He is. And it is because he is so obsessed with Covid - (partly, no doubt, because it has brought him fame). He reads everything constantly, so if anything happens he will be one of the first to spot it.
Anyway, the idea that this is *alarmism* is PB at its most effete and pathetic: emotionally unable to confront bad news.
"Due to the current data situation and the apparently uncontrollable spread of South Africa mutations, Tyrol is declared a "restricted zone" and can only be left with a negative Corona test. One of the largest police operations in recent years - within Austria or borders with Germany, Italy, etc. - is underway."
I'm perfectly able to confront bad news - I (and everyone else) have been doing so all year. However he peppers his threads with hyperbole and the kind of attention grabbing that an aspiring politician (he was a 2018 Dem candidate) does.
In a fire you want to listen to the calm guy showing you where the fire exits and extinguishers are, not the guy screaming "HOLY MOTHER OF GOD!" (as Eric did last January). The screaming guy is an alarmist and is, by drowning our the calm guy, doing more harm than good and there is no shame, nor is it "effete" (in fact quite the opposite) to point that out.
He was possibly the first guy who noticed a fire (or one of the first). You DO want to listen to that guy. If there is, you know, a fire.
I readily accept (and have said so below) that he sometimes errs on the alarmist side, he clearly enjoy the attention. But that does not make him always wrong, or someone you should resolutely ignore.
Unfortunately, in this case, he seems to be correct. Central Europe has a big problem, hence the belated but massive Austrian police action, closing the borders of an entire province, forbidding exit to anyone without negative tests.
You and Eric are peas in a pod really. He's not really a (medical) doctor and you're not really an artisinal flintnapper -
This whirlwind tour through viral Covid-19 themes felt like the conversational equivalent of Feigl-Ding’s Twitter account, which has grown by orders of magnitude since the dawn of the pandemic. The Harvard-trained scientist and 2018 Congressional aspirant posts dozens of times daily, often in the form of long, numbered threads. He’s fond of emojis, caps lock, and bombastic phrases. The first words of his very first viral tweet were “HOLY MOTHER OF GOD.”
...
But as Feigl-Ding’s influence has grown, so have the voices of his critics, many of them fellow scientists who have expressed ongoing concern over his tweets, which they say are often unnecessarily alarmist, misleading, or sometimes just plain wrong. “Science misinformation is a huge problem right now — I think we can all appreciate it — [and] he’s a constant source of it,” said Saskia Popescu, an infectious disease epidemiologist at George Mason University and the University of Arizona who serves on FAS’ Covid-19 Rapid Response Taskforce, a separate arm of the organization from Feigl-Ding’s work. Tara Smith, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Kent State University, suggested that Feigl-Ding’s reach means his tweets have the power to be hugely influential. “With as large of a following as he has, when he says something that’s really wrong or misleading, it reverberates throughout the Twittersphere,” she said.
...
To Angela Rasmussen, a Columbia University virologist, this represents a pattern. “[T]his is his MO,” she wrote in an email. “He tweets something sensational and out of context, buries any caveats further down-thread, and watches the clicks and [retweets] roll in.”
...
Feigl-Ding also glosses over his decision to leave medical school, which he enrolled in briefly after completing his Harvard degree. “I realized life’s about what you do, not the number of letters behind your name,” Feigl-Ding said, “and at that point, I already had dual doctorates in two other things, and you know, pursuing a medical degree would’ve been a little bit overkill.”
I mean he's citing his sources in the tweet. If his numbers are wrong it will be very easy to demonstrate.
The "numbers" he cites are primarily of the SA study of the AZ vaccine, which were not good, but equally the problems with that study have been extensively discussed on here, and he also fails to mention the study's findings that T-Cell responses were still triggered. He also goes on to simply assume that because the Tyrol is (more or less) in central Europe it must be everywhere. Manchester is (more or less) in the centre of the island of Great Britain and that has not (perhaps yet) happened here. He also fails to mention the fact that even in bleedin' South Africa itself restrictions have been eased and cases are still falling.
Finally, and this really gets me, he uses a handle with "Dr" in it - yet he never finished medical school. If his bio said something like "doctorate in health economics" (which he has) then I could live with it - but he doesn't. He tweets on medical issues using such a twitter handle but fails to make that clear.
The numbers he cites are about cases in Austria, with a link to the source. He doesn't give any numbers for a study of the AZ vaccine.
A major outbreak of the Boerbug in Austria. Not good. Suggests it is embedded in central Europe, and spreading
An OXAZ vaccinated UK population will be protected against our strain but less so against the SA. The SA will thus have a path to dominance and this, I gather, is a worry, although obviously not an argument for not vaccinating.
It's much less of a worry than is being made out by the news.
Slightly pointless worry anyway. I'm getting a better picture of the near term future now. Tweaked vaccines, regular shots, test & isolate still needed, best practice on hygiene & distancing still needed.
I don't think we will need distancing in the near future, I'd guess the government will do away with it around July once the under 50s are all partially or fully immunised. Test and isolate will be needed for outbreaks but we can see they know this as they are handing out redundancy notices to the call centre people. The main line of defence is going to be tweaked jabs and annual booster jabs for the over 40s and anyone else who wants one every September with surge vaccination capacity for up to 1.5m doses per day done.
You are a touch more optimistic than me. Although by distancing I didn't mean of the lockdown variety. What I expect is a persisting etiquette on this. People will be less inclined to join crowds and get close to strangers than they were BC.
It is pretty obvious that everything is getting more difficult, more expensive and more burdensome.
But on the other hand we have maintained the sovereignty we have had for the past few centuries so all is well.
I havent seen any sign of anything being more expensive day to day, but what is clear to everyone is our post Brexit vaccine rollout is saving countless lives. Wranglings over shellfish are of course a hardship for those involved but there has been zero downsides so far for the vast majority.
You haven't seen it but there are countless examples of the extra cost and embuggerance of the new procedures.
Will that cost be passed on to @Brom? We shall see but if not then profit margins suffer with the consequent impact on future investment, wages, employment, etc.
A major outbreak of the Boerbug in Austria. Not good. Suggests it is embedded in central Europe, and spreading
An OXAZ vaccinated UK population will be protected against our strain but less so against the SA. The SA will thus have a path to dominance and this, I gather, is a worry, although obviously not an argument for not vaccinating.
It's much less of a worry than is being made out by the news.
Everyone that's had OxAz can get a booster shot in the Autumn/early 2021, no worries.
It's not that its a worry but 1 week ago it was very likely that the UKs AZ vaccinated population would have been able to travel freely from early summer without a care in the world. Now, while we may be able to drive down cases in the UK through immunisation, we will still have to exist in a high state of lockdown to prevent the SA strain growing here.
Essentially we seem to be back to where we were before the AZ vaccine arrived, with only those having had the Pfizer vaccine looking like they will have enough immunity.
Having protection against severe disease and death is hardly back where we were before the vaccine.
We don't know yet whether AZ still offers protection against major disease and death in the elderly. That SA test was largely on the young, wasn't it? Who are much less likely to get severe Covid anyway.
I am not being alarmist. Let's hope you are right, you are an expert. Trouble is we just do not know, and it is this uncertainty which is the crippling factor.
It must be quite freaky for the Austrians: they were relying almost entirely on AZ for their vax programme.
There is no other way for a vaccine to protect your health than for it to generate an immune response is there? We know that the immune response to OXAZN in the elderly was completely in line with that of the young. So how can you interpret that in any way other than that the protective effect will also be in line. It's a shame that nobody in the control group had the decency to get severely sick and die to ease your collywobbles, but there we are.
The South Africans have completely halted their AZ roll-out. South Africa has some very smart doctors.
"UPDATE: 30.9% share of N501Y mutants (B.1.1.7, B.1.351 or P.1) in those who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 in the Munich area from February 05-07, 2021. Labor Becker & Kollegen informs."
This same area was one of the main sources of Olde Worlde Covid about a year ago.
Those who do not learn from history....
No it wasn’t. Alto Adige was relatively unaffected while the first wave raged in Lombardy, and to a lesser extent in the Austrian Tyrol. Until recently the Italian Alps have been tier one material.
I meant the Austrian Alps. Ischgl in the Tirol was literally the superspreader town in 2020, and here we go again: the Tirol
In the UK the air is driest in winter (in the partial pressure of water sense, not relative humidity) and this seems to be what causes respiratory disease, not damp.
Scotland number is very good. Maybe using up those vaccine stockpiles?
That's very disappointing. I was really hoping we would see 500k a day, every day.
I get a sense that they're holding back vaccines for second jabs and there's a lot of bad weather in England. There's been four days of constant snow in some parts.
Scotland number is very good. Maybe using up those vaccine stockpiles?
Scotland has had far more bad weather than England. England needs to get its finger out.
Scotland is far more used to dealing with it. Having said that I would really like to understand what has caused England numbers always to be so low at the start of the week.
Positive news from a personal perspective is that my 72yo mother with critical vulnerabilities had her AZ jab yesterday.
A major outbreak of the Boerbug in Austria. Not good. Suggests it is embedded in central Europe, and spreading
An OXAZ vaccinated UK population will be protected against our strain but less so against the SA. The SA will thus have a path to dominance and this, I gather, is a worry, although obviously not an argument for not vaccinating.
It's much less of a worry than is being made out by the news.
Everyone that's had OxAz can get a booster shot in the Autumn/early 2021, no worries.
It's not that its a worry but 1 week ago it was very likely that the UKs AZ vaccinated population would have been able to travel freely from early summer without a care in the world. Now, while we may be able to drive down cases in the UK through immunisation, we will still have to exist in a high state of lockdown to prevent the SA strain growing here.
Essentially we seem to be back to where we were before the AZ vaccine arrived, with only those having had the Pfizer vaccine looking like they will have enough immunity.
Having protection against severe disease and death is hardly back where we were before the vaccine.
We've yet to see performance data of the AZ vaccine for the more elderly population but hopefully you are right.
However, I expect that the restrictions the UK experiences this summer will be more onerous than the ones we had last summer, so in that sense we are back to the beginning.
Yes, unless this outbreak in central Europe fizzles out (and that is possible, inshallah) then I fear this means a considerably longer lockdown; maybe, in some form, until the autumn - when we have plentiful tweaked vaccines that defeat the SA Bug? Also closed borders for much if not all of the year.
What the F does that do to the economy, or indeed, to us?
Remember that the SA study showed that previous infection with Old Covid provides no immunity against SA Covid. So everybody whose already had it could get it again (as happened, perhaps, in Manaus?). It has serious implications.
The one thing you are missing is that the number of new cases in South Africa has collapsed from 20,000 a day a month ago to 2,000 a day now. So the SA Variant does not seem to last long.
Scotland number is very good. Maybe using up those vaccine stockpiles?
Scotland has had far more bad weather than England. England needs to get its finger out.
Scotland is far more used to dealing with it. Having said that I would really like to understand what has caused England numbers always to be so low at the start of the week.
Positive news from a personal perspective is that my 72yo mother with critical vulnerabilities had her AZ jab yesterday.
Tuesday's figures seem to relate to Sunday, not Monday.
"UPDATE: 30.9% share of N501Y mutants (B.1.1.7, B.1.351 or P.1) in those who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 in the Munich area from February 05-07, 2021. Labor Becker & Kollegen informs."
This same area was one of the main sources of Olde Worlde Covid about a year ago.
Those who do not learn from history....
No it wasn’t. Alto Adige was relatively unaffected while the first wave raged in Lombardy, and to a lesser extent in the Austrian Tyrol. Until recently the Italian Alps have been tier one material.
I meant the Austrian Alps. Ischgl in the Tirol was literally the superspreader town in 2020, and here we go again: the Tirol
In the UK the air is driest in winter (in the partial pressure of water sense, not relative humidity) and this seems to be what causes respiratory disease, not damp.
Cold air AND altitude is even worse.
Contributing factor rather than cause - but the suggestion is (for which there is some evidence) that the otherwise more protective mucus membrane doesn't do its job as well when it dries out. (Which also suggests that wearing masks has an added benefit, as doing so tends to retain moisture in the nasal tract.)
It is pretty obvious that everything is getting more difficult, more expensive and more burdensome.
But on the other hand we have maintained the sovereignty we have had for the past few centuries so all is well.
I havent seen any sign of anything being more expensive day to day, but what is clear to everyone is our post Brexit vaccine rollout is saving countless lives. Wranglings over shellfish are of course a hardship for those involved but there has been zero downsides so far for the vast majority.
You haven't seen it but there are countless examples of the extra cost and embuggerance of the new procedures.
Will that cost be passed on to @Brom? We shall see but if not then profit margins suffer with the consequent impact on future investment, wages, employment, etc.
Well we left the EU over a year ago, and the tranisiton period ended a month ago, maybe I'll have to wait longer, but I suspect these problems are on the whole rather niche and I expect a lot of it like the shellfish export problems to be smoothed over in the coming weeks. I think most remainers with a negative view of Brexit would agree it's surprised them on the positive side compared to predicted scenarios.
Right now it's pretty clear any issues you speak of pale in comparison with the effects of Covid, which unfortunate as it is will benefit the government by making any existing Brexit fallout seem like small beer.
A major outbreak of the Boerbug in Austria. Not good. Suggests it is embedded in central Europe, and spreading
An OXAZ vaccinated UK population will be protected against our strain but less so against the SA. The SA will thus have a path to dominance and this, I gather, is a worry, although obviously not an argument for not vaccinating.
It's much less of a worry than is being made out by the news.
Everyone that's had OxAz can get a booster shot in the Autumn/early 2021, no worries.
It's not that its a worry but 1 week ago it was very likely that the UKs AZ vaccinated population would have been able to travel freely from early summer without a care in the world. Now, while we may be able to drive down cases in the UK through immunisation, we will still have to exist in a high state of lockdown to prevent the SA strain growing here.
Essentially we seem to be back to where we were before the AZ vaccine arrived, with only those having had the Pfizer vaccine looking like they will have enough immunity.
Having protection against severe disease and death is hardly back where we were before the vaccine.
We've yet to see performance data of the AZ vaccine for the more elderly population but hopefully you are right.
However, I expect that the restrictions the UK experiences this summer will be more onerous than the ones we had last summer, so in that sense we are back to the beginning.
Yes, unless this outbreak in central Europe fizzles out (and that is possible, inshallah) then I fear this means a considerably longer lockdown; maybe, in some form, until the autumn - when we have plentiful tweaked vaccines that defeat the SA Bug? Also closed borders for much if not all of the year.
What the F does that do to the economy, or indeed, to us?
Remember that the SA study showed that previous infection with Old Covid provides no immunity against SA Covid. So everybody whose already had it could get it again (as happened, perhaps, in Manaus?). It has serious implications.
The one thing you are missing is that the number of new cases in South Africa has collapsed from 20,000 a day a month ago to 2,000 a day now. So the SA Variant does not seem to last long.
I'm not missing it at all. I have mentioned it several times the past couple of weeks. It is promising, if somewhat inexplicable.
Some say it is herd immunity, others an effective lockdown, a third explanation is that this new variant just fizzles away. Clearly, the third answer is hugely preferable.
You and Eric are peas in a pod really. He's not really a (medical) doctor and you're not really an artisinal flintnapper -
This whirlwind tour through viral Covid-19 themes felt like the conversational equivalent of Feigl-Ding’s Twitter account, which has grown by orders of magnitude since the dawn of the pandemic. The Harvard-trained scientist and 2018 Congressional aspirant posts dozens of times daily, often in the form of long, numbered threads. He’s fond of emojis, caps lock, and bombastic phrases. The first words of his very first viral tweet were “HOLY MOTHER OF GOD.”
...
But as Feigl-Ding’s influence has grown, so have the voices of his critics, many of them fellow scientists who have expressed ongoing concern over his tweets, which they say are often unnecessarily alarmist, misleading, or sometimes just plain wrong. “Science misinformation is a huge problem right now — I think we can all appreciate it — [and] he’s a constant source of it,” said Saskia Popescu, an infectious disease epidemiologist at George Mason University and the University of Arizona who serves on FAS’ Covid-19 Rapid Response Taskforce, a separate arm of the organization from Feigl-Ding’s work. Tara Smith, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Kent State University, suggested that Feigl-Ding’s reach means his tweets have the power to be hugely influential. “With as large of a following as he has, when he says something that’s really wrong or misleading, it reverberates throughout the Twittersphere,” she said.
...
To Angela Rasmussen, a Columbia University virologist, this represents a pattern. “[T]his is his MO,” she wrote in an email. “He tweets something sensational and out of context, buries any caveats further down-thread, and watches the clicks and [retweets] roll in.”
...
Feigl-Ding also glosses over his decision to leave medical school, which he enrolled in briefly after completing his Harvard degree. “I realized life’s about what you do, not the number of letters behind your name,” Feigl-Ding said, “and at that point, I already had dual doctorates in two other things, and you know, pursuing a medical degree would’ve been a little bit overkill.”
I mean he's citing his sources in the tweet. If his numbers are wrong it will be very easy to demonstrate.
The "numbers" he cites are primarily of the SA study of the AZ vaccine, which were not good, but equally the problems with that study have been extensively discussed on here, and he also fails to mention the study's findings that T-Cell responses were still triggered. He also goes on to simply assume that because the Tyrol is (more or less) in central Europe it must be everywhere. Manchester is (more or less) in the centre of the island of Great Britain and that has not (perhaps yet) happened here. He also fails to mention the fact that even in bleedin' South Africa itself restrictions have been eased and cases are still falling.
Finally, and this really gets me, he uses a handle with "Dr" in it - yet he never finished medical school. If his bio said something like "doctorate in health economics" (which he has) then I could live with it - but he doesn't. He tweets on medical issues using such a twitter handle but fails to make that clear.
My concern with him is less his lack of advanced/medical qualifications and more the clickbait style of his tweets. I know when someone is trying to manipulate me to grab my attention, and I turn away from it.
The world needs more calm analysis, not more hysteria. Times are tough enough without upsetting people more.
A major outbreak of the Boerbug in Austria. Not good. Suggests it is embedded in central Europe, and spreading
An OXAZ vaccinated UK population will be protected against our strain but less so against the SA. The SA will thus have a path to dominance and this, I gather, is a worry, although obviously not an argument for not vaccinating.
It's much less of a worry than is being made out by the news.
Ha ha ha... Since when did the newsmakers ever worry about, "worry"?
Surely by now all rational people understand that the news is created to further the agenda of the newsmakers... admitedly in tandem with the newsmakers own self serving ignorance.
If I may make a simple example... when do newsmakers actually check their sources? Ever? The reality is that it is self serving of the newsmakers to ignore checks since to do so would mostly scrap their story in the bud and would otherwise allow them to peddle their own agenda. The recent Observer/Guardian anti monarchy story for instance.
Tragically, tragically for our own social and political and democratic welfare, we find newsmakers forever obsessing about the "Gotcha Moment" (their self agrandising moment) as opposed to ummm...shall we say, "Journalism". Or is that a dirty word?
A major outbreak of the Boerbug in Austria. Not good. Suggests it is embedded in central Europe, and spreading
An OXAZ vaccinated UK population will be protected against our strain but less so against the SA. The SA will thus have a path to dominance and this, I gather, is a worry, although obviously not an argument for not vaccinating.
It's much less of a worry than is being made out by the news.
Everyone that's had OxAz can get a booster shot in the Autumn/early 2021, no worries.
It's not that its a worry but 1 week ago it was very likely that the UKs AZ vaccinated population would have been able to travel freely from early summer without a care in the world. Now, while we may be able to drive down cases in the UK through immunisation, we will still have to exist in a high state of lockdown to prevent the SA strain growing here.
Essentially we seem to be back to where we were before the AZ vaccine arrived, with only those having had the Pfizer vaccine looking like they will have enough immunity.
Having protection against severe disease and death is hardly back where we were before the vaccine.
We've yet to see performance data of the AZ vaccine for the more elderly population but hopefully you are right.
However, I expect that the restrictions the UK experiences this summer will be more onerous than the ones we had last summer, so in that sense we are back to the beginning.
Yes, unless this outbreak in central Europe fizzles out (and that is possible, inshallah) then I fear this means a considerably longer lockdown; maybe, in some form, until the autumn - when we have plentiful tweaked vaccines that defeat the SA Bug? Also closed borders for much if not all of the year.
What the F does that do to the economy, or indeed, to us?
Remember that the SA study showed that previous infection with Old Covid provides no immunity against SA Covid. So everybody whose already had it could get it again (as happened, perhaps, in Manaus?). It has serious implications.
The one thing you are missing is that the number of new cases in South Africa has collapsed from 20,000 a day a month ago to 2,000 a day now. So the SA Variant does not seem to last long.
I'm not missing it at all. I have mentioned it several times the past couple of weeks. It is promising, if somewhat inexplicable.
Some say it is herd immunity, others an effective lockdown, a third explanation is that this new variant just fizzles away. Clearly, the third answer is hugely preferable.
That level of decrease indicates to me it must be the third answer. All these new variants infect quickly and disappear quickly.
During the first wave in Europe despite the very strict lockdown it took weeks for the numbers to fall and then only gradually. These new varaints just seem to disappear.
Is tbat meant to be that it's ok for the Senate ITSELF to be prohibited from prosecuting officer holders?
Should it not be procedures and judges and juries to do that?
Right or wrong on any of this, is it equitable for the prosecution, the judge and the jury to decide they can indict and try and convict their prisoner? In absentia. Without appeal.
It is pretty obvious that everything is getting more difficult, more expensive and more burdensome.
But on the other hand we have maintained the sovereignty we have had for the past few centuries so all is well.
I havent seen any sign of anything being more expensive day to day, but what is clear to everyone is our post Brexit vaccine rollout is saving countless lives. Wranglings over shellfish are of course a hardship for those involved but there has been zero downsides so far for the vast majority.
You haven't seen it but there are countless examples of the extra cost and embuggerance of the new procedures.
Will that cost be passed on to @Brom? We shall see but if not then profit margins suffer with the consequent impact on future investment, wages, employment, etc.
Well we left the EU over a year ago, and the tranisiton period ended a month ago, maybe I'll have to wait longer, but I suspect these problems are on the whole rather niche and I expect a lot of it like the shellfish export problems to be smoothed over in the coming weeks. I think most remainers with a negative view of Brexit would agree it's surprised them on the positive side compared to predicted scenarios.
Right now it's pretty clear any issues you speak of pale in comparison with the effects of Covid, which unfortunate as it is will benefit the government by making any existing Brexit fallout seem like small beer.
That is true. Covid has provided ample smokescreen for Brexit.
"UPDATE: 30.9% share of N501Y mutants (B.1.1.7, B.1.351 or P.1) in those who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 in the Munich area from February 05-07, 2021. Labor Becker & Kollegen informs."
This same area was one of the main sources of Olde Worlde Covid about a year ago.
Those who do not learn from history....
No it wasn’t. Alto Adige was relatively unaffected while the first wave raged in Lombardy, and to a lesser extent in the Austrian Tyrol. Until recently the Italian Alps have been tier one material.
I meant the Austrian Alps. Ischgl in the Tirol was literally the superspreader town in 2020, and here we go again: the Tirol
In the UK the air is driest in winter (in the partial pressure of water sense, not relative humidity) and this seems to be what causes respiratory disease, not damp.
Cold air AND altitude is even worse.
Dry thin air is best for the long jump so it would make sense that it helps a virus to jump from person to person.
Outrage as Oxford University renames its prestigious Wykeham chair of physics after a Chinese firm 'with links to country's spy agency' - in return for a £700,000 donation.
A major outbreak of the Boerbug in Austria. Not good. Suggests it is embedded in central Europe, and spreading
An OXAZ vaccinated UK population will be protected against our strain but less so against the SA. The SA will thus have a path to dominance and this, I gather, is a worry, although obviously not an argument for not vaccinating.
It's much less of a worry than is being made out by the news.
Everyone that's had OxAz can get a booster shot in the Autumn/early 2021, no worries.
It's not that its a worry but 1 week ago it was very likely that the UKs AZ vaccinated population would have been able to travel freely from early summer without a care in the world. Now, while we may be able to drive down cases in the UK through immunisation, we will still have to exist in a high state of lockdown to prevent the SA strain growing here.
Essentially we seem to be back to where we were before the AZ vaccine arrived, with only those having had the Pfizer vaccine looking like they will have enough immunity.
Having protection against severe disease and death is hardly back where we were before the vaccine.
We've yet to see performance data of the AZ vaccine for the more elderly population but hopefully you are right.
However, I expect that the restrictions the UK experiences this summer will be more onerous than the ones we had last summer, so in that sense we are back to the beginning.
Yes, unless this outbreak in central Europe fizzles out (and that is possible, inshallah) then I fear this means a considerably longer lockdown; maybe, in some form, until the autumn - when we have plentiful tweaked vaccines that defeat the SA Bug? Also closed borders for much if not all of the year.
What the F does that do to the economy, or indeed, to us?
Remember that the SA study showed that previous infection with Old Covid provides no immunity against SA Covid. So everybody whose already had it could get it again (as happened, perhaps, in Manaus?). It has serious implications.
The one thing you are missing is that the number of new cases in South Africa has collapsed from 20,000 a day a month ago to 2,000 a day now. So the SA Variant does not seem to last long.
I'm not missing it at all. I have mentioned it several times the past couple of weeks. It is promising, if somewhat inexplicable.
Some say it is herd immunity, others an effective lockdown, a third explanation is that this new variant just fizzles away. Clearly, the third answer is hugely preferable.
That level of decrease indicates to me it must be the third answer. All these new variants infect quickly and disappear quickly.
During the first wave in Europe despite the very strict lockdown it took weeks for the numbers to fall and then only gradually. These new varaints just seem to disappear.
Bears shitting in woods get upset that other bears do the same?
A major outbreak of the Boerbug in Austria. Not good. Suggests it is embedded in central Europe, and spreading
An OXAZ vaccinated UK population will be protected against our strain but less so against the SA. The SA will thus have a path to dominance and this, I gather, is a worry, although obviously not an argument for not vaccinating.
It's much less of a worry than is being made out by the news.
Everyone that's had OxAz can get a booster shot in the Autumn/early 2021, no worries.
It's not that its a worry but 1 week ago it was very likely that the UKs AZ vaccinated population would have been able to travel freely from early summer without a care in the world. Now, while we may be able to drive down cases in the UK through immunisation, we will still have to exist in a high state of lockdown to prevent the SA strain growing here.
Essentially we seem to be back to where we were before the AZ vaccine arrived, with only those having had the Pfizer vaccine looking like they will have enough immunity.
Having protection against severe disease and death is hardly back where we were before the vaccine.
We don't know yet whether AZ still offers protection against major disease and death in the elderly. That SA test was largely on the young, wasn't it? Who are much less likely to get severe Covid anyway.
I am not being alarmist. Let's hope you are right, you are an expert. Trouble is we just do not know, and it is this uncertainty which is the crippling factor.
It must be quite freaky for the Austrians: they were relying almost entirely on AZ for their vax programme.
There is no other way for a vaccine to protect your health than for it to generate an immune response is there? We know that the immune response to OXAZN in the elderly was completely in line with that of the young. So how can you interpret that in any way other than that the protective effect will also be in line. It's a shame that nobody in the control group had the decency to get severely sick and die to ease your collywobbles, but there we are.
The South Africans have completely halted their AZ roll-out. South Africa has some very smart doctors.
A major outbreak of the Boerbug in Austria. Not good. Suggests it is embedded in central Europe, and spreading
An OXAZ vaccinated UK population will be protected against our strain but less so against the SA. The SA will thus have a path to dominance and this, I gather, is a worry, although obviously not an argument for not vaccinating.
It's much less of a worry than is being made out by the news.
Everyone that's had OxAz can get a booster shot in the Autumn/early 2021, no worries.
It's not that its a worry but 1 week ago it was very likely that the UKs AZ vaccinated population would have been able to travel freely from early summer without a care in the world. Now, while we may be able to drive down cases in the UK through immunisation, we will still have to exist in a high state of lockdown to prevent the SA strain growing here.
Essentially we seem to be back to where we were before the AZ vaccine arrived, with only those having had the Pfizer vaccine looking like they will have enough immunity.
Having protection against severe disease and death is hardly back where we were before the vaccine.
We've yet to see performance data of the AZ vaccine for the more elderly population but hopefully you are right.
However, I expect that the restrictions the UK experiences this summer will be more onerous than the ones we had last summer, so in that sense we are back to the beginning.
Yes, unless this outbreak in central Europe fizzles out (and that is possible, inshallah) then I fear this means a considerably longer lockdown; maybe, in some form, until the autumn - when we have plentiful tweaked vaccines that defeat the SA Bug? Also closed borders for much if not all of the year.
What the F does that do to the economy, or indeed, to us?
Remember that the SA study showed that previous infection with Old Covid provides no immunity against SA Covid. So everybody whose already had it could get it again (as happened, perhaps, in Manaus?). It has serious implications.
The one thing you are missing is that the number of new cases in South Africa has collapsed from 20,000 a day a month ago to 2,000 a day now. So the SA Variant does not seem to last long.
I'm not missing it at all. I have mentioned it several times the past couple of weeks. It is promising, if somewhat inexplicable.
Some say it is herd immunity, others an effective lockdown, a third explanation is that this new variant just fizzles away. Clearly, the third answer is hugely preferable.
That level of decrease indicates to me it must be the third answer. All these new variants infect quickly and disappear quickly.
During the first wave in Europe despite the very strict lockdown it took weeks for the numbers to fall and then only gradually. These new varaints just seem to disappear.
Yep. Could be. Great news if so.
Worth noting that the Austrian government is possibly more incompetent than ours, quarantine-wise.
Vienna has just imposed a lockdown on Tirol: you cannot get out of the province without a negative test.
HOWEVER this only starts on...... Friday. So anyone in Tirol who wants to leave, carrying the SA bug, without a negative test, can do it at their leisure over the next few days
A major outbreak of the Boerbug in Austria. Not good. Suggests it is embedded in central Europe, and spreading
An OXAZ vaccinated UK population will be protected against our strain but less so against the SA. The SA will thus have a path to dominance and this, I gather, is a worry, although obviously not an argument for not vaccinating.
It's much less of a worry than is being made out by the news.
Everyone that's had OxAz can get a booster shot in the Autumn/early 2021, no worries.
It's not that its a worry but 1 week ago it was very likely that the UKs AZ vaccinated population would have been able to travel freely from early summer without a care in the world. Now, while we may be able to drive down cases in the UK through immunisation, we will still have to exist in a high state of lockdown to prevent the SA strain growing here.
Essentially we seem to be back to where we were before the AZ vaccine arrived, with only those having had the Pfizer vaccine looking like they will have enough immunity.
Having protection against severe disease and death is hardly back where we were before the vaccine.
We've yet to see performance data of the AZ vaccine for the more elderly population but hopefully you are right.
However, I expect that the restrictions the UK experiences this summer will be more onerous than the ones we had last summer, so in that sense we are back to the beginning.
Yes, unless this outbreak in central Europe fizzles out (and that is possible, inshallah) then I fear this means a considerably longer lockdown; maybe, in some form, until the autumn - when we have plentiful tweaked vaccines that defeat the SA Bug? Also closed borders for much if not all of the year.
What the F does that do to the economy, or indeed, to us?
Remember that the SA study showed that previous infection with Old Covid provides no immunity against SA Covid. So everybody whose already had it could get it again (as happened, perhaps, in Manaus?). It has serious implications.
The one thing you are missing is that the number of new cases in South Africa has collapsed from 20,000 a day a month ago to 2,000 a day now. So the SA Variant does not seem to last long.
I'm not missing it at all. I have mentioned it several times the past couple of weeks. It is promising, if somewhat inexplicable.
Some say it is herd immunity, others an effective lockdown, a third explanation is that this new variant just fizzles away. Clearly, the third answer is hugely preferable.
That level of decrease indicates to me it must be the third answer. All these new variants infect quickly and disappear quickly.
During the first wave in Europe despite the very strict lockdown it took weeks for the numbers to fall and then only gradually. These new varaints just seem to disappear.
I don't see how a virus strain can 'fizzle'. It hasn't got any momentum.
Either it can find someone to infect, or it can't (because of behaviour, immunity, or environment).
Lockdown, have it infect everybody susceptible, or vaccinate. What else is there?
A major outbreak of the Boerbug in Austria. Not good. Suggests it is embedded in central Europe, and spreading
An OXAZ vaccinated UK population will be protected against our strain but less so against the SA. The SA will thus have a path to dominance and this, I gather, is a worry, although obviously not an argument for not vaccinating.
It's much less of a worry than is being made out by the news.
Everyone that's had OxAz can get a booster shot in the Autumn/early 2021, no worries.
It's not that its a worry but 1 week ago it was very likely that the UKs AZ vaccinated population would have been able to travel freely from early summer without a care in the world. Now, while we may be able to drive down cases in the UK through immunisation, we will still have to exist in a high state of lockdown to prevent the SA strain growing here.
Essentially we seem to be back to where we were before the AZ vaccine arrived, with only those having had the Pfizer vaccine looking like they will have enough immunity.
Having protection against severe disease and death is hardly back where we were before the vaccine.
We've yet to see performance data of the AZ vaccine for the more elderly population but hopefully you are right.
However, I expect that the restrictions the UK experiences this summer will be more onerous than the ones we had last summer, so in that sense we are back to the beginning.
Yes, unless this outbreak in central Europe fizzles out (and that is possible, inshallah) then I fear this means a considerably longer lockdown; maybe, in some form, until the autumn - when we have plentiful tweaked vaccines that defeat the SA Bug? Also closed borders for much if not all of the year.
What the F does that do to the economy, or indeed, to us?
Remember that the SA study showed that previous infection with Old Covid provides no immunity against SA Covid. So everybody whose already had it could get it again (as happened, perhaps, in Manaus?). It has serious implications.
The one thing you are missing is that the number of new cases in South Africa has collapsed from 20,000 a day a month ago to 2,000 a day now. So the SA Variant does not seem to last long.
I'm not missing it at all. I have mentioned it several times the past couple of weeks. It is promising, if somewhat inexplicable.
Some say it is herd immunity, others an effective lockdown, a third explanation is that this new variant just fizzles away. Clearly, the third answer is hugely preferable.
That level of decrease indicates to me it must be the third answer. All these new variants infect quickly and disappear quickly.
During the first wave in Europe despite the very strict lockdown it took weeks for the numbers to fall and then only gradually. These new varaints just seem to disappear.
I don't see how a virus strain can 'fizzle'. It hasn't got any momentum.
Either it can find someone to infect, or it can't (because of behaviour, immunity, or environment).
Lockdown, have it infect everybody susceptible, or vaccinate. What else is there?
In the long-term, it is just the latter two options. We can neither continue lockdown into perpetuity, nor will it prevent absolutely continued infections.
A major outbreak of the Boerbug in Austria. Not good. Suggests it is embedded in central Europe, and spreading
An OXAZ vaccinated UK population will be protected against our strain but less so against the SA. The SA will thus have a path to dominance and this, I gather, is a worry, although obviously not an argument for not vaccinating.
It's much less of a worry than is being made out by the news.
Everyone that's had OxAz can get a booster shot in the Autumn/early 2021, no worries.
It's not that its a worry but 1 week ago it was very likely that the UKs AZ vaccinated population would have been able to travel freely from early summer without a care in the world. Now, while we may be able to drive down cases in the UK through immunisation, we will still have to exist in a high state of lockdown to prevent the SA strain growing here.
Essentially we seem to be back to where we were before the AZ vaccine arrived, with only those having had the Pfizer vaccine looking like they will have enough immunity.
Having protection against severe disease and death is hardly back where we were before the vaccine.
We've yet to see performance data of the AZ vaccine for the more elderly population but hopefully you are right.
However, I expect that the restrictions the UK experiences this summer will be more onerous than the ones we had last summer, so in that sense we are back to the beginning.
Yes, unless this outbreak in central Europe fizzles out (and that is possible, inshallah) then I fear this means a considerably longer lockdown; maybe, in some form, until the autumn - when we have plentiful tweaked vaccines that defeat the SA Bug? Also closed borders for much if not all of the year.
What the F does that do to the economy, or indeed, to us?
Remember that the SA study showed that previous infection with Old Covid provides no immunity against SA Covid. So everybody whose already had it could get it again (as happened, perhaps, in Manaus?). It has serious implications.
The one thing you are missing is that the number of new cases in South Africa has collapsed from 20,000 a day a month ago to 2,000 a day now. So the SA Variant does not seem to last long.
I'm not missing it at all. I have mentioned it several times the past couple of weeks. It is promising, if somewhat inexplicable.
Some say it is herd immunity, others an effective lockdown, a third explanation is that this new variant just fizzles away. Clearly, the third answer is hugely preferable.
That level of decrease indicates to me it must be the third answer. All these new variants infect quickly and disappear quickly.
During the first wave in Europe despite the very strict lockdown it took weeks for the numbers to fall and then only gradually. These new varaints just seem to disappear.
Yep. Could be. Great news if so.
Worth noting that the Austrian government is possibly more incompetent than ours, quarantine-wise.
Vienna has just imposed a lockdown on Tirol: you cannot get out of the province without a negative test.
HOWEVER this only starts on...... Friday. So anyone in Tirol who wants to leave, carrying the SA bug, without a negative test, can do it at their leisure over the next few days
Oh dear, a whole bunch of cases about to seeded across all of Europe. We may end up having to add many EU countries to the red list over the next few weeks.
Outrage as Oxford University renames its prestigious Wykeham chair of physics after a Chinese firm 'with links to country's spy agency' - in return for a £700,000 donation.
A major outbreak of the Boerbug in Austria. Not good. Suggests it is embedded in central Europe, and spreading
An OXAZ vaccinated UK population will be protected against our strain but less so against the SA. The SA will thus have a path to dominance and this, I gather, is a worry, although obviously not an argument for not vaccinating.
It's much less of a worry than is being made out by the news.
Everyone that's had OxAz can get a booster shot in the Autumn/early 2021, no worries.
It's not that its a worry but 1 week ago it was very likely that the UKs AZ vaccinated population would have been able to travel freely from early summer without a care in the world. Now, while we may be able to drive down cases in the UK through immunisation, we will still have to exist in a high state of lockdown to prevent the SA strain growing here.
Essentially we seem to be back to where we were before the AZ vaccine arrived, with only those having had the Pfizer vaccine looking like they will have enough immunity.
Having protection against severe disease and death is hardly back where we were before the vaccine.
We don't know yet whether AZ still offers protection against major disease and death in the elderly. That SA test was largely on the young, wasn't it? Who are much less likely to get severe Covid anyway.
I am not being alarmist. Let's hope you are right, you are an expert. Trouble is we just do not know, and it is this uncertainty which is the crippling factor.
It must be quite freaky for the Austrians: they were relying almost entirely on AZ for their vax programme.
There is no other way for a vaccine to protect your health than for it to generate an immune response is there? We know that the immune response to OXAZN in the elderly was completely in line with that of the young. So how can you interpret that in any way other than that the protective effect will also be in line. It's a shame that nobody in the control group had the decency to get severely sick and die to ease your collywobbles, but there we are.
The South Africans have completely halted their AZ roll-out. South Africa has some very smart doctors.
No. Sometimes, to get an answer, you just have to watch how people behave, because the science is already done by them
eg It was obvious by late January 2020 that Coronavirus was a mahoosive problem, because no way would China shut down an entire province - 63m people - in the strictest quarantine in history, unless their scientists had examined all the data, ten times over, and thought: HOLY SHIT
You didn't have to spend hours examining virological reports, you just had to look at that, and think logically, for about one minute. Some did that, some didn't.
South Africa does not have the scientific expertise of China, but neither is it some 3rd world country with no clue. I am sure they would love to vaccinate their whole population with AZ: it is cheap and user-friendly and they have lots of it.
Instead, they have halted the entire AZ roll-out. This suggests they have closely looked at the data, and deduced there is a real issue. Sadly
Scotland number is very good. Maybe using up those vaccine stockpiles?
That's very disappointing. I was really hoping we would see 500k a day, every day.
I get a sense that they're holding back vaccines for second jabs and there's a lot of bad weather in England. There's been four days of constant snow in some parts.
Not sure they are holding back very many vaccines. We were told that the numbers being delivered would mean the 15m target would be doable but tight - and that seems to be exactly where we are. Honesty again the best policy. Let's see what the new targets are from 15th February. Hopefully we will be doing 5m a week then.
A major outbreak of the Boerbug in Austria. Not good. Suggests it is embedded in central Europe, and spreading
An OXAZ vaccinated UK population will be protected against our strain but less so against the SA. The SA will thus have a path to dominance and this, I gather, is a worry, although obviously not an argument for not vaccinating.
It's much less of a worry than is being made out by the news.
Everyone that's had OxAz can get a booster shot in the Autumn/early 2021, no worries.
It's not that its a worry but 1 week ago it was very likely that the UKs AZ vaccinated population would have been able to travel freely from early summer without a care in the world. Now, while we may be able to drive down cases in the UK through immunisation, we will still have to exist in a high state of lockdown to prevent the SA strain growing here.
Essentially we seem to be back to where we were before the AZ vaccine arrived, with only those having had the Pfizer vaccine looking like they will have enough immunity.
Having protection against severe disease and death is hardly back where we were before the vaccine.
We've yet to see performance data of the AZ vaccine for the more elderly population but hopefully you are right.
However, I expect that the restrictions the UK experiences this summer will be more onerous than the ones we had last summer, so in that sense we are back to the beginning.
Yes, unless this outbreak in central Europe fizzles out (and that is possible, inshallah) then I fear this means a considerably longer lockdown; maybe, in some form, until the autumn - when we have plentiful tweaked vaccines that defeat the SA Bug? Also closed borders for much if not all of the year.
What the F does that do to the economy, or indeed, to us?
Remember that the SA study showed that previous infection with Old Covid provides no immunity against SA Covid. So everybody whose already had it could get it again (as happened, perhaps, in Manaus?). It has serious implications.
The one thing you are missing is that the number of new cases in South Africa has collapsed from 20,000 a day a month ago to 2,000 a day now. So the SA Variant does not seem to last long.
I'm not missing it at all. I have mentioned it several times the past couple of weeks. It is promising, if somewhat inexplicable.
Some say it is herd immunity, others an effective lockdown, a third explanation is that this new variant just fizzles away. Clearly, the third answer is hugely preferable.
That level of decrease indicates to me it must be the third answer. All these new variants infect quickly and disappear quickly.
During the first wave in Europe despite the very strict lockdown it took weeks for the numbers to fall and then only gradually. These new varaints just seem to disappear.
I don't see how a virus strain can 'fizzle'. It hasn't got any momentum.
Either it can find someone to infect, or it can't (because of behaviour, immunity, or environment).
Lockdown, have it infect everybody susceptible, or vaccinate. What else is there?
The rate of decrease is completely incredible, it has to be in the nature of this variant which causes it to do this. South Africa is not doing anything different from a month ago yet cases have fallen 90%.
Its strange that there is so much concern about the SA variant as it seems to disappear so quickly.
Its also strange that this reduction in cases in South Africa has not made the news.
A major outbreak of the Boerbug in Austria. Not good. Suggests it is embedded in central Europe, and spreading
An OXAZ vaccinated UK population will be protected against our strain but less so against the SA. The SA will thus have a path to dominance and this, I gather, is a worry, although obviously not an argument for not vaccinating.
It's much less of a worry than is being made out by the news.
Everyone that's had OxAz can get a booster shot in the Autumn/early 2021, no worries.
It's not that its a worry but 1 week ago it was very likely that the UKs AZ vaccinated population would have been able to travel freely from early summer without a care in the world. Now, while we may be able to drive down cases in the UK through immunisation, we will still have to exist in a high state of lockdown to prevent the SA strain growing here.
Essentially we seem to be back to where we were before the AZ vaccine arrived, with only those having had the Pfizer vaccine looking like they will have enough immunity.
Having protection against severe disease and death is hardly back where we were before the vaccine.
We've yet to see performance data of the AZ vaccine for the more elderly population but hopefully you are right.
However, I expect that the restrictions the UK experiences this summer will be more onerous than the ones we had last summer, so in that sense we are back to the beginning.
Yes, unless this outbreak in central Europe fizzles out (and that is possible, inshallah) then I fear this means a considerably longer lockdown; maybe, in some form, until the autumn - when we have plentiful tweaked vaccines that defeat the SA Bug? Also closed borders for much if not all of the year.
What the F does that do to the economy, or indeed, to us?
Remember that the SA study showed that previous infection with Old Covid provides no immunity against SA Covid. So everybody whose already had it could get it again (as happened, perhaps, in Manaus?). It has serious implications.
The one thing you are missing is that the number of new cases in South Africa has collapsed from 20,000 a day a month ago to 2,000 a day now. So the SA Variant does not seem to last long.
I'm not missing it at all. I have mentioned it several times the past couple of weeks. It is promising, if somewhat inexplicable.
Some say it is herd immunity, others an effective lockdown, a third explanation is that this new variant just fizzles away. Clearly, the third answer is hugely preferable.
That level of decrease indicates to me it must be the third answer. All these new variants infect quickly and disappear quickly.
During the first wave in Europe despite the very strict lockdown it took weeks for the numbers to fall and then only gradually. These new varaints just seem to disappear.
I don't see how a virus strain can 'fizzle'. It hasn't got any momentum.
Either it can find someone to infect, or it can't (because of behaviour, immunity, or environment).
Lockdown, have it infect everybody susceptible, or vaccinate. What else is there?
It can mutate into something so innocuous you don't notice it. That's one kind of fizzling.
Scotland number is very good. Maybe using up those vaccine stockpiles?
That's very disappointing. I was really hoping we would see 500k a day, every day.
I get a sense that they're holding back vaccines for second jabs and there's a lot of bad weather in England. There's been four days of constant snow in some parts.
Not sure they are holding back very many vaccines. We were told that the numbers being delivered would mean the 15m target would be doable but tight - and that seems to be exactly where we are. Honesty again the best policy. Let's see what the new targets are from 15th February. Hopefully we will be doing 5m a week then.
Outrage as Oxford University renames its prestigious Wykeham chair of physics after a Chinese firm 'with links to country's spy agency' - in return for a £700,000 donation.
Outrage as Oxford University renames its prestigious Wykeham chair of physics after a Chinese firm 'with links to country's spy agency' - in return for a £700,000 donation.
The importer of stuff from Asia does not understand "Rules of Origin"?
They understand very well, that's why they are thinking of moving their distribution hub to the EU, at the cost of around 1,000 UK jobs.
An example of those sunny uplands visible before you.
If they understood them they would have moved before the transition period ended, rather than them come as a shock afterwards!
Nonsense. Because of Boris's pantomime - pretending there might be No Deal up to the eleventh hour - no one could have a clue what was actually required until Brexit was upon us.
The importer of stuff from Asia does not understand "Rules of Origin"?
They understand very well, that's why they are thinking of moving their distribution hub to the EU, at the cost of around 1,000 UK jobs.
An example of those sunny uplands visible before you.
If they understood them they would have moved before the transition period ended, rather than them come as a shock afterwards!
Nonsense. Because of Boris's pantomime - pretending there might be No Deal up to the eleventh hour - no one could have a clue what was actually required until Brexit was upon us.
Discussions over "Rules of Origin" were prominent throughout - see the discussion on cars.
The importer of stuff from Asia does not understand "Rules of Origin"?
They understand very well, that's why they are thinking of moving their distribution hub to the EU, at the cost of around 1,000 UK jobs.
An example of those sunny uplands visible before you.
If they understood them they would have moved before the transition period ended, rather than them come as a shock afterwards!
Not at all, you seem to have forgotten that our half-wit of a PM left about three working days gap between publishing the trade agreement and it coming into effect. No one knew what the rules of origin were going to be before that.
Admittedly they might have been very stupid to believe our PM's assurances before that that everything would be OK. But no company would be happy doing a hugely expensive and disruptive revamp of its distribution network when there was no transparency as to what the rules would be and whether the revamp would be necessary. Especially not in the middle of a massive worldwide pandemic and in the run-up to Christmas - timings which were 100% the fault of Boris Johnson and his government.
The saffer version seems vaccine resistant, previous infection resistant and leads to worse outcomes but how transmissible is it ? Perhaps less than the Kent version maybe.
A major outbreak of the Boerbug in Austria. Not good. Suggests it is embedded in central Europe, and spreading
An OXAZ vaccinated UK population will be protected against our strain but less so against the SA. The SA will thus have a path to dominance and this, I gather, is a worry, although obviously not an argument for not vaccinating.
It's much less of a worry than is being made out by the news.
Everyone that's had OxAz can get a booster shot in the Autumn/early 2021, no worries.
It's not that its a worry but 1 week ago it was very likely that the UKs AZ vaccinated population would have been able to travel freely from early summer without a care in the world. Now, while we may be able to drive down cases in the UK through immunisation, we will still have to exist in a high state of lockdown to prevent the SA strain growing here.
Essentially we seem to be back to where we were before the AZ vaccine arrived, with only those having had the Pfizer vaccine looking like they will have enough immunity.
Having protection against severe disease and death is hardly back where we were before the vaccine.
We've yet to see performance data of the AZ vaccine for the more elderly population but hopefully you are right.
However, I expect that the restrictions the UK experiences this summer will be more onerous than the ones we had last summer, so in that sense we are back to the beginning.
Yes, unless this outbreak in central Europe fizzles out (and that is possible, inshallah) then I fear this means a considerably longer lockdown; maybe, in some form, until the autumn - when we have plentiful tweaked vaccines that defeat the SA Bug? Also closed borders for much if not all of the year.
What the F does that do to the economy, or indeed, to us?
Remember that the SA study showed that previous infection with Old Covid provides no immunity against SA Covid. So everybody whose already had it could get it again (as happened, perhaps, in Manaus?). It has serious implications.
The one thing you are missing is that the number of new cases in South Africa has collapsed from 20,000 a day a month ago to 2,000 a day now. So the SA Variant does not seem to last long.
I'm not missing it at all. I have mentioned it several times the past couple of weeks. It is promising, if somewhat inexplicable.
Some say it is herd immunity, others an effective lockdown, a third explanation is that this new variant just fizzles away. Clearly, the third answer is hugely preferable.
That level of decrease indicates to me it must be the third answer. All these new variants infect quickly and disappear quickly.
During the first wave in Europe despite the very strict lockdown it took weeks for the numbers to fall and then only gradually. These new varaints just seem to disappear.
I don't see how a virus strain can 'fizzle'. It hasn't got any momentum.
Either it can find someone to infect, or it can't (because of behaviour, immunity, or environment).
Lockdown, have it infect everybody susceptible, or vaccinate. What else is there?
It can mutate into something so innocuous you don't notice it. That's one kind of fizzling.
Sorry for the naïve schoolboy science on this but isn't it a case that viruses expend genetic "energy" when they mutate and that there's always a trade-off, genetically, between infectivity and lethality. Highly lethal viruses aren't normally highly contagious and vice-versa. HIV or Ebola, for example haven't mutated, thank-god, into highly transmissible airborne forms as the genetic price is too high.
With respect to C19 the more it mutates, the weaker it becomes?
The importer of stuff from Asia does not understand "Rules of Origin"?
They understand very well, that's why they are thinking of moving their distribution hub to the EU, at the cost of around 1,000 UK jobs.
An example of those sunny uplands visible before you.
If they understood them they would have moved before the transition period ended, rather than them come as a shock afterwards!
Nonsense. Because of Boris's pantomime - pretending there might be No Deal up to the eleventh hour - no one could have a clue what was actually required until Brexit was upon us.
Everyone was advised to prepare for WTO terms.
If you were prepared for WTO terms then surely trade with a deal would be better, not worse, than that?
Outrage as Oxford University renames its prestigious Wykeham chair of physics after a Chinese firm 'with links to country's spy agency' - in return for a £700,000 donation.
That is absolutely fucking unacceptable and beyond ludicrous.
The money, I mean. It is an order of magnitude too light.
To properly endow a prestigious chair at Oxford with a name change, they should be looking to screw the donor for at least 6 or 7 million.
E.g., Harvard created an endowed Chair in Tamil for 6 million dollars.
It looks a ridiculous post anyway, it was held 1900-1941 by a guy called Townsend who footled about measuring electrical charges for all that time because nothing else of interest was going on in the world of physics. Hate to say it but the Other Place is where they do natural sciences best.
They better not mess with the chairs of logic or ancient history, though.
The saffer version seems vaccine resistant, previous infection resistant and leads to worse outcomes but how transmissible is it ? Perhaps less than the Kent version maybe.
At the current rate within a week or two it will be gone from South Africa
A major outbreak of the Boerbug in Austria. Not good. Suggests it is embedded in central Europe, and spreading
An OXAZ vaccinated UK population will be protected against our strain but less so against the SA. The SA will thus have a path to dominance and this, I gather, is a worry, although obviously not an argument for not vaccinating.
It's much less of a worry than is being made out by the news.
Everyone that's had OxAz can get a booster shot in the Autumn/early 2021, no worries.
It's not that its a worry but 1 week ago it was very likely that the UKs AZ vaccinated population would have been able to travel freely from early summer without a care in the world. Now, while we may be able to drive down cases in the UK through immunisation, we will still have to exist in a high state of lockdown to prevent the SA strain growing here.
Essentially we seem to be back to where we were before the AZ vaccine arrived, with only those having had the Pfizer vaccine looking like they will have enough immunity.
Having protection against severe disease and death is hardly back where we were before the vaccine.
We've yet to see performance data of the AZ vaccine for the more elderly population but hopefully you are right.
However, I expect that the restrictions the UK experiences this summer will be more onerous than the ones we had last summer, so in that sense we are back to the beginning.
Yes, unless this outbreak in central Europe fizzles out (and that is possible, inshallah) then I fear this means a considerably longer lockdown; maybe, in some form, until the autumn - when we have plentiful tweaked vaccines that defeat the SA Bug? Also closed borders for much if not all of the year.
What the F does that do to the economy, or indeed, to us?
Remember that the SA study showed that previous infection with Old Covid provides no immunity against SA Covid. So everybody whose already had it could get it again (as happened, perhaps, in Manaus?). It has serious implications.
The one thing you are missing is that the number of new cases in South Africa has collapsed from 20,000 a day a month ago to 2,000 a day now. So the SA Variant does not seem to last long.
I'm not missing it at all. I have mentioned it several times the past couple of weeks. It is promising, if somewhat inexplicable.
Some say it is herd immunity, others an effective lockdown, a third explanation is that this new variant just fizzles away. Clearly, the third answer is hugely preferable.
That level of decrease indicates to me it must be the third answer. All these new variants infect quickly and disappear quickly.
During the first wave in Europe despite the very strict lockdown it took weeks for the numbers to fall and then only gradually. These new varaints just seem to disappear.
I don't see how a virus strain can 'fizzle'. It hasn't got any momentum.
Either it can find someone to infect, or it can't (because of behaviour, immunity, or environment).
Lockdown, have it infect everybody susceptible, or vaccinate. What else is there?
It can mutate into something so innocuous you don't notice it. That's one kind of fizzling.
Sorry for the naïve schoolboy science on this but isn't it a case that viruses expend genetic "energy" when they mutate and that there's always a trade-off, genetically, between infectivity and lethality. Highly lethal viruses aren't normally highly contagious and vice-versa. HIV or Ebola, for example haven't mutated, thank-god, into highly transmissible airborne forms as the genetic price is too high.
With respect to C19 the more it mutates, the weaker it becomes?
I'm probably completely wrong....
Not the case. "Expending genetic energy" gets nowhere even as a metaphor. Smallpox - highly contagious, very lethal.
A major outbreak of the Boerbug in Austria. Not good. Suggests it is embedded in central Europe, and spreading
An OXAZ vaccinated UK population will be protected against our strain but less so against the SA. The SA will thus have a path to dominance and this, I gather, is a worry, although obviously not an argument for not vaccinating.
It's much less of a worry than is being made out by the news.
Everyone that's had OxAz can get a booster shot in the Autumn/early 2021, no worries.
It's not that its a worry but 1 week ago it was very likely that the UKs AZ vaccinated population would have been able to travel freely from early summer without a care in the world. Now, while we may be able to drive down cases in the UK through immunisation, we will still have to exist in a high state of lockdown to prevent the SA strain growing here.
Essentially we seem to be back to where we were before the AZ vaccine arrived, with only those having had the Pfizer vaccine looking like they will have enough immunity.
Having protection against severe disease and death is hardly back where we were before the vaccine.
We've yet to see performance data of the AZ vaccine for the more elderly population but hopefully you are right.
However, I expect that the restrictions the UK experiences this summer will be more onerous than the ones we had last summer, so in that sense we are back to the beginning.
Yes, unless this outbreak in central Europe fizzles out (and that is possible, inshallah) then I fear this means a considerably longer lockdown; maybe, in some form, until the autumn - when we have plentiful tweaked vaccines that defeat the SA Bug? Also closed borders for much if not all of the year.
What the F does that do to the economy, or indeed, to us?
Remember that the SA study showed that previous infection with Old Covid provides no immunity against SA Covid. So everybody whose already had it could get it again (as happened, perhaps, in Manaus?). It has serious implications.
The one thing you are missing is that the number of new cases in South Africa has collapsed from 20,000 a day a month ago to 2,000 a day now. So the SA Variant does not seem to last long.
I'm not missing it at all. I have mentioned it several times the past couple of weeks. It is promising, if somewhat inexplicable.
Some say it is herd immunity, others an effective lockdown, a third explanation is that this new variant just fizzles away. Clearly, the third answer is hugely preferable.
That level of decrease indicates to me it must be the third answer. All these new variants infect quickly and disappear quickly.
During the first wave in Europe despite the very strict lockdown it took weeks for the numbers to fall and then only gradually. These new varaints just seem to disappear.
I don't see how a virus strain can 'fizzle'. It hasn't got any momentum.
Either it can find someone to infect, or it can't (because of behaviour, immunity, or environment).
Lockdown, have it infect everybody susceptible, or vaccinate. What else is there?
It can mutate into something so innocuous you don't notice it. That's one kind of fizzling.
Sorry for the naïve schoolboy science on this but isn't it a case that viruses expend genetic "energy" when they mutate and that there's always a trade-off, genetically, between infectivity and lethality. Highly lethal viruses aren't normally highly contagious and vice-versa. HIV or Ebola, for example haven't mutated, thank-god, into highly transmissible airborne forms as the genetic price is too high.
With respect to C19 the more it mutates, the weaker it becomes?
I'm probably completely wrong....
I have no more expertise than you, but that is my understanding of how viruses "normally" behave, but C19 is possibly abnormal, in that it is mutating into more transmissible and POTENTIALLY (we don't know yet) more lethal variants.
It already has a USP in its pronounced ability to transmit asymptomatically.
Here's the scientific dispute about increased lethality:
A major outbreak of the Boerbug in Austria. Not good. Suggests it is embedded in central Europe, and spreading
An OXAZ vaccinated UK population will be protected against our strain but less so against the SA. The SA will thus have a path to dominance and this, I gather, is a worry, although obviously not an argument for not vaccinating.
It's much less of a worry than is being made out by the news.
Everyone that's had OxAz can get a booster shot in the Autumn/early 2021, no worries.
It's not that its a worry but 1 week ago it was very likely that the UKs AZ vaccinated population would have been able to travel freely from early summer without a care in the world. Now, while we may be able to drive down cases in the UK through immunisation, we will still have to exist in a high state of lockdown to prevent the SA strain growing here.
Essentially we seem to be back to where we were before the AZ vaccine arrived, with only those having had the Pfizer vaccine looking like they will have enough immunity.
Having protection against severe disease and death is hardly back where we were before the vaccine.
We've yet to see performance data of the AZ vaccine for the more elderly population but hopefully you are right.
However, I expect that the restrictions the UK experiences this summer will be more onerous than the ones we had last summer, so in that sense we are back to the beginning.
Yes, unless this outbreak in central Europe fizzles out (and that is possible, inshallah) then I fear this means a considerably longer lockdown; maybe, in some form, until the autumn - when we have plentiful tweaked vaccines that defeat the SA Bug? Also closed borders for much if not all of the year.
What the F does that do to the economy, or indeed, to us?
Remember that the SA study showed that previous infection with Old Covid provides no immunity against SA Covid. So everybody whose already had it could get it again (as happened, perhaps, in Manaus?). It has serious implications.
The one thing you are missing is that the number of new cases in South Africa has collapsed from 20,000 a day a month ago to 2,000 a day now. So the SA Variant does not seem to last long.
I'm not missing it at all. I have mentioned it several times the past couple of weeks. It is promising, if somewhat inexplicable.
Some say it is herd immunity, others an effective lockdown, a third explanation is that this new variant just fizzles away. Clearly, the third answer is hugely preferable.
That level of decrease indicates to me it must be the third answer. All these new variants infect quickly and disappear quickly.
During the first wave in Europe despite the very strict lockdown it took weeks for the numbers to fall and then only gradually. These new varaints just seem to disappear.
I don't see how a virus strain can 'fizzle'. It hasn't got any momentum.
Either it can find someone to infect, or it can't (because of behaviour, immunity, or environment).
Lockdown, have it infect everybody susceptible, or vaccinate. What else is there?
It can mutate into something so innocuous you don't notice it. That's one kind of fizzling.
True, although technically that's the 'infect everybody susceptible' route.
I suppose to be sure what is going on we'd need some antibody sampling tests from SA.
The saffer version seems vaccine resistant, previous infection resistant and leads to worse outcomes but how transmissible is it ? Perhaps less than the Kent version maybe.
If they're competing for different host bodies then it may not matter. What we really need to see is data on severe symptoms, hospitalisation and death for it against current vaccines and prior infection. If it just results in 0.1% of people getting severe symptoms, 0.05% needing hospital and almost no on dying then it's not such a big deal. If it results in 5% getting severe symptoms, 2.5% needing hospital and 0.5% dying we have a big problem.
The importer of stuff from Asia does not understand "Rules of Origin"?
They understand very well, that's why they are thinking of moving their distribution hub to the EU, at the cost of around 1,000 UK jobs.
An example of those sunny uplands visible before you.
If they understood them they would have moved before the transition period ended, rather than them come as a shock afterwards!
Not at all, you seem to have forgotten that our half-wit of a PM left about three working days gap between publishing the trade agreement and it coming into effect. No one knew what the rules of origin were going to be before that.
Admittedly they might have been very stupid to believe our PM's assurances before that that everything would be OK. But no company would be happy doing a hugely expensive and disruptive revamp of its distribution network when there was no transparency as to what the rules would be and whether the revamp would be necessary. Especially not in the middle of a massive worldwide pandemic and in the run-up to Christmas - timings which were 100% the fault of Boris Johnson and his government.
If he thought he could import shoes from Asia and sell them to the EU as British life must be a long series of unpleasant surprises....
What a bunch of parasites the Royal Family is. All good conservatives must denounce them for they are denying ordinary people that most Thatcherite of principles, the right to own their own home.
The royal family has used a secretive procedure to vet three parliamentary acts that have prevented residents on Prince Charles’ estate from buying their own homes for decades, the Guardian can reveal.
His £1bn Duchy of Cornwall estate was later given special exemptions in the acts that denied residents the legal right to buy their own homes outright.
The saffer version seems vaccine resistant, previous infection resistant and leads to worse outcomes but how transmissible is it ? Perhaps less than the Kent version maybe.
If they're competing for different host bodies then it may not matter. What we really need to see is data on severe symptoms, hospitalisation and death for it against current vaccines and prior infection. If it just results in 0.1% of people getting severe symptoms, 0.05% needing hospital and almost no on dying then it's not such a big deal. If it results in 5% getting severe symptoms, 2.5% needing hospital and 0.5% dying we have a big problem.
Another problem is that once we vaccinate everyone (half of them with AZ), we will have crushed the UK Variant.... only to leave ample room for the SA Variant to reinfect half the country.
We really really need to know if AZ is still effective in the elderly against SA C19
The importer of stuff from Asia does not understand "Rules of Origin"?
They understand very well, that's why they are thinking of moving their distribution hub to the EU, at the cost of around 1,000 UK jobs.
An example of those sunny uplands visible before you.
If they understood them they would have moved before the transition period ended, rather than them come as a shock afterwards!
Not at all, you seem to have forgotten that our half-wit of a PM left about three working days gap between publishing the trade agreement and it coming into effect. No one knew what the rules of origin were going to be before that.
Admittedly they might have been very stupid to believe our PM's assurances before that that everything would be OK. But no company would be happy doing a hugely expensive and disruptive revamp of its distribution network when there was no transparency as to what the rules would be and whether the revamp would be necessary. Especially not in the middle of a massive worldwide pandemic and in the run-up to Christmas - timings which were 100% the fault of Boris Johnson and his government.
If he thought he could import shoes from Asia and sell them to the EU as British life must be a long series of unpleasant surprises....
Well, they could have moved the distribution centre earlier. Would that have been better for the UK? The crucial point isn't whether the UK jobs should have been lost a few months earlier, it's the fact that have to be lost at all.
What a bunch of parasites the Royal Family is. All good conservatives must denounce them for they are denying ordinary people that most Thatcherite of principles, the right to own their own home.
The royal family has used a secretive procedure to vet three parliamentary acts that have prevented residents on Prince Charles’ estate from buying their own homes for decades, the Guardian can reveal.
His £1bn Duchy of Cornwall estate was later given special exemptions in the acts that denied residents the legal right to buy their own homes outright.
What a bunch of parasites the Royal Family is. All good conservatives must denounce them for they are denying ordinary people that most Thatcherite of principles, the right to own their own home.
The royal family has used a secretive procedure to vet three parliamentary acts that have prevented residents on Prince Charles’ estate from buying their own homes for decades, the Guardian can reveal.
His £1bn Duchy of Cornwall estate was later given special exemptions in the acts that denied residents the legal right to buy their own homes outright.
Poor timing tho. No one will notice amidst Covid. They should have held it back, until lockdown is over in the middle of August 2028 and the UK population has been reduced to 19 people in a hut on the Isle of Eigg.
Outrage as Oxford University renames its prestigious Wykeham chair of physics after a Chinese firm 'with links to country's spy agency' - in return for a £700,000 donation.
That is absolutely fucking unacceptable and beyond ludicrous.
The money, I mean. It is an order of magnitude too light.
To properly endow a prestigious chair at Oxford with a name change, they should be looking to screw the donor for at least 6 or 7 million.
E.g., Harvard created an endowed Chair in Tamil for 6 million dollars.
It looks a ridiculous post anyway, it was held 1900-1941 by a guy called Townsend who footled about measuring electrical charges for all that time because nothing else of interest was going on in the world of physics. Hate to say it but the Other Place is where they do natural sciences best.
They better not mess with the chairs of logic or ancient history, though.
Try googling Tube-Alloys. Or Lamb Shift.
Oxford physics was rejuvenated by the efforts of Lindemann in the 1940s, before that it had sunk into the doldrums.
Seriously, if Oxford are going to rename the Chair, they should ask for more than 700k.
I presume the Indian cricket commentaries are still talking about India in with a good chance of winning the 1st Test.
We missed it in the UK but in the after match analysis the reason why England won was because
1) England had come straight from Sri Lanka and were used to playing on turning pitches whilst India had come from bouncy pitches in Australia.
2) India's last test in Australia was such a heroic victory that it took so much out of India, because it was India's greatest every away test performance.
The saffer version seems vaccine resistant, previous infection resistant and leads to worse outcomes but how transmissible is it ? Perhaps less than the Kent version maybe.
If they're competing for different host bodies then it may not matter. What we really need to see is data on severe symptoms, hospitalisation and death for it against current vaccines and prior infection. If it just results in 0.1% of people getting severe symptoms, 0.05% needing hospital and almost no on dying then it's not such a big deal. If it results in 5% getting severe symptoms, 2.5% needing hospital and 0.5% dying we have a big problem.
Another problem is that once we vaccinate everyone (half of them with AZ), we will have crushed the UK Variant.... only to leave ample room for the SA Variant to reinfect half the country.
We really really need to know if AZ is still effective in the elderly against SA C19
We will find out in due course and chances are by then we'll have mutation busting booster shots available from Novavax and J&J and more on the way from AZ. We're conducting an efficacy study of mixing vaccine types so we can use variable boosters rather than need to give people two doses of a new vaccine.
Honestly, the government has done a lot of joined up thinking on this and I'm really impressed by the way we're trying to stay one step ahead of the virus with vaccines.
The importer of stuff from Asia does not understand "Rules of Origin"?
They understand very well, that's why they are thinking of moving their distribution hub to the EU, at the cost of around 1,000 UK jobs.
An example of those sunny uplands visible before you.
If they understood them they would have moved before the transition period ended, rather than them come as a shock afterwards!
Not at all, you seem to have forgotten that our half-wit of a PM left about three working days gap between publishing the trade agreement and it coming into effect. No one knew what the rules of origin were going to be before that.
Admittedly they might have been very stupid to believe our PM's assurances before that that everything would be OK. But no company would be happy doing a hugely expensive and disruptive revamp of its distribution network when there was no transparency as to what the rules would be and whether the revamp would be necessary. Especially not in the middle of a massive worldwide pandemic and in the run-up to Christmas - timings which were 100% the fault of Boris Johnson and his government.
If he thought he could import shoes from Asia and sell them to the EU as British life must be a long series of unpleasant surprises....
Well, they could have moved the distribution centre earlier. Would that have been better for the UK? The crucial point isn't whether the UK jobs should have been lost a few months earlier, it's the fact that have to be lost at all.
They did tell businesses to "check, change, go". We just didn't realise that they meant "go away".
A major outbreak of the Boerbug in Austria. Not good. Suggests it is embedded in central Europe, and spreading
An OXAZ vaccinated UK population will be protected against our strain but less so against the SA. The SA will thus have a path to dominance and this, I gather, is a worry, although obviously not an argument for not vaccinating.
It's much less of a worry than is being made out by the news.
Everyone that's had OxAz can get a booster shot in the Autumn/early 2021, no worries.
It's not that its a worry but 1 week ago it was very likely that the UKs AZ vaccinated population would have been able to travel freely from early summer without a care in the world. Now, while we may be able to drive down cases in the UK through immunisation, we will still have to exist in a high state of lockdown to prevent the SA strain growing here.
Essentially we seem to be back to where we were before the AZ vaccine arrived, with only those having had the Pfizer vaccine looking like they will have enough immunity.
Having protection against severe disease and death is hardly back where we were before the vaccine.
We've yet to see performance data of the AZ vaccine for the more elderly population but hopefully you are right.
However, I expect that the restrictions the UK experiences this summer will be more onerous than the ones we had last summer, so in that sense we are back to the beginning.
Yes, unless this outbreak in central Europe fizzles out (and that is possible, inshallah) then I fear this means a considerably longer lockdown; maybe, in some form, until the autumn - when we have plentiful tweaked vaccines that defeat the SA Bug? Also closed borders for much if not all of the year.
What the F does that do to the economy, or indeed, to us?
Remember that the SA study showed that previous infection with Old Covid provides no immunity against SA Covid. So everybody whose already had it could get it again (as happened, perhaps, in Manaus?). It has serious implications.
The one thing you are missing is that the number of new cases in South Africa has collapsed from 20,000 a day a month ago to 2,000 a day now. So the SA Variant does not seem to last long.
I'm not missing it at all. I have mentioned it several times the past couple of weeks. It is promising, if somewhat inexplicable.
Some say it is herd immunity, others an effective lockdown, a third explanation is that this new variant just fizzles away. Clearly, the third answer is hugely preferable.
That level of decrease indicates to me it must be the third answer. All these new variants infect quickly and disappear quickly.
During the first wave in Europe despite the very strict lockdown it took weeks for the numbers to fall and then only gradually. These new varaints just seem to disappear.
I don't see how a virus strain can 'fizzle'. It hasn't got any momentum.
Either it can find someone to infect, or it can't (because of behaviour, immunity, or environment).
Lockdown, have it infect everybody susceptible, or vaccinate. What else is there?
It can mutate into something so innocuous you don't notice it. That's one kind of fizzling.
Sorry for the naïve schoolboy science on this but isn't it a case that viruses expend genetic "energy" when they mutate and that there's always a trade-off, genetically, between infectivity and lethality. Highly lethal viruses aren't normally highly contagious and vice-versa. HIV or Ebola, for example haven't mutated, thank-god, into highly transmissible airborne forms as the genetic price is too high.
With respect to C19 the more it mutates, the weaker it becomes?
I'm probably completely wrong....
Mutations are random. Could have any effect or no discernible effect.
For mutations that have an effect, evolutionary pressures select which thrive and which disappear. Mutation(s) leading to:
greater infectivity -> successful strain (all other things being equal, it gets into more people)
greater risk of death/severe symptoms -> depends (irrelevant if after infectious phase, makes less successful if before/during infectious phase as it cuts short infectious phase)
So, over time you'd expect more infectious versions to appear (although what 'more infectious' means can vary - a version that evades acquired immunity or vaccinations could be 'more infectious' than the original strain is now even if less infectious than the original strain was originally). Simply, if something is better at infecting, it will reach more people and there will be more of it.
More severe versions are less likely to prosper as severity could likely interfere with infectiousness as people die, isolate or are treated. But if a more severe version developed that didn't interfere with infectiousness, then there's no reason it should not prosper too (other than likely increase in human efforts to conquer it)
What a bunch of parasites the Royal Family is. All good conservatives must denounce them for they are denying ordinary people that most Thatcherite of principles, the right to own their own home.
The royal family has used a secretive procedure to vet three parliamentary acts that have prevented residents on Prince Charles’ estate from buying their own homes for decades, the Guardian can reveal.
His £1bn Duchy of Cornwall estate was later given special exemptions in the acts that denied residents the legal right to buy their own homes outright.
The saffer version seems vaccine resistant, previous infection resistant and leads to worse outcomes but how transmissible is it ? Perhaps less than the Kent version maybe.
If they're competing for different host bodies then it may not matter. What we really need to see is data on severe symptoms, hospitalisation and death for it against current vaccines and prior infection. If it just results in 0.1% of people getting severe symptoms, 0.05% needing hospital and almost no on dying then it's not such a big deal. If it results in 5% getting severe symptoms, 2.5% needing hospital and 0.5% dying we have a big problem.
Another problem is that once we vaccinate everyone (half of them with AZ), we will have crushed the UK Variant.... only to leave ample room for the SA Variant to reinfect half the country.
We really really need to know if AZ is still effective in the elderly against SA C19
We will find out in due course and chances are by then we'll have mutation busting booster shots available from Novavax and J&J and more on the way from AZ. We're conducting an efficacy study of mixing vaccine types so we can use variable boosters rather than need to give people two doses of a new vaccine.
Honestly, the government has done a lot of joined up thinking on this and I'm really impressed by the way we're trying to stay one step ahead of the virus with vaccines.
I wonder if they might give J&J as a booster for AZ if it arrives early enough. Similar, but with a different vector.
No doubt to lots of complaints about them using 'off label' methods.
A major outbreak of the Boerbug in Austria. Not good. Suggests it is embedded in central Europe, and spreading
An OXAZ vaccinated UK population will be protected against our strain but less so against the SA. The SA will thus have a path to dominance and this, I gather, is a worry, although obviously not an argument for not vaccinating.
It's much less of a worry than is being made out by the news.
Everyone that's had OxAz can get a booster shot in the Autumn/early 2021, no worries.
It's not that its a worry but 1 week ago it was very likely that the UKs AZ vaccinated population would have been able to travel freely from early summer without a care in the world. Now, while we may be able to drive down cases in the UK through immunisation, we will still have to exist in a high state of lockdown to prevent the SA strain growing here.
Essentially we seem to be back to where we were before the AZ vaccine arrived, with only those having had the Pfizer vaccine looking like they will have enough immunity.
Having protection against severe disease and death is hardly back where we were before the vaccine.
We've yet to see performance data of the AZ vaccine for the more elderly population but hopefully you are right.
However, I expect that the restrictions the UK experiences this summer will be more onerous than the ones we had last summer, so in that sense we are back to the beginning.
Yes, unless this outbreak in central Europe fizzles out (and that is possible, inshallah) then I fear this means a considerably longer lockdown; maybe, in some form, until the autumn - when we have plentiful tweaked vaccines that defeat the SA Bug? Also closed borders for much if not all of the year.
What the F does that do to the economy, or indeed, to us?
Remember that the SA study showed that previous infection with Old Covid provides no immunity against SA Covid. So everybody whose already had it could get it again (as happened, perhaps, in Manaus?). It has serious implications.
The one thing you are missing is that the number of new cases in South Africa has collapsed from 20,000 a day a month ago to 2,000 a day now. So the SA Variant does not seem to last long.
I'm not missing it at all. I have mentioned it several times the past couple of weeks. It is promising, if somewhat inexplicable.
Some say it is herd immunity, others an effective lockdown, a third explanation is that this new variant just fizzles away. Clearly, the third answer is hugely preferable.
That level of decrease indicates to me it must be the third answer. All these new variants infect quickly and disappear quickly.
During the first wave in Europe despite the very strict lockdown it took weeks for the numbers to fall and then only gradually. These new varaints just seem to disappear.
I don't see how a virus strain can 'fizzle'. It hasn't got any momentum.
Either it can find someone to infect, or it can't (because of behaviour, immunity, or environment).
Lockdown, have it infect everybody susceptible, or vaccinate. What else is there?
It can mutate into something so innocuous you don't notice it. That's one kind of fizzling.
Sorry for the naïve schoolboy science on this but isn't it a case that viruses expend genetic "energy" when they mutate and that there's always a trade-off, genetically, between infectivity and lethality. Highly lethal viruses aren't normally highly contagious and vice-versa. HIV or Ebola, for example haven't mutated, thank-god, into highly transmissible airborne forms as the genetic price is too high.
With respect to C19 the more it mutates, the weaker it becomes?
I'm probably completely wrong....
I have no more expertise than you, but that is my understanding of how viruses "normally" behave, but C19 is possibly abnormal, in that it is mutating into more transmissible and POTENTIALLY (we don't know yet) more lethal variants.
It already has a USP in its ability to transmit asymptomatically.
Here's the scientific dispute about increased lethality:
There’s no particular bias towards non-lethality in the mutations a virus undergoes.
There is (obviously) a bias towards greater infectiousness in the virus mutations you’re likely to be exposed to & greater infectiousness tends to go along with a longer period of being asymptomatic. Sometimes that’s because the infection is less lethal, so the host survives longer or doesn’t die at all. But a mutation that increases the viral load of the victims breathe at the expense of lifetime might be just as effective!
One reason extant viruses tend to be less lethal over time might simply be that selection pressure on the infected population (i.e. us) has eliminated all the people who suffered the worst effects of infection by those vectors. Back in Tudor times, "the sweat" spread through England in waves, often killing in a day. Nowadays, we’re not even sure what kind of disease "the sweat" was! Presumably it killed off everyone that was vulnerable to it & either the remainder then provided sufficient herd immunity to eliminate the disease altogether, or it remains as one of the infectious, but relatively harmless infections that we all get in our lifetimes.
A major outbreak of the Boerbug in Austria. Not good. Suggests it is embedded in central Europe, and spreading
An OXAZ vaccinated UK population will be protected against our strain but less so against the SA. The SA will thus have a path to dominance and this, I gather, is a worry, although obviously not an argument for not vaccinating.
It's much less of a worry than is being made out by the news.
Everyone that's had OxAz can get a booster shot in the Autumn/early 2021, no worries.
It's not that its a worry but 1 week ago it was very likely that the UKs AZ vaccinated population would have been able to travel freely from early summer without a care in the world. Now, while we may be able to drive down cases in the UK through immunisation, we will still have to exist in a high state of lockdown to prevent the SA strain growing here.
Essentially we seem to be back to where we were before the AZ vaccine arrived, with only those having had the Pfizer vaccine looking like they will have enough immunity.
Having protection against severe disease and death is hardly back where we were before the vaccine.
We've yet to see performance data of the AZ vaccine for the more elderly population but hopefully you are right.
However, I expect that the restrictions the UK experiences this summer will be more onerous than the ones we had last summer, so in that sense we are back to the beginning.
Yes, unless this outbreak in central Europe fizzles out (and that is possible, inshallah) then I fear this means a considerably longer lockdown; maybe, in some form, until the autumn - when we have plentiful tweaked vaccines that defeat the SA Bug? Also closed borders for much if not all of the year.
What the F does that do to the economy, or indeed, to us?
Remember that the SA study showed that previous infection with Old Covid provides no immunity against SA Covid. So everybody whose already had it could get it again (as happened, perhaps, in Manaus?). It has serious implications.
The one thing you are missing is that the number of new cases in South Africa has collapsed from 20,000 a day a month ago to 2,000 a day now. So the SA Variant does not seem to last long.
I'm not missing it at all. I have mentioned it several times the past couple of weeks. It is promising, if somewhat inexplicable.
Some say it is herd immunity, others an effective lockdown, a third explanation is that this new variant just fizzles away. Clearly, the third answer is hugely preferable.
That level of decrease indicates to me it must be the third answer. All these new variants infect quickly and disappear quickly.
During the first wave in Europe despite the very strict lockdown it took weeks for the numbers to fall and then only gradually. These new varaints just seem to disappear.
I don't see how a virus strain can 'fizzle'. It hasn't got any momentum.
Either it can find someone to infect, or it can't (because of behaviour, immunity, or environment).
Lockdown, have it infect everybody susceptible, or vaccinate. What else is there?
It can mutate into something so innocuous you don't notice it. That's one kind of fizzling.
Sorry for the naïve schoolboy science on this but isn't it a case that viruses expend genetic "energy" when they mutate and that there's always a trade-off, genetically, between infectivity and lethality. Highly lethal viruses aren't normally highly contagious and vice-versa. HIV or Ebola, for example haven't mutated, thank-god, into highly transmissible airborne forms as the genetic price is too high.
With respect to C19 the more it mutates, the weaker it becomes?
I'm probably completely wrong....
Mutations are random. Could have any effect or no discernible effect.
For mutations that have an effect, evolutionary pressures select which thrive and which disappear. Mutation(s) leading to:
greater infectivity -> successful strain (all other things being equal, it gets into more people)
greater risk of death/severe symptoms -> depends (irrelevant if after infectious phase, makes less successful if before/during infectious phase as it cuts short infectious phase)
So, over time you'd expect more infectious versions to appear (although what 'more infectious' means can vary - a version that evades acquired immunity or vaccinations could be 'more infectious' than the original strain is now even if less infectious than the original strain was originally). Simply, if something is better at infecting, it will reach more people and there will be more of it.
More severe versions are less likely to prosper as severity could likely interfere with infectiousness as people die, isolate or are treated. But if a more severe version developed that didn't interfere with infectiousness, then there's no reason it should not prosper too (other than likely increase in human efforts to conquer it)
You seem to know your stuff, could you tell this layman: how common is it for viruses to mutate so that they can reinfect people who have already had a case? As seems to be the situation with the SA Mutation. Is this unusual?
I don't remember any boffins warning us this might happen. But maybe I just missed it. Or maybe it is a genuinely unexpected development?
The saffer version seems vaccine resistant, previous infection resistant and leads to worse outcomes but how transmissible is it ? Perhaps less than the Kent version maybe.
If they're competing for different host bodies then it may not matter. What we really need to see is data on severe symptoms, hospitalisation and death for it against current vaccines and prior infection. If it just results in 0.1% of people getting severe symptoms, 0.05% needing hospital and almost no on dying then it's not such a big deal. If it results in 5% getting severe symptoms, 2.5% needing hospital and 0.5% dying we have a big problem.
Another problem is that once we vaccinate everyone (half of them with AZ), we will have crushed the UK Variant.... only to leave ample room for the SA Variant to reinfect half the country.
We really really need to know if AZ is still effective in the elderly against SA C19
We will find out in due course and chances are by then we'll have mutation busting booster shots available from Novavax and J&J and more on the way from AZ. We're conducting an efficacy study of mixing vaccine types so we can use variable boosters rather than need to give people two doses of a new vaccine.
Honestly, the government has done a lot of joined up thinking on this and I'm really impressed by the way we're trying to stay one step ahead of the virus with vaccines.
I wonder if they might give J&J as a booster for AZ if it arrives early enough. Similar, but with a different vector.
No doubt to lots of complaints about them using 'off label' methods.
A major outbreak of the Boerbug in Austria. Not good. Suggests it is embedded in central Europe, and spreading
An OXAZ vaccinated UK population will be protected against our strain but less so against the SA. The SA will thus have a path to dominance and this, I gather, is a worry, although obviously not an argument for not vaccinating.
It's much less of a worry than is being made out by the news.
Everyone that's had OxAz can get a booster shot in the Autumn/early 2021, no worries.
It's not that its a worry but 1 week ago it was very likely that the UKs AZ vaccinated population would have been able to travel freely from early summer without a care in the world. Now, while we may be able to drive down cases in the UK through immunisation, we will still have to exist in a high state of lockdown to prevent the SA strain growing here.
Essentially we seem to be back to where we were before the AZ vaccine arrived, with only those having had the Pfizer vaccine looking like they will have enough immunity.
Having protection against severe disease and death is hardly back where we were before the vaccine.
We've yet to see performance data of the AZ vaccine for the more elderly population but hopefully you are right.
However, I expect that the restrictions the UK experiences this summer will be more onerous than the ones we had last summer, so in that sense we are back to the beginning.
Yes, unless this outbreak in central Europe fizzles out (and that is possible, inshallah) then I fear this means a considerably longer lockdown; maybe, in some form, until the autumn - when we have plentiful tweaked vaccines that defeat the SA Bug? Also closed borders for much if not all of the year.
What the F does that do to the economy, or indeed, to us?
Remember that the SA study showed that previous infection with Old Covid provides no immunity against SA Covid. So everybody whose already had it could get it again (as happened, perhaps, in Manaus?). It has serious implications.
The one thing you are missing is that the number of new cases in South Africa has collapsed from 20,000 a day a month ago to 2,000 a day now. So the SA Variant does not seem to last long.
I'm not missing it at all. I have mentioned it several times the past couple of weeks. It is promising, if somewhat inexplicable.
Some say it is herd immunity, others an effective lockdown, a third explanation is that this new variant just fizzles away. Clearly, the third answer is hugely preferable.
That level of decrease indicates to me it must be the third answer. All these new variants infect quickly and disappear quickly.
During the first wave in Europe despite the very strict lockdown it took weeks for the numbers to fall and then only gradually. These new varaints just seem to disappear.
I don't see how a virus strain can 'fizzle'. It hasn't got any momentum.
Either it can find someone to infect, or it can't (because of behaviour, immunity, or environment).
Lockdown, have it infect everybody susceptible, or vaccinate. What else is there?
It can mutate into something so innocuous you don't notice it. That's one kind of fizzling.
Sorry for the naïve schoolboy science on this but isn't it a case that viruses expend genetic "energy" when they mutate and that there's always a trade-off, genetically, between infectivity and lethality. Highly lethal viruses aren't normally highly contagious and vice-versa. HIV or Ebola, for example haven't mutated, thank-god, into highly transmissible airborne forms as the genetic price is too high.
With respect to C19 the more it mutates, the weaker it becomes?
I'm probably completely wrong....
I have no more expertise than you, but that is my understanding of how viruses "normally" behave, but C19 is possibly abnormal, in that it is mutating into more transmissible and POTENTIALLY (we don't know yet) more lethal variants.
It already has a USP in its ability to transmit asymptomatically.
Here's the scientific dispute about increased lethality:
There’s no particular bias towards non-lethality in the mutations a virus undergoes.
There is (obviously) a bias towards greater infectiousness in the virus mutations you’re likely to be exposed to & greater infectiousness tends to go along with a longer period of being asymptomatic. Sometimes that’s because the infection is less lethal, so the host survives longer or doesn’t die at all. But a mutation that increases the viral load of the victims breathe at the expense of lifetime might be just as effective!
One reason extant viruses tend to be less lethal over time might simply be that selection pressure on the infected population (i.e. us) has eliminated all the people who suffered the worst effects of infection by those vectors. Back in Tudor times, "the sweat" spread through England in waves, often killing in a day. Nowadays, we’re not even sure what kind of disease "the sweat" was! Presumably it killed off everyone that was vulnerable to it & either the remainder then provided sufficient herd immunity to eliminate the disease altogether, or it remains as one of the infectious, but relatively harmless infections that we all get in our lifetimes.
The sweat is a fascinating disease. I've read that it seemed to be a uniquely British thing, not known on the continent. Some speculate that it was normal viral fevers made lethal by the medical advice current at the time to keep the patient as warm as possible, such as wrapping in lots of blankets etc. Apparently not the practice elsewhere. If so, then the treatment was killing the patient.
The importer of stuff from Asia does not understand "Rules of Origin"?
They understand very well, that's why they are thinking of moving their distribution hub to the EU, at the cost of around 1,000 UK jobs.
An example of those sunny uplands visible before you.
If they understood them they would have moved before the transition period ended, rather than them come as a shock afterwards!
Not at all, you seem to have forgotten that our half-wit of a PM left about three working days gap between publishing the trade agreement and it coming into effect. No one knew what the rules of origin were going to be before that.
Admittedly they might have been very stupid to believe our PM's assurances before that that everything would be OK. But no company would be happy doing a hugely expensive and disruptive revamp of its distribution network when there was no transparency as to what the rules would be and whether the revamp would be necessary. Especially not in the middle of a massive worldwide pandemic and in the run-up to Christmas - timings which were 100% the fault of Boris Johnson and his government.
If he thought he could import shoes from Asia and sell them to the EU as British life must be a long series of unpleasant surprises....
Well, they could have moved the distribution centre earlier. Would that have been better for the UK? The crucial point isn't whether the UK jobs should have been lost a few months earlier, it's the fact that have to be lost at all.
I think JD Sports approach is sensible. People paying attention knew before B Day that Brexit would be bad for anyone with cross-border supply chains, as it is bad in so many other ways. But if your business model depends on those supply chains you would want to understand the full implications before making your move. This, JD Sports has done, by shifting operations from the UK to the EU, as many other businesses have also done, or are doing. Not great for the UK, but sensible for the companies.
Comments
I readily accept (and have said so below) that he sometimes errs on the alarmist side, he clearly enjoy the attention. But that does not make him always wrong, or someone you should resolutely ignore.
Unfortunately, in this case, he seems to be correct. Central Europe has a big problem, hence the belated but massive Austrian police action, closing the borders of an entire province, forbidding exit to anyone without negative tests.
Will that cost be passed on to @Brom? We shall see but if not then profit margins suffer with the consequent impact on future investment, wages, employment, etc.
https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1358505890677153792?s=20
In the UK the air is driest in winter (in the partial pressure of water sense, not relative humidity) and this seems to be what causes respiratory disease, not damp.
Cold air AND altitude is even worse.
Positive news from a personal perspective is that my 72yo mother with critical vulnerabilities had her AZ jab yesterday.
But fewer, slower and more expensive options for Mr and Mrs Briton to do stuff involving abroad.
One out of two ain't bad, I suppose.
(Which also suggests that wearing masks has an added benefit, as doing so tends to retain moisture in the nasal tract.)
Right now it's pretty clear any issues you speak of pale in comparison with the effects of Covid, which unfortunate as it is will benefit the government by making any existing Brexit fallout seem like small beer.
Pre-Brexit we could trade freely within our own Country. Now we can't. We are less Sovereign than we were.
Some say it is herd immunity, others an effective lockdown, a third explanation is that this new variant just fizzles away. Clearly, the third answer is hugely preferable.
The world needs more calm analysis, not more hysteria. Times are tough enough without upsetting people more.
--AS
Since when did the newsmakers ever worry about, "worry"?
Surely by now all rational people understand that the news is created to further the agenda of the newsmakers... admitedly in tandem with the newsmakers own self serving ignorance.
If I may make a simple example... when do newsmakers actually check their sources? Ever?
The reality is that it is self serving of the newsmakers to ignore checks since to do so would mostly scrap their story in the bud and would otherwise allow them to peddle their own agenda. The recent Observer/Guardian anti monarchy story for instance.
Tragically, tragically for our own social and political and democratic welfare, we find newsmakers forever obsessing about the "Gotcha Moment" (their self agrandising moment) as opposed to ummm...shall we say, "Journalism". Or is that a dirty word?
During the first wave in Europe despite the very strict lockdown it took weeks for the numbers to fall and then only gradually. These new varaints just seem to disappear.
The money, I mean. It is an order of magnitude too light.
To properly endow a prestigious chair at Oxford with a name change, they should be looking to screw the donor for at least 6 or 7 million.
E.g., Harvard created an endowed Chair in Tamil for 6 million dollars.
https://twitter.com/ChrisMusson/status/1359134932195500036?s=20
https://twitter.com/ChrisMusson/status/1359147423462019072?s=20
An example of those sunny uplands visible before you.
Worth noting that the Austrian government is possibly more incompetent than ours, quarantine-wise.
Vienna has just imposed a lockdown on Tirol: you cannot get out of the province without a negative test.
HOWEVER this only starts on...... Friday. So anyone in Tirol who wants to leave, carrying the SA bug, without a negative test, can do it at their leisure over the next few days
https://twitter.com/fhorntweets/status/1359133599187009539?s=20
Either it can find someone to infect, or it can't (because of behaviour, immunity, or environment).
Lockdown, have it infect everybody susceptible, or vaccinate. What else is there?
https://twitter.com/EU_Commission/status/1359148381894017028?s=20
eg It was obvious by late January 2020 that Coronavirus was a mahoosive problem, because no way would China shut down an entire province - 63m people - in the strictest quarantine in history, unless their scientists had examined all the data, ten times over, and thought: HOLY SHIT
You didn't have to spend hours examining virological reports, you just had to look at that, and think logically, for about one minute. Some did that, some didn't.
South Africa does not have the scientific expertise of China, but neither is it some 3rd world country with no clue. I am sure they would love to vaccinate their whole population with AZ: it is cheap and user-friendly and they have lots of it.
Instead, they have halted the entire AZ roll-out. This suggests they have closely looked at the data, and deduced there is a real issue. Sadly
South Africa is not doing anything different from a month ago yet cases have fallen 90%.
Its strange that there is so much concern about the SA variant as it seems to disappear so quickly.
Its also strange that this reduction in cases in South Africa has not made the news.
The refusal to submit this to arbitration elsewhere is hilarious.
*well, voted for the thing that led to it
Admittedly they might have been very stupid to believe our PM's assurances before that that everything would be OK. But no company would be happy doing a hugely expensive and disruptive revamp of its distribution network when there was no transparency as to what the rules would be and whether the revamp would be necessary. Especially not in the middle of a massive worldwide pandemic and in the run-up to Christmas - timings which were 100% the fault of Boris Johnson and his government.
Perhaps less than the Kent version maybe.
With respect to C19 the more it mutates, the weaker it becomes?
I'm probably completely wrong....
If you were prepared for WTO terms then surely trade with a deal would be better, not worse, than that?
They better not mess with the chairs of logic or ancient history, though.
It already has a USP in its pronounced ability to transmit asymptomatically.
Here's the scientific dispute about increased lethality:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55779171
I suppose to be sure what is going on we'd need some antibody sampling tests from SA.
https://twitter.com/Joe_Mayes/status/1359154118837813248
https://twitter.com/EmporersNewC/status/1359155338738556932
The royal family has used a secretive procedure to vet three parliamentary acts that have prevented residents on Prince Charles’ estate from buying their own homes for decades, the Guardian can reveal.
His £1bn Duchy of Cornwall estate was later given special exemptions in the acts that denied residents the legal right to buy their own homes outright.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/09/prince-charles-vetted-laws-that-stop-his-tenants-buying-their-homes
We really really need to know if AZ is still effective in the elderly against SA C19
Ah, I see their problem.
https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1359156489919860742?s=20
Which looks like one flight a day at Aberdeen from Bergen and another from Doha at Edinburgh....
Oxford physics was rejuvenated by the efforts of Lindemann in the 1940s, before that it had sunk into the doldrums.
Seriously, if Oxford are going to rename the Chair, they should ask for more than 700k.
(BTW, I think R. Nabavi was an Oxford physicist).
1) England had come straight from Sri Lanka and were used to playing on turning pitches whilst India had come from bouncy pitches in Australia.
2) India's last test in Australia was such a heroic victory that it took so much out of India, because it was India's greatest every away test performance.
Honestly, the government has done a lot of joined up thinking on this and I'm really impressed by the way we're trying to stay one step ahead of the virus with vaccines.
For mutations that have an effect, evolutionary pressures select which thrive and which disappear.
Mutation(s) leading to:
greater infectivity -> successful strain (all other things being equal, it gets into more people)
greater risk of death/severe symptoms -> depends (irrelevant if after infectious phase, makes less successful if before/during infectious phase as it cuts short infectious phase)
So, over time you'd expect more infectious versions to appear (although what 'more infectious' means can vary - a version that evades acquired immunity or vaccinations could be 'more infectious' than the original strain is now even if less infectious than the original strain was originally). Simply, if something is better at infecting, it will reach more people and there will be more of it.
More severe versions are less likely to prosper as severity could likely interfere with infectiousness as people die, isolate or are treated. But if a more severe version developed that didn't interfere with infectiousness, then there's no reason it should not prosper too (other than likely increase in human efforts to conquer it)
No doubt to lots of complaints about them using 'off label' methods.
There is (obviously) a bias towards greater infectiousness in the virus mutations you’re likely to be exposed to & greater infectiousness tends to go along with a longer period of being asymptomatic. Sometimes that’s because the infection is less lethal, so the host survives longer or doesn’t die at all. But a mutation that increases the viral load of the victims breathe at the expense of lifetime might be just as effective!
One reason extant viruses tend to be less lethal over time might simply be that selection pressure on the infected population (i.e. us) has eliminated all the people who suffered the worst effects of infection by those vectors. Back in Tudor times, "the sweat" spread through England in waves, often killing in a day. Nowadays, we’re not even sure what kind of disease "the sweat" was! Presumably it killed off everyone that was vulnerable to it & either the remainder then provided sufficient herd immunity to eliminate the disease altogether, or it remains as one of the infectious, but relatively harmless infections that we all get in our lifetimes.
https://twitter.com/jamesdoleman/status/1359156672376295431?s=20
I don't remember any boffins warning us this might happen. But maybe I just missed it. Or maybe it is a genuinely unexpected development?