India double mutation and red list

[Clotsaway]

This is worrying. They have all the variants present and a new double mutation of covid.

When will they be red listed? Sure as hell don't want the double mutation coming into the country. What's taking the government so long to ted list them?!?!

Johnson is desperate to get a trade deal with India - he's off to New Delhi this month to try to persuade them to cut tariffs on whisky and cars. I imagine this will make the govt reluctant to put India on the red list (it definitely should be!)

Too late, it's already here...
amp.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/15/covid-variant-first-detected-india-found-uk

Yes, it is here - but that doesn't make it too late to red-list. Christina Pagel is very good on this twitter.com/chrischirp/status/1382733894756220934

Boris wants his trade talk before the EU gets in there first, no matter the consequences.

@TheMancunianCandidate

Johnson is desperate to get a trade deal with India - he's off to New Delhi this month to try to persuade them to cut tariffs on whisky and cars. I imagine this will make the govt reluctant to put India on the red list (it definitely should be!)

Yes I was thinking there must be an economical aspect to India not being red listed in the first instance when cases were going significantly. Another possibility is India manufacturing a large number of vaccinations for the uk. Boris probably doesn't want to red list them and cause upset.

[quote TheMancunianCandidate]Yes, it is here - but that doesn't make it too late to red-list. Christina Pagel is very good on this twitter.com/chrischirp/status/1382733894756220934[/quote]
Yes, sorry, of course. I was more responding to OP saying don't want it coming to the country. 77 cases already detected and there are likely to be many more they don't know about...

If this is the case then why are they not red listed yet? Why is our government taking so long to take action?

As I said on another thread the whole thing makes me just take the new variant shite with a pinch of salt. If the government were concerned they’d actually do something.

They definitely need to be red listed ASAP. We have family in India and the situation is horrific and out of control. There is news everyday of someone we know dying of covid. After going through lockdown and the numbers going down, the last thing we need is the cases increasing again.

Should we all be writing to our MPs to raise this issue? I'm guessing the more attention this gets the more likely it is that India will be added (albeit inevitably later than it should have been).

@RedcurrantPuff

As I said on another thread the whole thing makes me just take the new variant shite with a pinch of salt. If the government were concerned they’d actually do something.

There are only two possible beliefs one could take from the current situation.

1. The scientists are all lying.

2. The government is being incompetent.

Now personally, I kind of assume that the second is standard fare, i.e. I'm surprised when they're NOT incompetent.

It’s a given that the government are useless but while I don’t think scientists are lying they actually don’t know much yet about any new variant. It’s all “might” be more infectious, “might” evade vaccines. Equally they might not.

@RedcurrantPuff

It’s a given that the government are useless but while I don’t think scientists are lying they actually don’t know much yet about any new variant. It’s all “might” be more infectious, “might” evade vaccines. Equally they might not.

“might” evade vaccines

No, we KNOW they evade vaccines - e.g. the SA variant renders the AZ vaccine almost useless at stopping symptomatic disease and thus will have almost zero impact on the ability of people to spread the virus.

So why did Chris Whitty say only last week it would likely be around a year for vaccine evading mutations to emerge?

Becoming increasingly apparent that the whole world is just going to have to adapt to live side-by-side Covid, possibly forever, it might variant itself into a common Covid-cold virus.

Variants are going to "get in" all the time. Or emerge here.

Quarantine, yes maybe for the moment until global vaccinations are rolled out.

I don't want to be "shut in". Because that is what people are basically screaming for, or will it be "oh live and let live" if a variant emerges in Spain this summer and you gave a holiday booked there?

Not unless you want to live like this for years @frozendaisy - with endless waves and repeated lockdowns.

You can't live with this virus.

We've been in restrictions for the best part of a year and look how much damage covid has still been able to cause.

If we took the brakes of restrictions off, the virus would spread like it always has and soon we'd be just like Brazil.

I'd have thought a double mutation would make the government want to side on the err of caution seeing as its something very new from the virus.

That was a tiny study on the A Z vaccine and the South African variant.

"Just like Brazil"? But how is their vaccine rollout compared to ours?

"You can't live with this virus"

Despite the fact that that is what most scientists are saying we will be doing? For a start, its mortality rate is not 100%; so many people have been living with this virus

We will have to live with it regardless of the damage it causes. I don’t know why we think we might be exempt from having to deal with an illness that causes huge numbers of sickness and deaths. Covid has killed hardly any compared to Spanish flu for example.

Also, the so called "double mutant variant" from India isn't even listed as a variant of concern yet. People are jumping to all sorts of conclusions on here.

Double mutant is sensationalist headline grabbing.

@TheMancunianCandidate I love Prof. Christina Pagel!

I posted a very similar thread to you OP this morning, but had not seen your thread. It is frankly a deja vu of Boris Johnson shaking hands with patients last February and then ending up in hospital himself, very unwell. The man is irresponsible. Cancel your India trip! Do your negotiations on Zoom!!! You have a baby for god sake.

Thousands will keep arriving from India weekly and we will all be back in a big mess quite soon. It is so foreseeable. I promise I am no Covid loon, quite the contrary, totally moderate. However, what is going on in India currently is very worrying. You just need to look at Mumbai to realise this is indeed a very concerning variant.