A new variant doesn't equal disaster

[chararara]

A new variant, more negative news.

Fact is, it is far too early to know anything concrete about this variant and already the news is contradicting itself. They are overly negative for views.

Some more positive points:

• South Africa has great genome testing and does a lot more advanced testing than neighbouring countries due to their expertise from HIV testing. It is no surprise they discovered it and very possible other countries missed it. The sequence of this variant points to being older than two weeks. Hence, it is likely it already existed and SA have been the first to pick it up. Why is this good? It means it has potentially been circulating for months, so if it has only just been noticed, it is less likely to be the extra transmissible nightmare as the media state.

• SA is not a good country to make predictions from. They have a low vaccine rate, yet had unusually low infections. Any strain would take a great hold, so it's impossible to say that its "ripping through," when the population is largely unvaccinated. Data cannot be extrapolated to majority vaccinated countries at this point in time.

• It has new spike protein additions. Concerning? Yes. Definitely a problem? No. They could just be changes that have barely any impact. It's just as feasible to assume the best, as well as the worst.

• Even if this is a more transmissible strain or resistant strain, it is highly unlikely it would completely evade vaccines or not offer defense against severe illness.

We are not back at the beginning. Be cautious and mindful with the media you consume. Get a booster vaccine.

Some less negative articles:

www.reddit.com/r/CoronavirusUK/comments/r2k067/new_variant_will_not_take_us_back_to_square_one/

@dabbydeedoo

where does it end? is very much like a child asking 'are we there yet?' when stuck in a traffic jam.

No one fucking knows where it ends.

Have you thought about counselling support to help you deal with uncertainty?

Adults understand we are not in control.

@Frazzled2207

Somebody please feel free to correct me but I thought the only definitive way out of the pandemic was for covid to mutate itself into something that caused less serious illness. And so on and so forth until eventually it just becomes another coronavirus that causes a cold. As there are many of those already.

Obviously if it mutated itself into sthg that caused more serious illness that would be bad, but there is no evidence either way as yet

That's exactly what it has been doing. We were at the point where it would have been declared endemic within six months or so and daily case numbers would not have been released.

This new variant might have thrown a spanner in the works. I understand being cautious about it, I just can't handle any more of the media hysteria.

I was really pissed off with people on here who minimized the threat of Covid the first time it came on the scene. I was properly drawn in by the fear that lead to that first lockdown.

Looking back at that - how much damage did we fear march into?

I will never allow myself to be blinded in this way and give up so much again.

@dabbydeedoo Covid has not been mutating into something less serious, Delta was more serious due to greater transmission rates.

I do not know where you are getting your information from but you are very badly informed.

@BlowBadness I don't need you to explain anything to me, 'hun'. My partner works in the field.

We're not 'back to 2020' at all. Please stop spouting misinformation. This is what's the worst of everything, people thinking they understand things they don't, thinking they're scientists when they're not.

Should we be cautious? Yes. Should we take precautions? Yes. It's madness that masks are no longer mandated, for example. But this absolute hysteria every time there's a new variant? A rise in case numbers? You honestly think we can go on like this for the next five years?

There's still no indication that this variant will present even the same severity of disease, let alone more severe.

Initial reports indicate that at least one positive case landing into Europe was completely asymptomatic. There doesn't appear to be an uptick in hosptalisations and deaths in affected southern African countries.

As pandemics tend to mutate to become less deadly (a la 1918 flu) or even mutate to entirely burn themselves out (a la Plague or SARS) it's entirely possible that this variant is both more transmissable and less severe in terms of disease and mortality. If it turned out to be less severe, that would be good news as it would outcompete Delta. There is a theory from Japan that there is a limit to the number of mutations a virus can withstand before it fails to spread so the clock may be ticking down on covid already.

We've sensibly this time restricted travel. Now let's wait calmly and see.

[quote rrhuth]@dabbydeedoo Covid has not been mutating into something less serious, Delta was more serious due to greater transmission rates.

I do not know where you are getting your information from but you are very badly informed.[/quote]
Just my partner, who works in the field.

I was talking about the death rate when I said 'less serious'. It's completely unsurprising that a variant that spreads more easily is less deadly. We were at the point where Delta had spread so widely and so many people had either natural or vaccine induced immunity that it was at the point of becoming endemic.

Am I saying we shouldn't care anymore? No. I think we should have more restrictions, like mandated mask wearing and more social distancing. But this absolute hysteria every time something new is discovered is going to cause serious, serious mental health problems that go on much longer than the pandemic.

Africa is only 6% vaccinated, I don't know what their death rates are but it must be carnage in some of the cities.

I don't think there's been much death in most parts of SSA. The average age in most SSA countries is only in the early 20s due to the demographics. South Africa has slightly less youthful demographics, but the vaccination rate there is almost 40%.

Hate me all you like for being the bearer of the news

Darling, we don't hate you.
We just think you're bloody stupid.

The Omicron variant is like when you get an antibiotic resistant bacteria Gawd-almighty, got any other pearls of scientific wisdom to share with us all?

[quote rrhuth]@dabbydeedoo

where does it end? is very much like a child asking 'are we there yet?' when stuck in a traffic jam.

No one fucking knows where it ends.

Have you thought about counselling support to help you deal with uncertainty?

Adults understand we are not in control.[/quote]
I'm very sorry you haven't discovered the concept of a 'rhetorical question' yet.

The answer to when it ends is when we decide to stop talking non-stop about it, as if there were no other issues in the entire world.

That's the answer.

While he did say that it was too early to draw definitive conclusions, there has been some cautious optimism on the Today Programme this morning from Prof. Sir Andrew Pollard:

/quote
If you look at where most of the mutations are, they are similar to regions of the spike protein that have been seen with other variants so far and that tells you that despite mutations existing in other variants, the vaccines have continued to prevent very severe disease as we’ve moved through Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta.

At least from a speculative point of view we have some optimism that the vaccine should still work against this variant for severe disease but really we need to wait several weeks to have that confirmed.

But it is extremely unlikely that a reboot of a pandemic in a vaccinated population like we saw last year is going to happen.
//end quote

Japan's covid mutation extinction theory.

www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2021/11/18/national/delta-variant-self-destruction-theory/

So the Omicron variant which was found in four vaccinated people is itself not going to be bothered by the vaccine now in use, and we're back to 2020 again. And that's going to keep happening because the vaccines are not "sterilising" vaccines, they're always going to be like this, so there'll need to be a short winter lockdown each year as we wait for the vaccine manufacturers to catch up and make a new formula for the new variant.

The flu vaccine is similarly "leaky" and what's written above hasn't happened in 100 years of annual flu mutations.

Not everyone takes the flu vaccine though, meaning that most years the strain which dominates comes from an unvaccinated person. Covid vaccination is going to be almost universal by May once mandates have nudged the hesitant and it will be a whole different ballgame.

We have billions unvaccinated in the world and this mutation comes from an area of the world with low vaccination rates.

@rrhuth

surely anyone rational will question WTF do the government of Botswana know of science This is an astoundlingly racist comment. This type of attitude is so damaging - to dismiss information from scientists because you are prejudiced against African states.

You haven't even provided a source confirming who in the Botswana government said this, but it's certainly contradicted by opinions from qualified scientists who've been studying covid. There isn't even any pharmaceutical production in Botswana, their virology research is veterinary, no scientists in the field work in the Botswana government and as a country they are not even contributing genome testing that would have identified this sooner. I'm prejudiced against giving equal weight to unscientific opinions from randoms about scientific matters, sure.

If this thread is about finding reasons not to panic (yet!), it seems helpful to mention the comments from Angelique Coetzee, chairman of the South African Medical Association:

‘From us as medical practitioners, we picked up, last week, the different clinical pictures, we looked at the advisory committees and so far what we have seen is very mild cases. [I’m] not sure why we are all up in arms.’

One possible scenario, that fits what is known so far, is that the new variant could prove to be both highly infectious, more so than delta, and give rise to much less serious symptoms. In that case, if it took over everywhere from delta, it would be a good thing.

Caveat: I don’t know how things will pan out, just speculating in the most optimistic way that the currently known facts allow.

@PicsInRed

Not everyone takes the flu vaccine though, meaning that most years the strain which dominates comes from an unvaccinated person. Covid vaccination is going to be almost universal by May once mandates have nudged the hesitant and it will be a whole different ballgame.

We have billions unvaccinated in the world and this mutation comes from an area of the world with low vaccination rates.

It was detected in South Africa where they have the science in place to find these things. It could have originated anywhere.

dabbydeedoo

I really feel for you, why do some people lack compassion. I so hope you get your holiday very soon xx

Dr Susan Hopkins, the chief medical adviser to the UK Health Security Agency, said the R value, or effective reproduction number, of the B.1.1.529 variant in the South African province of Gauteng, where it was first found, was now 2 – a level of transmission not recorded since the beginning of the pandemic, before restrictions began to be imposed. For an R of anything above 1, an epidemic will grow exponentially.

I guess that is why Sajid Javid looks so uncharacteristically worried.

Been thinking about this, and would anyone mind indulging my half-arsed completely baseless theory?

So... scientists are speculating that it may have evolved in a single individual, possibly an untreated HIV/AIDS patient. I don't know what basis they have for thinking this - presumably it's because they think the virus had a lot of time in which to mutate (i.e someone who wasn't able to fight it off). The thing is, if this variant survived for such a long time in someone whose immune system was compromised, doesn't it stand to reason that it's very likely to cause mild symptoms in just about everyone?

The answer to when it ends is when we decide to stop talking non-stop about it

Yeah, well this isn't going to happen, @dabbydeedoo. You can't just wish difficult/inconvenient things away. Pretending isn't going to help anyone.

If you don't want to think about it, that's your issue lookout, just stop listening to the news and pretend in your head it has gone away. You can't expect the world to turn a blind eye just to suit you.

Well that would answer why 61 people tested positive on just two flights in the Netherlands, if it is twice as transmissible that would make sense.
It also means we are in for a rough ride as it has come at the worst time possible in the middle of the winter, and at Christmas, and with much of Europe already struggling with hospital space.

The health secretary looks worried because he has promised us all a normal Christmas, and god help him if that changes this year.