https://www.lemonfool.co.uk/viewtopic.p ... 79#p460956
UK Gov now loses Kudos for a delay
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59449480
Why wasn't this done yesterday when Bo Jo addressed the nation
![Rolling Eyes :roll:](./images/smilies/icon_rolleyes.gif)
And the media need to wind it in a bit. Headlines like "UK battles to save christmas" last night on the Suns website won't help.redsturgeon wrote:
We just need to be sensible.
The Sun...vagrantbrain wrote:And the media need to wind it in a bit. Headlines like "UK battles to save christmas" last night on the Suns website won't help.redsturgeon wrote:
We just need to be sensible.
I'm done. Take careredsturgeon wrote:The Sun...vagrantbrain wrote: And the media need to wind it in a bit. Headlines like "UK battles to save christmas" last night on the Suns website won't help.
The media is also to blame for overdoing "shortage of.." type headlinesredsturgeon wrote:The Sun...vagrantbrain wrote: And the media need to wind it in a bit. Headlines like "UK battles to save christmas" last night on the Suns website won't help.
To ask the Sun to "wind it in a bit" is a bit like asking the sun not to rise tomorrow. The raison d'etre of the Sun is to produce headlines like these.vagrantbrain wrote:I'm done. Take careredsturgeon wrote: The Sun...
Unless of course you take great pains to keep out that new variant and prevent it circulating.gryffron wrote:Evidence SO FAR from SA is that omicron has high transmissibility but very mild symptoms. And yes, that's based on a fairly small number of positively identified cases. IF that holds up, it may itself prove to be a natural vaccine against its more dangerous cousins. I guess that's ultimately how pandemics die out.
Gryff
Thanks for the summary John. I watched another what I would call "calm overview" of the situation. I suspect that it's way more technical than the Andrew Marr coverage, it's a video from a doctor who has been doing various in-depth videos on aspects of SARS-CoV-2/Covid-19 and just posted one on Omicron - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLsMqC7WxTcredsturgeon wrote:Watching the Marr show this morning to try to get a calm overview of where we are this is my take.
South African doctor reports new variant a few days ago that seems highly transmissible and gives rise to a slightly different set of mild symptoms in those patients seen. (NB "mild" just means not needing hospitalisation)
This new variant is found to contain an very large number of mutations and thus could evade the current vaccines.
In the light of this, measures are swiftly taken to limit spread.
A renewed push on vaccines is in place.
Vaccine companies are already looking to prepare new vaccines available in a few months.
In the meantime we may find that best case scenario is that the Omicron variant, though highly contagious is relatively mild and the measures put in place have been an over reaction. We should know more in two weeks.
Worst case scenario is that Omicron evades the vaccine and takes hold in our elderly and vulnerable population and causes a new peak in hospitalisations and deaths but at least we acted quickly to mitigate the worst impacts though more restrictions may be necessary.
We just need to be sensible.
No need to panic or get angry...
John
To that end, might I suggest that this thread be renamed "New Omicron variant"?redsturgeon wrote:The Sun...vagrantbrain wrote: And the media need to wind it in a bit. Headlines like "UK battles to save christmas" last night on the Suns website won't help.
Well said! In fact that video I just linked to quotes the first identified case as coming from a sample collected on 9th November from an HIV patient in Botswana.Hallucigenia wrote:To that end, might I suggest that this thread be renamed "New Omicron variant"?redsturgeon wrote: The Sun...
There's no great evidence it originated in South Africa, and "super-variant" is not particularly helpful. It seems unfair to attribute it to South Africa when it's only because the HIV epidemic has given them some of the best virus surveillance capabilities in the world, and they're next to a load of countries where healthcare can be rudimentary. A variant could arise almost anywhere in sub-Saharan Africa and it would probably be detected first in South Africa. Compare with "Spanish flu" in 1918, which was a USian virus exported to Flanders and had nothing to do with Spain other than as a neutral country in WWI Spain felt free to report bad stuff in a way that those at war could not.
And seconded. The thread title is very inappropriate.Julian wrote:Well said! In fact that video I just linked to quotes the first identified case as coming from a sample collected on 9th November from an HIV patient in Botswana.Hallucigenia wrote: To that end, might I suggest that this thread be renamed "New Omicron variant"?
There's no great evidence it originated in South Africa, and "super-variant" is not particularly helpful. It seems unfair to attribute it to South Africa when it's only because the HIV epidemic has given them some of the best virus surveillance capabilities in the world, and they're next to a load of countries where healthcare can be rudimentary. A variant could arise almost anywhere in sub-Saharan Africa and it would probably be detected first in South Africa. Compare with "Spanish flu" in 1918, which was a USian virus exported to Flanders and had nothing to do with Spain other than as a neutral country in WWI Spain felt free to report bad stuff in a way that those at war could not.
If the "dream scenario" was to emerge, Omicron fitter than Delta but causing appreciably less severe disease with no or minor extra immune escape vs Delta, I wonder how quickly the UK Government would change policy? If that dream scenario did happen then my lay-person's take would be that it would then be actively in our interest to open up borders so that we could import Omicron, displace the more severe Delta variant, and thus reduce hospital admissions and speed up (due to Omicron being fitter) the roll-out of natural immunity to the unvaccinated.
- Julian
I agree that would be genuinely interesting to see how the, generally, less informed public, would be "sold" that this is the most appropriate response.Julian wrote:
If the "dream scenario" was to emerge, Omicron fitter than Delta but causing appreciably less severe disease with no or minor extra immune escape vs Delta, I wonder how quickly the UK Government would change policy? If that dream scenario did happen then my lay-person's take would be that it would then be actively in our interest to open up borders so that we could import Omicron, displace the more severe Delta variant, and thus reduce hospital admissions and speed up (due to Omicron being fitter) the roll-out of natural immunity to the unvaccinated.
- Julian
My responses as followsJulian wrote:
1 - [ Do you (John) have any inside knowledge about how many different variants of the PCR test there are and has any internal chatter amongst the testing community started discussing in more detail which tests show S gene dropout on Omicron and which (if any) don't? ]
2 - Yes of course it is infectious and could displace Delta but it is still too early to know that for sure based on actual observed cases rather than theoretical concerns about spike mutations. Delta might still prevail.
3 - There has been much focus on the spike mutations possibly making it more infections but the spike is also suspected to be responsible for various mechanisms that cause damage to various systems in the body, i.e. increase the severity of disease in some people. If the spike is changed significantly that not only raises the possibility of increased transmissibility but also the possibility of a reduction in disease severity due to that mutated spike protein no longer being able to cause some of those damaging effects.
4 - I didn't see the data source Dr Syed was referencing but he did say that there were early indications that the incubation period for Omicron might be longer than that of Delta.
I really don't like the way you phrase that, it's pretty incompatible with the theory of evolution and the mathematics of virus spread. It's possible that Omicron isn't really a thing, rather a part of the normal range of the virus or a series of unlikely random events that happened to blip the detection network. Your phrasing could be interpreted to match one of those, but it does not describe them.Julian wrote:
2 - Yes there are a lot of mutations in Omicron but that might also make the virus unstable and there is still a possibility that like the Beta variant it could fizzle out either due to instability or because it isn't sufficiently fitter than Delta to outcompete it.
Yeah it's quoting the same doctor as the I did and the BBC link onthemove provided above. But she was/is working from a very small sample size. It'd be nice. But by no means conclusive yet.look wrote:https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/sa ... 021-11-28/
mild symptoms, can be treated at home.
The omicron variant seems quite infectious : https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-heal ... nfections/gryffron wrote:Yeah it's quoting the same doctor as the I did and the BBC link onthemove provided above. But she was/is working from a very small sample size. It'd be nice. But by no means conclusive yet.look wrote:https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/sa ... 021-11-28/
mild symptoms, can be treated at home.
Gryff
“It is very early days, we will have to wait and see in the next week or two. This appears to be very, very infectious, we are inundated with patients.”
“We don’t know what is happening going forward, so this is so stressful – the sheer number,” said Dr Cohen.
Hatzollah, a private ambulance service run by members of the city's Jewish community, has kept meticulous records of Covid-19 infections since the pandemic began.
They say there has been a staggering surge of infections in the last two and half weeks. They have gone from receiving no calls about Covid-19 to more than 60 a day.
Time to get the garlic out again?look wrote:https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/sa ... 021-11-28/
mild symptoms, can be treated at home.