medical staff are ill, isolating or retiring and quitting.

@Newjez

Not a scientist, but from what I've read, the intensity of the disease can be related to the amount of virus load you receive. That makes sense. Monkeys don't normally get human smallpox, but it's been proven that if you give them a large enough load, then they will catch it. So it sort of makes sense that this new variant, being more easily transmitted, will produce a more severe illness. Probably by a magnitude of 0.7, which is how much more it is transmissible. So, I think we probably need to take this very seriously, because I don't think our hospitals can take another 70% of patients. So, wear a fucking mask and don't be a cock everyone!

It may not be the case

Ask on the strain thread

Just a small thought, but given that the new strain was identified in September, and if it's 70% more infectious, why have the reported numbers only just exploded?

@Puzzledandpissedoff

Just a small thought, but given that the new strain was identified in September, and if it's 70% more infectious, why have the reported numbers only just exploded?

It is puzzling.

@Puzzledandpissedoff

Just a small thought, but given that the new strain was identified in September, and if it's 70% more infectious, why have the reported numbers only just exploded?

Yes, and just in the south east and London. And the demographics show it’s school age kids being infected.

and just in the south east and London

Quite so - after all plenty have been travelling since September and presumably taken the new "70% more infectious strain" with them, and yet so far it's mainly the SE where the numbers have allegedly rocketed

A realist cynic might even think this was produced to reduce the outrage over Tier 4

Give the op a break.

Yes it's more infectious which is worrying as everyday activities are even less safe than before. I think this is more it op. But like many things in this pandemic, we don't know. You could be right. It could also mutate again and make a vaccine ineffective for this strain. This strain appears to be very dominant.

Generally things are more positive op as with only small mutations the vaccinne can be adapted to fix it (a recent BBC article looked into this more deeply). But it's ok and actually sensible to be cautious.

If everyone had been more cautious earlier on, we would be less in a state right now.

@Puzzledandpissedoff

Just a small thought, but given that the new strain was identified in September, and if it's 70% more infectious, why have the reported numbers only just exploded?

Because a large number of people may be asymptomatic, perhaps? So this has continued to spread since September, and now there are a huge number of people affected, and beds filled up?

Remember earlier on in the year, London was hit the hardest and then it spread to rest of country - I'm sure the first London case was back in November 2019. The fact that beds in London are full to the brim is not a good sign for the rest of the country.

Because a large number of people may be asymptomatic, perhaps?

Maybe, but that hardly fits with beds allegedly filling up - after all if they're asymptomatic they won't need treatment
Granted those who have no symptoms can pass it on to others who then develop them (especially at a 70% transmission rate) but the timescale doesn't fit either; if this has been around since September I'd have expected it to happen long before now

@Puzzledandpissedoff

Because a large number of people may be asymptomatic, perhaps?

Maybe, but that hardly fits with beds allegedly filling up - after all if they're asymptomatic they won't need treatment
Granted those who have no symptoms can pass it on to others who then develop them (especially at a 70% transmission rate) but the timescale doesn't fit either; if this has been around since September I'd have expected it to happen long before now

I guess it's all just one big conspiracy theory then right?

I guess it's all just one big conspiracy theory then right?

Who knows? I'm not much into these theories myself, but with the countless deceits and the corruption we've seen I no longer take anything these people say on trust

But if the vaccine does need tweaking, won't that delay things by sic or more months, as they were manufacturing the vaccines ahead of authorisation so as to be ready to roll as soon as authorisation occurred ?

No, I’m saying I understand the worry of the Covid-19 strain. I don’t understand why we now must worry about ALL coronaviruses when we didn’t before

Six 6 months

@midgebabe

But if the vaccine does need tweaking, won't that delay things by sic or more months, as they were manufacturing the vaccines ahead of authorisation so as to be ready to roll as soon as authorisation occurred ?

I don't think so - though obviously I'm no expert.

As I understand, the likely worst case scenario is that current vaccines might be slighly less effective against the new variant. Future doses could be 'tweaked' but the ones we have will still work very well.

That's my inexpert understanding.