New Coronavirus Variant OMICRON a ‘Serious Concern’ in South Africa

[cytg111]

Yeah, but he's struck me as a reasonable and sensible commentator on the topic.

And I just am not impressed with the WHO's performance overall. They've been wildly inconsistent. And on this travel thing in particular I don't get their reasoning. They are supposed to be concerned with global health, not fussing about the economic prospects of the travel industry. In what way does restricting flights from countries with the new variant make the health situation _worse_?

Seems to me there's a general cultural trait that says that international travel is absolutely never to be messed with. Hence we got local travel restrictions, telling me I shouldn't walk to the neighbouring borough to do my shopping, while people were still flying in to the airports in their thousands. And the WHO is just giving voice to that cultural trait, because they feel the need to say something to remind everyone they still exist, even though protecting international trade and travel isn't part of their job at all.

I get it, on the other hand there is the boy who called wolf right? At this point they’re say “we dont know, dont have the data”.. and from that standpoint they cant advise shutting shit down… what would it look like if they advised for restrictions and it turned out to be a dud? Its gotta be about the science, if a politician is gonna go with gut instinct and shut it down anyway, I cant fault that either… but science gotta be about the data.

 

[pmv]

I get it, on the other hand there is the boy who called wolf right? At this point they’re say “we dont know, dont have the data”.. and from that standpoint they cant advise shutting shit down… what would it look like if they advised for restrictions and it turned out to be a dud? Its gotta be about the science, if a politician is gonna go with gut instinct and shut it down anyway, I cant fault that either… but science gotta be about the data.

But they didn't just not advise shutting down, they specifically warned _against_ doing so. I don't see why they felt the need to do that.

Here we got the Delta variant becoming not-so-much the dominant variant, but the _only_ variant, because last time Johnson was extremely reluctant to halt flights from India (because he was desperate for a post-Brexit trade deal with Modi). I don't see how the WHO has any business encouraging him to make the same mistake again.

To be honest, I just don't see what constructive role the WHO has played in all this. Pre-pandemic I had no opinion on the organisation, indeed had Trump or the Republicans started attacking it I'd have felt the need to defend it as a necessary mechanism for international co-operation on an issue which is intrinsically international. But it just doesn't seem to have done anything very useful during the pandemic, we just get random figures in it saying random things at random times, rarely in any sort of helpful way.

 

[Timorous]

I get it, on the other hand there is the boy who called wolf right? At this point they’re say “we dont know, dont have the data”.. and from that standpoint they cant advise shutting shit down… what would it look like if they advised for restrictions and it turned out to be a dud? Its gotta be about the science, if a politician is gonna go with gut instinct and shut it down anyway, I cant fault that either… but science gotta be about the data.

You block the flights while you gather the data with a variant that has as many red flags as this one because failing to do so could lead to being at square 1 again very rapidly.

So yes, science is about the data and blocking flights is about giving more time to get the data to come up with a plan of action if needed.

 

[mikeymikec]

Here we got the Delta variant becoming not-so-much the dominant variant, but the _only_ variant, because last time Johnson was extremely reluctant to halt flights from India (because he was desperate for a post-Brexit trade deal with Modi). I don't see how the WHO has any business encouraging him to make the same mistake again.

FIFY:

Boris is extremely reluctant to do anything about covid, aside from a vaccine rollout.

I can only describe the UK gov's response to covid at present being: "I feel that if we really pull together, we can be a world leader in infection rates and lock down over Christmas!".

Come to think of it, I wonder if the reason why there was a Christmas lockdown last year (and not *much* earlier) is that the tories worship the economy rather than what keeps the economy alive (people) and felt that a Christmas lockdown is possibly less economically costly.

 

[Torn Mind]

He is one dude with a youtube channel. One opinion.

It's not his authority I'm following.

It's something about having experience a few waves already and knowing this thing infects people very well.

Do we have data of how the original virus start oh so small and innocuously and then spread to every area of this giant country?
Then Alpha.
And then Delta.

SA was winding down Delta even with shitty vaxx rates and now its popping up once again...in their summertime. Travelers, both vaxxed and unvaxxed, are being detected with this variant in locales spread around the world.

And sometimes, this thing infects at a undetectable level for a few days and then there is enough to test positive. Vaxxed travelers think their safe while unvaxxed may or may not give fuck.

It's also clear that major countries are not heeding the WHO's stooge.

 

[Lost_in_the_HTTP]

I mean, we already have "The Clap"... so why not "The Bob"?

And The Clapper. And Bobbers.

 

[Charmonium]

Not sure what we will run out of first, new variants or vaccine deniers?

Yup. They all deserve a Darwin award. Of course we're all going to need to chip in if we do it posthumously.

The thing is, as has been mentioned, vaccine and/or new vaccine production is going to have to ramp up to astronomical proportions if we're going to beat out the next variant and I don't see that happening.

How much fuckery can it do to the fuking spike at still be a functional key??? this is bs. Cheating.

Excellent question. If there are 380 bases . . . I forget how many bases there are per protein codon. Google says 3 per codon so that about 130 codons. That still leaves a lot of room for variants. I just guessing here but if that's the case, what probably matters most is the tip.

But even if that's the case, there should still be a number of tip variations that can trigger a cell to engulf the virus. The only difference will be how strongly they link to the docking site. Stronger docking should result in greater virulence if the rest of the virus remains as good at causing a cell to replicate it as delta is.

Not a virologist here so my guess is that if you have 32 variations in just the spike protein, the odds for this virus being as virulent might, just might not be quite as good. But we'll have to see.

 

[brianmanahan]

i wonder what the odds are of this strain being like ebola

 

[Sonikku]

I'm afraid this is just going to keep happening until a variant emerges that's really fucking deadly.

 

[Charmonium]

i wonder what the odds are of this strain being like ebola

You know, people used to ask a similar question of HIV - what if it becomes airborne. It never did of course, but why not. I don't know the answer to that but I think that even though viruses are very simple compared even to bacteria, only a small number of "mistakes" in the replication are likely to have any benefit for the virus. Now . . . what constitutes a "small number" is up for debate and who really knows if maybe it only takes one mistake to make a huge difference.

The only ray of hope I can offer is that in East Asia where this virus or its predecessors go back for millenia, the people there gradually developed mutations that provided some protect, Presumably enough that most people might have survived.

The message there isn't to procreate NOW!!! But rather that viruses of all manner have been after us since were sludge near volcanic vent, or wherever we sprang from. And while viruses have racked up some wins over the millenia, it's the bacteria like yersinia pestis that really fucked us up.

edit: with complexity comes more rules and with more rules come fewer mistakes that can be tolerated.

 

[Charmonium]

For whatever reason, I've slept for the past 2 days. I'm going to tentatively blame that on tumeric supplement I got a couple of days ago and or the Q10, the latter of which I've always had some issues with. I've tried tumeric before but this was supposed to be a super absorbent form so I it for the intestinal issues.

Anyway, I am now updating my database by watching cable news (MSNBC) and early reports seem to suggest that omicron isn't any better causing disease and that the spike we will see over the winter will delta, delta and more delta.

I guess we'll see. Buckle up I . . . suppose.

 

[pmv]

I'm afraid this is just going to keep happening until a variant emerges that's really fucking deadly.

Well, on the plus side, there's only room for 9 more variants before we run out of Greek letters. If it hasn't become species-ending by "Omega" then we're safe.

 

[Lost_in_the_HTTP]

Does this mean another stimulus check?

 

[pmv]

FIFY:

Boris is extremely reluctant to do anything about covid, aside from a vaccine rollout.

I can only describe the UK gov's response to covid at present being: "I feel that if we really pull together, we can be a world leader in infection rates and lock down over Christmas!".

Come to think of it, I wonder if the reason why there was a Christmas lockdown last year (and not *much* earlier) is that the tories worship the economy rather than what keeps the economy alive (people) and felt that a Christmas lockdown is possibly less economically costly.

Well, yeah, it's been transparently obvious since the start, with their initial flirting with the mad 'herd immunity through mass infection' plan, that there's an overwhelming pressure within the Tory party to put 'the economy' (i.e. keeping the share dividends and rents rolling in) ahead of any concern for public health.

I think Johnson himself is sufficiently lacking in any firm beliefs that for a while he could be swayed more by 'team lockdown' (maybe partly as a consequence of his own brush with COVID, maybe that concentreated his mind for a bit?). But the Tory Party's overwhelming concern for profits above all, was always going to reassert itself.

 

[Dr. Detroit]

Does this mean another stimulus check?

Stimmy checks, $4K Unemployment checks, and no housing payments for another 24-months!

Asking the real questions!

 

[Heartbreaker]

There seems to be a lot contention about how serious an Omicron infection is, but the Atlantic story makes a point. We know it's bad enough that we're in trouble. Milder or Not, it's still likely to result in more deaths, and pushing hospitals over the brink, because it is so much more transmissible.

We Know Enough About Omicron to Know That We’re in Trouble

More data will soon be coming in. But how much do they really matter?

www.theatlantic.com

 

[ultimatebob]

Stimmy checks, $4K Unemployment checks, and no housing payments for another 24-months!

Asking the real questions!

Yeah... Papa Joe has been kinda cheap with the Covid stimmies lately. I was hoping for another Christmas stimmie check so I can load up on some Dogecoin and AMC stock, because that's how we invest in America now!

 

[brianmanahan]

There seems to be a lot contention about how serious an Omicron infection is, but the Atlantic story makes a point. We know it's bad enough that we're in trouble. Milder or Not, it's still likely to result in more deaths, and pushing hospitals over the brink, because it is so much more transmissible.

the hospitals near me are so full that the ER was at 2.5x capacity last week

many patients' beds are in the hallways, and some people have waited up to 3 days to move from the hallway to their own room

they stopped trying to separate COVID and non-COVID patients... nurses are saying "there's no use, you're gonna get it anyway"

someone i know was there for an afternoon and saw a nurse get slapped by a patient, another nurse crying in the corner, and another nurse talking to a patient who pulled down their mask, coughed right in her face, and say they had tested positive for COVID.

 

[pmv]

There seems to be a lot contention about how serious an Omicron infection is, but the Atlantic story makes a point. We know it's bad enough that we're in trouble. Milder or Not, it's still likely to result in more deaths, and pushing hospitals over the brink, because it is so much more transmissible.

We Know Enough About Omicron to Know That We’re in Trouble

More data will soon be coming in. But how much do they really matter?

www.theatlantic.com

It's also infecting a lot of hospital staff, thus causing a shortage of medical workers (and also firefighters and cops, apparently).

Honestly, round here it's a significant percentage of people actually officially _testing_ positive, which probably means actual infections several times that. Feel I have to make a saving roll on my CON any time I pass someone in the street.

 

[brianmanahan]

Feel I have to make a saving roll on my CON any time I pass someone in the street.

i've felt that way for 18 months now! i don't dare take my mask off around people, and i see myself wearing it for years after this. vacations are probably something i will never do again.

omicron has gotten my return to work pushed back another few months, but i am so tempted to look for a permanent remote job during that time so i never have to go in again.

 

[Heartbreaker]

i've felt that way for 18 months now! i don't dare take my mask off around people, and i see myself wearing it for years after this.

I mask up everywhere when leaving the house, but Omicron is so transmissible, that it seems like very meagre protection now.

Feel I have to make a saving roll on my CON any time I pass someone in the street.

I'm not so worried for me. I have my booster scheduled, and a functional immune system, but my Mom, who is on a couple of immune suppressing drugs, doesn't stand a chance if it comes anywhere near her.

 

[pmv]

i've felt that way for 18 months now! i don't dare take my mask off around people, and i see myself wearing it for years after this. vacations are probably something i will never do again.

I wasn't so nervous before omicron - it's both that it's so widespread here there's a good chance anyone I encounter may have it, and that it's so contagious that even outdoor contact might be enough to get it. This city is particularly badly hit.

 

[Red Squirrel]

South Africa hospitalization rate has fallen 91% with Omicron.

 

[Pohemi]

Posted this in (one of) the other COVID thread, but this might've been a better place for it.

WHO: Omicron detected in 89 countries, cases doubling fast

The World Health Organization says the number of COVID-19 cases involving omicron is doubling every 1.5 to three days in countries where there is community transmission of the variant and not just people who were infected abroad.

apnews.com

Seems it's on a streak like wildfire.

 

[pmv]

South Africa hospitalization rate has fallen 91% with Omicron.

But with infection rates soaring, that's still going to put tremendous strain on the hospitals, even if it works out the same here (which I doubt that it will, because it depends on the age profile of the population)

London mayor declares ‘major incident’ to help Covid-hit hospitals

Sadiq Khan takes step after UK recorded its largest 24-hour increase in new cases since pandemic began

www.theguardian.com

Government data shows there are 1,534 Covid patients in London hospitals, an increase of 28.6% from last week, when there were 1,193.