New Fred. It nearly ended in tiers.

[Cismyfatarse]

Sorry. Lost track of what was proposed. Hope this will do.

And yes I think you're totally right it will be a yearly covid jag which will be fine when it's all under better control.

@jabbathebutt

she's just trying to emphasise that Scotland is different and independent, nothing to do with it being necessary. Like a PP said, she thinks we button up the back.

Not exactly. That's what they're being advised to do, so that we can try to keep out any mutations that lead to vaccine escape. Because then we'd be back to square one.

Westminster are not doing it fully, i..e they're only putting restrictions on certain countries, which makes no sense. If there are mutations, they will inevitably spread, so keeping the borders open to travellers from the vast majority of countries is kind of counter-productive.

Yes @IncludeWomenInTheSequel looks like they're hedging their bets with countries that have established variants and have clear links to countries with variants (like Portugal). I would guess they've not wanted to go full throttle but this list of 33 will be added to as new variants / new links to established variants emerge over the coming days and weeks.

@kurtrussellsbeard I'm also not sure how helpful the comparisons to the flu are I did not say at all that Covid is a comparison to the flu. What I said it mutates like the flu does. As we have already seen with SA Kent Brazil variants. Hence stopping travellers bringing in a further variant.
You have taken what I said wrongly.

@Coquohvan I was replying to @RaspberryCoulis. I agree with you that it mutates like the flu but the point I was making to that poster was that at this point we can't just suck it up and deal with the variants the way we do with the flu so comparisons aren't helpful.

I agree raspberry but I think the UK position is even worse. All the red list countries are in Africa and S America. AZ developed their vaccines and tested them in SA and Brazil along with UK.

It doesn't seem credible that there aren't just as many variants in Europe, ME, US and Asia. Just they aren't being identified nor vaccines being tested against them.

There are going to be variants/mutations in any country where you've got a load of unvaccinated people mixing. It really is a case of nobody is safe until everyone is safe.

I know that doesn't really sit well with loads of people but it's just true.

There us absolutely no evidence that “mutations” are more deadly or cause worse illness.

This is just bloody ridiculous now.

You didn’t quote who you were referring to. 👍

Actually @RaspberryCoulis may have a point when this current C19 is under control with most of the world vaccinated. We could be in a situation whereby we are protected in further years by an annual tweaked vaccine. Especially as the UK does huge amounts off sequencing. As ever time will tell.

I can't find it in myself to argue against hotel quarantine, tbh. If it's a choice of that or another year of this, I'll man the front desk at the hotel myself.

I tagged the poster I was replying to. Sorry if you picked it up incorrectly 👍🏻

@WouldBeGood

There us absolutely no evidence that “mutations” are more deadly or cause worse illness.

This is just bloody ridiculous now.

Well you don't know in what way they're going to mutate in the future so of course there's no evidence. They might get worse, or be milder, or begin to affect kids more, etc.

The Kent variation is more transmissible; the next one could be double that or ten times that or affect kids. You cant know, that's why you try to eliminate it as much as possible at a community level then keep travel to the bare minimum.

She absolutely does have a point andI think everyone is in agreement that that's how this will pan out.

Sadly it's not under control yet and nowhere near enough people across the world are vaccinated for it to be so easily dismissed as aww well we deal with flu variants all the time.

@WouldBeGood

There us absolutely no evidence that “mutations” are more deadly or cause worse illness.

This is just bloody ridiculous now.

Yeah I agree with this. That gloomy Deepti woman was on the briefing again today freaking out about how "worried" she was about the South African variant. That's the one that AZ vaccine isn't great with - for mild cases.

Quite frankly I couldn't give a shit about it not working against the mild cases. Doesn't matter. We need it to be working against the cases which end up in hospital, which it appears to be doing.

@DollyMixtureLulus I'm with you.Lets just stop foreign travel for now and get everyone vaccinated. Right now going outside city limits would be treat enough for me, never mind seeing my English relatives.

Would I like to go abroad- yes of course I would but higher up the list is DS getting face to face education, being able to travel freely in UK and reopen restaurants, gyms etc.

Frankly anyone traveling abroad at the minute must be rich enough not to worry about the consequences of getting stuck abroad or stupid.

Scientists of the world - we're really concerned about the variants.

Folk on internet - the variants are not a bother.

🤷🏻‍♀️

Surely people must realise how ridiculous this is?

I thought the same Raspberry. If it only allows mild cases then that's ok. Sure, not ideal as chances are if you're symptomatic you can probably transmit so it may not have as big as reduction on transmission. But it's not ineffective, hospitals filling up territory

Something we do really well in the UK is the viral genomic sequencing initiative (COG). It's all built on open source code and lab protocols. It's not even all that expensive. If they really wanted to make a global impact, the UK govt could do a one off big boost to international aid with a programme to jump start viral genomic surveillance worldwide, with additional funding to COG to share expertise. Sorry this is probably totally the wrong forum, but the discussion of viral mutations and the above comment that no one is safe until everyone is safe had me thinking.

@TheMShip I've been reading about this. Didn't realise until now how cutting edge the work carried out in the UK was!

Would be wonderful if they did as you propose.

@kurtrussellsbeard

Scientists of the world - we're really concerned about the variants.

Folk on internet - the variants are not a bother.

🤷🏻‍♀️

Surely people must realise how ridiculous this is?

Yes but @kurtrussellsbeard - all the scientists are considering is the virus.

They are not concerned about the economy, people's jobs, children's education, mental health and all the rest of it because their sole focus is viruses and transmission. And that's fine, that's their job. But the government has to balance a huge range of factors.

If you want to stop transmission of any virus then yes, keep people locked up and shut everything down. It will work. But we just can't do that forever and there comes a point where the other factors start to grow in importance and there comes a tipping point where governments say that actually, we've mitigated the risks of the virus as much as we possibly can and we now need to start getting on with opening up again. The disagreement is about where that tipping point is. Some people think we're there already. Other people won't think we're there until the entire world is vaccinated. Most of us are somewhere in the middle.

Got my first shift tomorrow evening at the vaccine clinic, bit nervous but it should be fine. Glad I've had the last 2 days off to chill out.

@RaspberryCoulis well at this point the governments across the UK at least are listening to the scientists and are clearly very concerned about the potential impact of the variants.

An out of control virus isn't great for any of the issues you mentioned either.

Yay! Good luck @ladylunchalot. Enjoy jabbing. From what I've seen everyone's very excited about getting the vaccine and glad to be there.

Good luck @ladylunchalot !

Re the E484K mutation leading to partial vaccine escape. Mild and moderate cases still cause long covid in 1 in 10 people. Mild cases in children cause MISC-C. Mild and moderate cases are more likely to transmit to other people, who may or may not be effectively vaccinated.

The B117 variant is estimated to have 30% more mortality and is 70% more transmissible than original SARS-Cov2. Even without the higher mortality, that level of extra transmissibility means a lot more deaths (have seen the graphs, can't be arsed to look them up just now but if someone is curious tag me and I'll dig them out later).

Point is, mutations matter.