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The Future Now – the biggest impact of COVID – politicalbetting.com
The Future Now – the biggest impact of COVID – politicalbetting.com
It’s always hard to know how the future will judge the present. Events which utterly dominated government policy and public discourse can be forgotten in a matter of years. Other events were passed by almost unnoticed at the time, and yet – in retrospect – seem incredibly important.
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Shit. The truly alarming thing there is what I feared most: past infection with ‘normal’ Covid provides no immunity against SA Covid. This bug is Satanic
If the Safferbug runs riot in the UK this spring we will be back to square one. They won’t be able to tweak any of the vaccines in time. People will catch it again who’ve already had it. People vaxxed with AZ will also get it. Hopefully they will only get mild/moderate cases, but we don’t know that yet, for sure.
I don’t want to come over all Black Rook but this is ominous. To me it suggests lockdown until Autumn. And yet I just don’t think the economy can hack that, or the nation’s mental health. So what gives?
I don't think there is a grand conspiracy about lockdown but I do think, as I have said from March, that government by Chief Medical Officer is not something I approve of.
Equally, if you have a press conference every day at 5pm with the PM and CMO and Head of the NHS about, say, smoking, or mountaineering, or 3-day eventing, you will pretty soon end up with a ban on those activities.
The only relevant criteria are hospitalisations and deaths. The lockdowns were, depending on the govt's particular PR aim, to protect the NHS and/or to save lives. If hospitalisations decrease to the point whereby we are not facing a "crisis" and there is a reduced or no danger of hospitals being overwhelmed, the lockdowns should end.
I’m sorry, but this is utter drivel
‘In the future, World War 2 will only be mentioned in passing, and only when describing the extraordinary story of how we harnessed nuclear power for weapons and energy’ - is the exact equivalent
Unfortunately darling, you are going to have to go with that dreadful £20k a week cottage in the Cotswolds.
The current lockdown should squish all forms down to a low level, including the SA bug. With more and faster testing available, and deciding which countries to open up to should obviate most of the need for any lockdown.
And some restrictions are more effective than others - simply banning gatherings over 1000 people (arguably you could still have them if you had reliable and available LFTs that every attendee had to pass) decreases R by an average of 33%.
On top of that, they'll probably have tweaks to some or most vaccines within three months (before many of us are due our second doses, anyway).
resume. Those that want to isolate can. In the meantime the rest of the world gets on with things.
There really shouldn't be any reason why the likes of Pfizer would take that long, it is literally the equivalent of changing a few lines of programming code.
We also have a long term bet with Valneva and CureVac.
We're also investing in world leading mutation busting modelling to predict viral evolutionary pathways so that future vaccines are one step ahead of the game.
What this means is that the government needs to get serious about border controls. Have a completely open economy and I'd also suggest a two island approach with Ireland. Once we've got the infrastructure in place to rapidly immunise people to variants with CureVac we can begin to roll out vaccine passports for overseas travel.
Maybe lockdown adherence is slipping, or maybe it's now just circulating among people who do still have to go out. Either way, it's not good news for the partial primary school reopening planned in two weeks.
To whit, Leon and Francis Urquhart.
Leon is particular seems keen to sow discord, panic and fear. Very keen.
In that light we could be in for a third wave. Or lockdown til Autumn.
I hate it. But this bug is what it is
I thought you approved of that, or is the complaint he is invading your territory?
And surely Sage and the government were always going to sabotage the vaccine anyway, if it hadn't turned out to be shit to start with, in order to engineer Lockdown Without End?
BBC News - Elon Musk's Tesla buys $1.5bn of Bitcoin causing currency to spike
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55939972
https://apple.news/AgK0kIc-XSbOCK4lZEnr8EQ
- The sample size in the new study was small. Of 1749 participants, 42 got sick, of whom 19 had the vaccine and 23 had a placebo, producing an efficacy figure of just 22 per cent.
- However, no one became severely ill or died.
- That is partly because participants were young – average age 31 – but also because while the vaccine doesn’t appear to prompt a significant immune response in the form of antibodies specific to 501Y.V2, it does still boost a broader immune response in the form of T cells. That also appears to be true of reinfection.
- So AstraZeneca believes its vaccine still offers protection against serious illness and death from the variant. The same, with respect to T-Cells, will likely be true of reinfection.
- In any case, South Africa has shipments of the Pfizer, Novavax and Johnson & Johnson vaccines on order, and all appear to provide protection against the variant, including among over 65s.o.
Finally, if you want some good news from South Africa, look at their case numbers and mortality over the last six weeks. Dropping like a rock.Panicky Hancock presser at 5...
Over a week-end, we are now almost at the post vaccine lockdown stage.
So...about those pubs....
We neither read nor understood the deal we signed.
Again.
Yours, BoZo and chums.
https://businesstech.co.za/news/trending/465684/south-africa-must-prepare-for-a-possible-third-covid-19-wave-mkhize/
Its clear though, that, as far as coming out of lockdown is concerned, we are getting to a situation where all bets are off.
There won;t be a roadmap on 22 February, schools may well not go back on 8 March and we won;t be having a great summer.
What are the reasons?
Fuck em.
If we have to, we re-jab with Novavax and J&J. But we shouldn't have to.
Impecable timing.
Partly, I suspect it's the fact that it's winter, so it's cold and gloomy, so it isn't as possible to do the going to the park and waving at acquaintances thing. It's also gone on for longer... In London, we've had lockdown in November, a relaxation in early December, then basically lockdown ever since. And some places have had it worse- did Leicester ever get out of its local lockdown? Seems unimaginably long ago.
But on top of that, there was something heroic about Lockdown 1. The Thursday Claps, people putting rainbows in their windows. The teddy bear trails. This lockdown hasn't had any of that- Clap for Sir Tom didn't really happen, there's no "Thank You Baked Potato". it's just been grey and boring. When I predicted a Puritan Lockdown (you can leave the house for Work or Church, but nothing else), it was in the knowledge that that would be really boring.
Spring (and the fact that lockdown is doing its job) will help before the vaccine does. But spring will come, and that will help. And mega-capacity testing is there for 2021, which it wasn't in 2020. Spring and summer will be fine, whatever. Hence the key month is September. And the mRNA vaccines are blooming clever. Yay boffins.
Courage, my flint-knapper.
Terrible human disasters often produce great science. That’s how we react to them. That doesn’t mean we forget the disasters, and the pain and horror that came with.
Covid is going to be a collective scar on humanity for a generation, and it ain’t over yet.
We will TRY and forget it, we will want to talk about anything but, as the memory will be so painful. But it will be there, lurking.
The economic and psychological aftershocks of lockdown alone will last for years.
Why don't you read the bloody research before smearing your doom porn over what is (otherwise) a (mostly) intellectual and interesting forum?
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However, in good news, the Novavax vaccine could still protect against the South African variant, although the efficacy dropped from 95% (against the original strain) to 60% against the South African variant (49% if people living with HIV were included).
While vaccine efficacy against mild-to-moderate disease has taken a hit with regard to the South African variant, it's expected vaccine efficacy will fare better against severe disease.
This was true for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
The Johnson & Johnson vaccine uses similar technology to AstraZeneca, and the immune response induced by these two vaccines is similar.
For that reason, the AstraZeneca vaccine may well retain good efficacy against severe disease.
Antibodies aren't the only thing that's important.
T-cells likely play a role in preventing severe disease, and there's evidence to suggest the T cell response is not substantially affected with regard to the South African variant.
I report the good news and the bad news as I see it, with a dash of opinion. At the moment we are receiving rather bad news, it seems to me, after a run of great news around the vaccines. You are free to disagree
Given that the trials were the time consuming element prior to manufacture, how much time can be saved on new vaccinations?
Does that differ between mRNA and tradition Oxford style vaccinations?
Indeed, yesterday's AZN interview on Marr was quite expansive on these matters and reassuring
I really do believe we all have a responsibility not to undermine AZN, as so many people have received their first dose
We should not all go 'Macron' until and unless there is consensus across the scientists that there is indeed a problem
Any negative talk just plays into anti vaxxers and has the potential to make matters much worse
Maybe restraint is best practice at this moment in time
It's possible. Though I also agree with @Leon's objection. Covid will be seen as the catalyst for changes which were happening already. Here are 3.
1 The end of American hegemony. Trump will loom large. As a symptom not a cause.
2 The end of the Thatcher /Reagan economic consensus. It's been struggling since the GFC to find Solutions. Now not many are reaching for its playbook.
3 We learned to use the Internet properly. Rather like horses became anachronistic after WW2 for all but leisure and entertainment so will all transactions which can be done Online. They'll linger on for a couple of decades, same as horse drawn deliveries did, but will fade away. As will cash.
Shopping will never be the same again.
A lot of very, very irresponsible stuff in the news today from outlets that should know better. Let's hope the government learns a lesson. Some people do want lockdown to go on for as long as possible, whatever the efficacy.
We are not post vaccine by any means of the imagination. Getting the first dose to over 70 year olds is a very good first part of the vaccination process, but it's just under a quarter of the vulnerable doses that need to be done.
- Antibodies patrol the bloodstream that are targeted at various viruses. the level of these depends on the level of "risk" your immune system perceives so drops off over time. If a virus that is targeted comes along, these things flock to it and gum up the bit that tries to invade cells (the spike, with coronavirus), making it so it can't even latch on and get to work. This is referred to as "sterilising immunity" and means the virus essentially bounces off.
- T-cells, in two types, also wander around. These keep going. Some randomly knock on cells "doors" and ask them to show what's inside; if the cell has a "dodgy" thing inside (the T-cell compares with a list it keeps of trophies from previous encounters) it orders the cell to instantly self destruct, and the cell must comply. This is "fighting the virus" when it's around and reduces the level of damage the virus can do if your T-cells are armed with the correct list and patrolling regularly. I visualise grizzled versions of Judge Dredd ("I AM the immunity!")
- The second type goes scurrying off to B-cells, which are antibody factories, and orders them to start churning out more of those antibodies seen above. This prevents any virus that's already wandering through the system from getting much further.
All very simplified and quite possibly completely wrong.
The vaccines power up both the T-cells and get the antibodies going. Because the SA variant has adjusted its spike, the antibodies are less effective at gumming it up, so can still often get through even when they're swamping it. They'll take out some of them, of course, and lower the viral concentration, which will help the T-cells with the level of activity needed.
The T-cells, however, are still effective, so while the virus doesn't "bounce off" and gets further than hoped, it still runs into the problem of the Judge Dredd T-cells, which make the challenge of getting far enough to cause serious damage so much harder.
Those who know far more will probably laugh at all that and be able to adjust it to what the real status is.
There's no way we'd have seen mRNA technology so quickly without the pandemic, I'd love to see a Nobel Prize go to the couple at BioNTech.
Similar things have happened in India. Which is even poorer, and more crowded. Cases have just fallen away (long before any vaccines arrived)
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/india/
Hey, look, this is GOOD news. Perhaps the bug, at some point, just fizzles out.
Let us pray.
330 deaths, 14,000 cases
I'd advise the UK government to do a media blitz to reassure UK recipients of the Oxford vaccine.
My father who should be out jabbing the masses towards the end of the month has said his job became a little harder today.
On the few occasions you move away from doom pornography you are one of the best posters on here. Sadly those sojourns are becoming ever more infrequent.
Bit Johnson refused to rule out a lockdown extension, even though we are ahead of schedule in vaccination, and on every measure the disease is receding.
I think @MaxPB in particular has been urging the UK government to make sure that we keep up with the mRNA research and the development of vaccines based upon that. In fairness the government, or at least Kate Bingham, seems very alert to this but I wonder if its full potential beyond Covid has yet been recognised.
The deal the government did last week is for a vaccine with the same proposed benefits as the Imperial work i.e. mRNA with is more stable so doesn't require anything more than refrigerator.
If that's what the timescale refers to, then it's not unreasonable.
Good news in my book.....
https://elemental.medium.com/how-the-cystic-fibrosis-miracle-drug-is-playing-out-in-real-life-447de82c6191
There is actually a significant difference between the AZN vaccine, and the otherwise very similar one from Janssen (aka J&J).
Janssen use a chemically stabilised form of the spike protein in the design of their vaccine; AZN did not use the technique. It might explain the apparent difference in efficacy.
(I think this is also true of the spike protein in the two mRNA vaccines form Pfizer and Moderna.)
Stabilizing the closed SARS-CoV-2 spike trimer
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7801441/
The trimeric spike (S) protein of SARS-CoV-2 is the primary focus of most vaccine design and development efforts. Due to intrinsic instability typical of class I fusion proteins, S tends to prematurely refold to the post-fusion conformation, compromising immunogenic properties and prefusion trimer yields. To support ongoing vaccine development efforts, we report the structure-based design of soluble S trimers with increased yields and stabilities, based on introduction of single point mutations and disulfide-bridges. We identify regions critical for stability: the heptad repeat region 1, the SD1 domain and position 614 in SD2. We combine a minimal selection of mostly interprotomeric mutations to create a stable S-closed variant with a 6.4-fold higher expression than the parental construct while no longer containing a heterologous trimerization domain. The cryo-EM structure reveals a correctly folded, predominantly closed pre-fusion conformation. Highly stable and well producing S protein and the increased understanding of S protein structure will support vaccine development and serological diagnostics....
* Pfizer's manufacturing process takes 60 days, so that is the key lead time
https://news.stv.tv/politics/crown-office-urged-to-probe-murrell-committee-evidence
Mr Murrell less than convincing today, it has to be said.
The suggested referral is ironic given that the Crown Office is itself in the murk up to its oxters, with calls for the Lord Advocate, James Wolffe, to resign over the Rangers shambles.
It's all getting very banana republic up here. Maybe that should be turnip republic, in deference to malc?
Lockdowns worked in the US in 1918 [1] for Spanish Flu
India in 2020 is close in GDP per capita and much better in life expectancy compared to the US in 1918 [2]
[1] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/03/how-cities-flattened-curve-1918-spanish-flu-pandemic-coronavirus/
[2] https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$state$time$value=1918;;&chart-type=bubbles (US is the biggish green circle in 1918; in 2020 India is one of the big pink one at a similar horizontal position
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/secrets-of-the-vaccine-taskforces-success
"The foreign press coverage has turned from mockery to awe, with Britain having vaccinated more people than France, Germany, Italy and Spain put together. Many of those behind this success are virtually unknown to the public. Their story matters, because the Vaccine Taskforce is already being looked to by ministers as a model for how government should work once the pandemic is over.
"Sir Patrick – backed by Dominic Cummings – went to the Prime Minister and said that a vaccine tsar should be appointed so as to avoid repeating old mistakes. The Chancellor agreed – as a former investor with portfolio he believed a hawkish approach on contracts was necessary, even if it carried risk levels that led Treasury officials to describe it as 'an extremely unusual programme'. ‘They needed someone with immense private expertise — a dealmaker,’ says an aide.
"In many ways, Kate Bingham was an obvious choice. An established venture capitalist, she has spent her career investing in pharma companies."
• This report draws attention to the little-analysed but pervasive presence of Chinese
military-linked conglomerates and universities in the sponsorship of high-technology
research centres in many leading UK universities.
• In many cases, these UK universities are unintentionally generating research that is
sponsored by and may be of use to China’s military conglomerates, including those
with activities in the production of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs), including
intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) as well as hypersonic missiles, in which
China is involved in a new arms race and seeks ‘massively destabilising’ weaponry.
• Much of this research is entirely based at UK universities, while other research
outputs include cooperation with researchers in China, often at the military-linked
universities or companies sponsoring the UK research centre.
• Many of the research projects will have a civilian use, and UK-based researchers will
be unaware of a possible dual use that might lead to a contribution to China’s
military industries.
• This report illustrates how 15 of the 24 Russell Group universities and many other UK
academic bodies have productive research relationships with Chinese military-linked
manufacturers and universities. Much of the research at the university centres and
laboratories is also being sponsored by the UK taxpayer through research councils,
Innovate UK, and the Royal Society
https://www.civitas.org.uk/publications/inadvertently-arming-china/
@TheScreamingEagles will surely be unsurprised that China has not bothered with that academic backwater at Cowley.