HYUFD was always right on this. Boris will just say No. What can the Nats do? It's not like the Scots are screaming for a new vote: they are not. Nor does Nicola want to call a potentially dream-ending, career-ending, SNP-ending 2nd indyref, which she would probably lose, as things stand
It's not a question of @HYUFD being right - it's called politics and anyone with half a functioning brain cell will realise the status quo suits BOTH Johnson and Sturgeon perfectly.
He keeps saying NO to a second referendum to appease the Conservative Unionist faithful which suits Sturgeon as she a) neither wants nor needs a second referendum and b) can continue to blame Boris Johnson and the perfidious English for anything and everything.
She can continue agitating for a second referendum safe in the knowledge a) she won't get one and b) Johnson will continue to bolster her support by continuing to deny it and that plays to the Nationalist agenda.
But you have to feel for the Remoaners, on here and elsewhere, who have a badly disguised hunger for Scotland to leave the Union, breaking up the country, as some kind of *punishment* for Brexit. Wankers
Out of curiosity, are people who want England to lose their matches at Euro 2020 as punishment for England players taking the knee also wankers?
Really, who said that?
Snowflakes such as Laurence Fox and PB's Leon.
So, whose first to suggest that it is White Privilege for Kane to start ahead of DCL or Marcus Rashford?
Lights blue touch paper and retires...
Given his performance thus far it's as good an explanation as any.
HYUFD was always right on this. Boris will just say No. What can the Nats do? It's not like the Scots are screaming for a new vote: they are not. Nor does Nicola want to call a potentially dream-ending, career-ending, SNP-ending 2nd indyref, which she would probably lose, as things stand
It's not a question of @HYUFD being right - it's called politics and anyone with half a functioning brain cell will realise the status quo suits BOTH Johnson and Sturgeon perfectly.
He keeps saying NO to a second referendum to appease the Conservative Unionist faithful which suits Sturgeon as she a) neither wants nor needs a second referendum and b) can continue to blame Boris Johnson and the perfidious English for anything and everything.
She can continue agitating for a second referendum safe in the knowledge a) she won't get one and b) Johnson will continue to bolster her support by continuing to deny it and that plays to the Nationalist agenda.
But you have to feel for the Remoaners, on here and elsewhere, who have a badly disguised hunger for Scotland to leave the Union, breaking up the country, as some kind of *punishment* for Brexit. Wankers
Out of curiosity, are people who want England to lose their matches at Euro 2020 as punishment for England players taking the knee also wankers?
Of course. We are all wankers. But Remoaners are TOTAL wankers. A breed apart
I hope we are all singing the new anthem on Friday...
We're encouraging schools across the UK to celebrate One Britain One Nation Day on 25 June, when children can learn about our shared values of tolerance, kindness, pride and respect. #OBONDAY21 @1Britain1Nation
HYUFD was always right on this. Boris will just say No. What can the Nats do? It's not like the Scots are screaming for a new vote: they are not. Nor does Nicola want to call a potentially dream-ending, career-ending, SNP-ending 2nd indyref, which she would probably lose, as things stand
It's not a question of @HYUFD being right - it's called politics and anyone with half a functioning brain cell will realise the status quo suits BOTH Johnson and Sturgeon perfectly.
He keeps saying NO to a second referendum to appease the Conservative Unionist faithful which suits Sturgeon as she a) neither wants nor needs a second referendum and b) can continue to blame Boris Johnson and the perfidious English for anything and everything.
She can continue agitating for a second referendum safe in the knowledge a) she won't get one and b) Johnson will continue to bolster her support by continuing to deny it and that plays to the Nationalist agenda.
But you have to feel for the Remoaners, on here and elsewhere, who have a badly disguised hunger for Scotland to leave the Union, breaking up the country, as some kind of *punishment* for Brexit. Wankers
Out of curiosity, are people who want England to lose their matches at Euro 2020 as punishment for England players taking the knee also wankers?
Really, who said that?
Snowflakes such as Laurence Fox and PB's Leon.
So, whose first to suggest that it is White Privilege for Kane to start ahead of DCL or Marcus Rashford?
Lights blue touch paper and retires...
Given his performance thus far it's as good an explanation as any.
Class is permanent. He is undroppable in my opinion.
Sadly it looks like the vaccine may be failing in israel. I think this is what the govt are worried about. From the telegraph Israel faces Covid surge as virus circulates even among vaccinated
Delta variant blamed after clusters identified around schools, with health ministry calling for inoculation of children as young as 12
Israeli teenagers are being vaccinated following Covid outbreaks in schools CREDIT: REUTERS
Campbell MacDiarmid, Middle East Correspondent
22 JUNE 2021 • 4:07 PM
Israel has recommended vaccinating teenagers following several coronavirus outbreaks clustered around schools, with even fully vaccinated people contracting the virus as authorities blame the more infectious delta variant.
Sadly it looks like the vaccine may be failing in israel. I think this is what the govt are worried about. From the telegraph Israel faces Covid surge as virus circulates even among vaccinated
Delta variant blamed after clusters identified around schools, with health ministry calling for inoculation of children as young as 12
Israeli teenagers are being vaccinated following Covid outbreaks in schools CREDIT: REUTERS
Campbell MacDiarmid, Middle East Correspondent
22 JUNE 2021 • 4:07 PM
Israel has recommended vaccinating teenagers following several coronavirus outbreaks clustered around schools, with even fully vaccinated people contracting the virus as authorities blame the more infectious delta variant.
HYUFD was always right on this. Boris will just say No. What can the Nats do? It's not like the Scots are screaming for a new vote: they are not. Nor does Nicola want to call a potentially dream-ending, career-ending, SNP-ending 2nd indyref, which she would probably lose, as things stand
It's not a question of @HYUFD being right - it's called politics and anyone with half a functioning brain cell will realise the status quo suits BOTH Johnson and Sturgeon perfectly.
He keeps saying NO to a second referendum to appease the Conservative Unionist faithful which suits Sturgeon as she a) neither wants nor needs a second referendum and b) can continue to blame Boris Johnson and the perfidious English for anything and everything.
She can continue agitating for a second referendum safe in the knowledge a) she won't get one and b) Johnson will continue to bolster her support by continuing to deny it and that plays to the Nationalist agenda.
But you have to feel for the Remoaners, on here and elsewhere, who have a badly disguised hunger for Scotland to leave the Union, breaking up the country, as some kind of *punishment* for Brexit. Wankers
Out of curiosity, are people who want England to lose their matches at Euro 2020 as punishment for England players taking the knee also wankers?
Of course. We are all wankers. But Remoaners are TOTAL wankers. A breed apart
Stop shouting! I just knew GBNews would make you even angrier.
HYUFD was always right on this. Boris will just say No. What can the Nats do? It's not like the Scots are screaming for a new vote: they are not. Nor does Nicola want to call a potentially dream-ending, career-ending, SNP-ending 2nd indyref, which she would probably lose, as things stand
It's not a question of @HYUFD being right - it's called politics and anyone with half a functioning brain cell will realise the status quo suits BOTH Johnson and Sturgeon perfectly.
He keeps saying NO to a second referendum to appease the Conservative Unionist faithful which suits Sturgeon as she a) neither wants nor needs a second referendum and b) can continue to blame Boris Johnson and the perfidious English for anything and everything.
She can continue agitating for a second referendum safe in the knowledge a) she won't get one and b) Johnson will continue to bolster her support by continuing to deny it and that plays to the Nationalist agenda.
But you have to feel for the Remoaners, on here and elsewhere, who have a badly disguised hunger for Scotland to leave the Union, breaking up the country, as some kind of *punishment* for Brexit. Wankers
Out of curiosity, are people who want England to lose their matches at Euro 2020 as punishment for England players taking the knee also wankers?
Really, who said that?
Snowflakes such as Laurence Fox and PB's Leon.
So, whose first to suggest that it is White Privilege for Kane to start ahead of DCL or Marcus Rashford?
Lights blue touch paper and retires...
Given his performance thus far it's as good an explanation as any.
Class is permanent. He is undroppable in my opinion.
So long as it isn't causing the population to start perishing again in significant numbers then it matters not a jot. See also that story from earlier today about the Plague ripping through that care home in Cornwall. Loads of double jabbed old ducks infected. All asymptomatic.
It may be best not to allow oneself to be too easily depressed by brand new posters who suddenly appear on PB at eleven o'clock at night spreading "vaccines don't work, we're all doomed" tales.
So long as it isn't causing the population to start perishing again in significant numbers then it matters not a jot. See also that story from earlier today about the Plague ripping through that care home in Cornwall. Loads of double jabbed old ducks infected. All asymptomatic.
It may be best not to allow oneself to be too easily depressed by brand new posters who suddenly appear on PB at eleven o'clock at night spreading "vaccines don't work, we're all doomed" tales.
Well we are in the summer season when people are unlikely to die. But what about autumn. The govt is clearly worried about this
Politics For All @PoliticsForAlI Police cars revolving lightPolice cars revolving light | BREAKING: “It’s all over, the link between cases and deaths is broken” - Government source
We are never going to be rid of this wretched virus. Rather depressing
Don't panic Mr Mainwaring
Seriously, there's a lot to get fed up about in the world - and I'm still concerned that more excuses *might* be found to put July 19th off, for example. But I don't think a few infections in Israel are particularly scary. Vaccines are very far from a total barrier against infection. We knew this already.
So long as it isn't causing the population to start perishing again in significant numbers then it matters not a jot. See also that story from earlier today about the Plague ripping through that care home in Cornwall. Loads of double jabbed old ducks infected. All asymptomatic.
It may be best not to allow oneself to be too easily depressed by brand new posters who suddenly appear on PB at eleven o'clock at night spreading "vaccines don't work, we're all doomed" tales.
But the news is the news
"Israel's COVID-19 vaccine drive is targeting teenagers amid a rise in cases blamed on the Delta variant, prompting reluctant parents to get their children vaccinated https://reut.rs/3vLcSwN"
Married to the news of Delta Max emerging in India, this is concerning. The virus might be evolving just fast enough to escape the clutches of science. Obvs I hope this is wrong
So long as it isn't causing the population to start perishing again in significant numbers then it matters not a jot. See also that story from earlier today about the Plague ripping through that care home in Cornwall. Loads of double jabbed old ducks infected. All asymptomatic.
It may be best not to allow oneself to be too easily depressed by brand new posters who suddenly appear on PB at eleven o'clock at night spreading "vaccines don't work, we're all doomed" tales.
Interesting anecdote from my colleague with an affected household. The two double vaxxed who caught it (father and son) had the AstraZenica, the two that tested negative were the double vaxxed by Pfizer mother and daughter.
The son was the one who introduced it, there was an outbreak at his medical school finals, in a year that was jabbed with Astra Zenica. A small sample, but it does get me wondering.
So long as it isn't causing the population to start perishing again in significant numbers then it matters not a jot. See also that story from earlier today about the Plague ripping through that care home in Cornwall. Loads of double jabbed old ducks infected. All asymptomatic.
It may be best not to allow oneself to be too easily depressed by brand new posters who suddenly appear on PB at eleven o'clock at night spreading "vaccines don't work, we're all doomed" tales.
Well we are in the summer season when people are unlikely to die. But what about autumn. The govt is clearly worried about this
So long as it isn't causing the population to start perishing again in significant numbers then it matters not a jot. See also that story from earlier today about the Plague ripping through that care home in Cornwall. Loads of double jabbed old ducks infected. All asymptomatic.
It may be best not to allow oneself to be too easily depressed by brand new posters who suddenly appear on PB at eleven o'clock at night spreading "vaccines don't work, we're all doomed" tales.
Well we are in the summer season when people are unlikely to die. But what about autumn. The govt is clearly worried about this
Oh do f*ck off you wind up merchant/Russian bot/doom reveller (delete as desired). It’s no surprise that Covid is spreading in Israeli children as they are not vaccinated. They won’t be dying either. It’s the same here. Lots of cases in the young, very little death.Back under your rock.
So who does everyone fancy playing from Group F then? Hungary obvs., but highly improbable. I reckon Portugal.
Germany. F*ck it.
Penalties etc.
Although Germany played very well in their last match, they're eminently beatable compared to many teams in the competition, and the confidence boost from overcoming the old nemesis might be the making of the England team. We can dream...
So long as it isn't causing the population to start perishing again in significant numbers then it matters not a jot. See also that story from earlier today about the Plague ripping through that care home in Cornwall. Loads of double jabbed old ducks infected. All asymptomatic.
It may be best not to allow oneself to be too easily depressed by brand new posters who suddenly appear on PB at eleven o'clock at night spreading "vaccines don't work, we're all doomed" tales.
But the news is the news
"Israel's COVID-19 vaccine drive is targeting teenagers amid a rise in cases blamed on the Delta variant, prompting reluctant parents to get their children vaccinated https://reut.rs/3vLcSwN"
Married to the news of Delta Max emerging in India, this is concerning. The virus might be evolving just fast enough to escape the clutches of science. Obvs I hope this is wrong
Bring on the aliens
If we wet over every report of a variant then we'll be stuck in the doom loop forever, like the Susan Michies of this world want.
This is unnecessary. Don't give in to it.
There will always be more variants, people will always be catching this thing, and it is at least possible that some people will always keep dying of it (although, as has often been discussed before, it could simply end up as one more common cold virus a few years down the line.)
And if scares like this help to drive vax totals up then they may even do more good than harm.
Prof. Christina Pagel @chrischirp · Jun 21 24. So no, I think it's wrong and irresponsible of the govt and others to be fine with thousands - potentially soon tens of thousands - of new cases a day here just because we likely won't bring the NHS to near collapse again.
Indie SAGE's leading media star is back from two-week holiday covid kids.
Sky and BBC will need to clear the green rooms in readiness.
So long as it isn't causing the population to start perishing again in significant numbers then it matters not a jot. See also that story from earlier today about the Plague ripping through that care home in Cornwall. Loads of double jabbed old ducks infected. All asymptomatic.
It may be best not to allow oneself to be too easily depressed by brand new posters who suddenly appear on PB at eleven o'clock at night spreading "vaccines don't work, we're all doomed" tales.
Well we are in the summer season when people are unlikely to die. But what about autumn. The govt is clearly worried about this
Oh do f*ck off you wind up merchant/Russian bot/doom reveller (delete as desired). It’s no surprise that Covid is spreading in Israeli children as they are not vaccinated. They won’t be dying either. It’s the same here. Lots of cases in the young, very little death.Back under your rock.
So long as it isn't causing the population to start perishing again in significant numbers then it matters not a jot. See also that story from earlier today about the Plague ripping through that care home in Cornwall. Loads of double jabbed old ducks infected. All asymptomatic.
It may be best not to allow oneself to be too easily depressed by brand new posters who suddenly appear on PB at eleven o'clock at night spreading "vaccines don't work, we're all doomed" tales.
Interesting anecdote from my colleague with an affected household. The two double vaxxed who caught it (father and son) had the AstraZenica, the two that tested negative were the double vaxxed by Pfizer mother and daughter.
The son was the one who introduced it, there was an outbreak at his medical school finals, in a year that was jabbed with Astra Zenica. A small sample, but it does get me wondering.
Oh God, don't you start feeding the trolls as well.
Israel is clearly on a significant upswing and bear in mind 90 % of their population has been vaccinated
90% is a nonsense figure
57% 2 doses in israel vs 47% UK. So much more vaccinated than us
The UK is at 64.6% of the population with a first dose. There's a decent chance we'll reach >70% with two doses even before we start vaccinating under-18s.
So who does everyone fancy playing from Group F then? Hungary obvs., but highly improbable. I reckon Portugal.
Germany. F*ck it.
Penalties etc.
Hungary isn’t that improbable. Unlucky against Portugal. Drew with France. Why shouldn’t they beat Germany?
In Budapest I'd give them a chance. They are well organised, work really hard, and break incisively and at speed. Theyve been impressive and haven't looked overmatched against two very good sides for all but the last 12 minutes v Portugal. Unfortunately, this game is in Munich. A draw isn't inconceivable, but a win would be an extraordinary result. And, even then, they'd need the other result to go for them.
So long as it isn't causing the population to start perishing again in significant numbers then it matters not a jot. See also that story from earlier today about the Plague ripping through that care home in Cornwall. Loads of double jabbed old ducks infected. All asymptomatic.
It may be best not to allow oneself to be too easily depressed by brand new posters who suddenly appear on PB at eleven o'clock at night spreading "vaccines don't work, we're all doomed" tales.
But the news is the news
"Israel's COVID-19 vaccine drive is targeting teenagers amid a rise in cases blamed on the Delta variant, prompting reluctant parents to get their children vaccinated https://reut.rs/3vLcSwN"
Married to the news of Delta Max emerging in India, this is concerning. The virus might be evolving just fast enough to escape the clutches of science. Obvs I hope this is wrong
Bring on the aliens
If we wet over every report of a variant then we'll be stuck in the doom loop forever, like the Susan Michies of this world want.
This is unnecessary. Don't give in to it.
There will always be more variants, people will always be catching this thing, and it is at least possible that some people will always keep dying of it (although, as has often been discussed before, it could simply end up as one more common cold virus a few years down the line.)
And if scares like this help to drive vax totals up then they may even do more good than harm.
There's a vaccine expert, Geert Vanden Bossche, who argues that our current vaccines just force the virus into selecting to escape.
His stuff is really complicated and so I have no idea. Seems a bit of an outlier.
BREAKING: India's health ministry describes Delta Plus, a new mutation of the Delta coronavirus variant, as a Variant of Concern https://t.co/8QZrqIpCiW
Oh FFS!
We're going to need a bigger alphabet
We just need to use some additional alphabets. Russian and Hebrew buy us another 55 letters, which should see us out to October at least...
Also: poor Scotland.
Arabic adds a further 28: make that 33 if you add the additional letters from Farsi and Urdu
Why not just use countries - there are 200 of those?
Yeah, but how many people would know how to pronounce the Kirabati variant?
The test for the vaccines will be the autumn no doubt about it
Or maybe Jan 22, as that is the month the flu will hit its high note as it were. The combination of covid with some kind of vaccine escape and flu in a year after several flu quiet years could be a bastard.
Prof. Christina Pagel @chrischirp · Jun 21 24. So no, I think it's wrong and irresponsible of the govt and others to be fine with thousands - potentially soon tens of thousands - of new cases a day here just because we likely won't bring the NHS to near collapse again.
Indie SAGE's leading media star is back from two-week holiday covid kids.
Sky and BBC will need to clear the green rooms in readiness.
Good to have her back.
I look forward to wall to wall foaming at the mouth from a sector of the PB community in response to her every utterance.
So long as it isn't causing the population to start perishing again in significant numbers then it matters not a jot. See also that story from earlier today about the Plague ripping through that care home in Cornwall. Loads of double jabbed old ducks infected. All asymptomatic.
It may be best not to allow oneself to be too easily depressed by brand new posters who suddenly appear on PB at eleven o'clock at night spreading "vaccines don't work, we're all doomed" tales.
But the news is the news
"Israel's COVID-19 vaccine drive is targeting teenagers amid a rise in cases blamed on the Delta variant, prompting reluctant parents to get their children vaccinated https://reut.rs/3vLcSwN"
Married to the news of Delta Max emerging in India, this is concerning. The virus might be evolving just fast enough to escape the clutches of science. Obvs I hope this is wrong
Bring on the aliens
If we wet over every report of a variant then we'll be stuck in the doom loop forever, like the Susan Michies of this world want.
This is unnecessary. Don't give in to it.
There will always be more variants, people will always be catching this thing, and it is at least possible that some people will always keep dying of it (although, as has often been discussed before, it could simply end up as one more common cold virus a few years down the line.)
And if scares like this help to drive vax totals up then they may even do more good than harm.
There's a vaccine expert, Geert Vanden Bossche, who argues that our current vaccines just force the virus into selecting to escape.
His stuff is really complicated and so I have no idea. Seems a bit of an outlier.
Shouldn’t the virus be evolving to a milder form, with more asymptomatic infection? That way it spreads easier and its hosts are less likely to isolate, and isolation thwarts its spread. A virus that constantly evolves to become more infectious AND nastier seems odd. But I am not a virologist
Of course, if it is a genius Chinese bioweapon manque, that explains all
Israel is clearly on a significant upswing and bear in mind 90 % of their population has been vaccinated
90% is a nonsense figure
57% 2 doses in israel vs 47% UK. So much more vaccinated than us
The UK is at 64.6% of the population with a first dose. There's a decent chance we'll reach >70% with two doses even before we start vaccinating under-18s.
So long as it isn't causing the population to start perishing again in significant numbers then it matters not a jot. See also that story from earlier today about the Plague ripping through that care home in Cornwall. Loads of double jabbed old ducks infected. All asymptomatic.
It may be best not to allow oneself to be too easily depressed by brand new posters who suddenly appear on PB at eleven o'clock at night spreading "vaccines don't work, we're all doomed" tales.
But the news is the news
"Israel's COVID-19 vaccine drive is targeting teenagers amid a rise in cases blamed on the Delta variant, prompting reluctant parents to get their children vaccinated https://reut.rs/3vLcSwN"
Married to the news of Delta Max emerging in India, this is concerning. The virus might be evolving just fast enough to escape the clutches of science. Obvs I hope this is wrong
Bring on the aliens
If we wet over every report of a variant then we'll be stuck in the doom loop forever, like the Susan Michies of this world want.
This is unnecessary. Don't give in to it.
There will always be more variants, people will always be catching this thing, and it is at least possible that some people will always keep dying of it (although, as has often been discussed before, it could simply end up as one more common cold virus a few years down the line.)
And if scares like this help to drive vax totals up then they may even do more good than harm.
There's a vaccine expert, Geert Vanden Bossche, who argues that our current vaccines just force the virus into selecting to escape.
His stuff is really complicated and so I have no idea. Seems a bit of an outlier.
IIRC the data so far suggest that complete vaccination works about as well on Delta as on Alpha or the original Plague.
We should expect escape to happen, but gradually, as with the flu. Which is why we have to go through the rigmarole of flu jabs for the vulnerable every year.
So, perhaps we end up having to do the same with Covid? Fine.
Prof. Christina Pagel @chrischirp · Jun 21 24. So no, I think it's wrong and irresponsible of the govt and others to be fine with thousands - potentially soon tens of thousands - of new cases a day here just because we likely won't bring the NHS to near collapse again.
Indie SAGE's leading media star is back from two-week holiday covid kids.
Sky and BBC will need to clear the green rooms in readiness.
So long as it isn't causing the population to start perishing again in significant numbers then it matters not a jot. See also that story from earlier today about the Plague ripping through that care home in Cornwall. Loads of double jabbed old ducks infected. All asymptomatic.
It may be best not to allow oneself to be too easily depressed by brand new posters who suddenly appear on PB at eleven o'clock at night spreading "vaccines don't work, we're all doomed" tales.
But the news is the news
"Israel's COVID-19 vaccine drive is targeting teenagers amid a rise in cases blamed on the Delta variant, prompting reluctant parents to get their children vaccinated https://reut.rs/3vLcSwN"
Married to the news of Delta Max emerging in India, this is concerning. The virus might be evolving just fast enough to escape the clutches of science. Obvs I hope this is wrong
Bring on the aliens
If we wet over every report of a variant then we'll be stuck in the doom loop forever, like the Susan Michies of this world want.
This is unnecessary. Don't give in to it.
There will always be more variants, people will always be catching this thing, and it is at least possible that some people will always keep dying of it (although, as has often been discussed before, it could simply end up as one more common cold virus a few years down the line.)
And if scares like this help to drive vax totals up then they may even do more good than harm.
There's a vaccine expert, Geert Vanden Bossche, who argues that our current vaccines just force the virus into selecting to escape.
His stuff is really complicated and so I have no idea. Seems a bit of an outlier.
Shouldn’t the virus be evolving to a milder form, with more asymptomatic infection? That way it spreads easier and its hosts are less likely to isolate, and isolation thwarts its spread. A virus that constantly evolves to become more infectious AND nastier seems odd. But I am not a virologist
Of course, if it is a genius Chinese bioweapon manque, that explains all
Covid has a large amount of pre-symptomatic spread, so developing symptoms, or not, doesn't really affect too much how many people are infected by each carrier.
In principle you could envisage a mutation that would simultaneously increase the amount of pre-symptomatic spread and coincidentally worsen the symptoms once they begin - indeed, that appears to be the case with the Delta variant. It is more infectious, and it has more severe symptoms for those infected (who haven't been vaccinated).
One of the reasons we could do with increasing the pace of vaccination globally, is that the period where a population is partially vaccinated is one in which you have the ideal conditions for a virus to evolve to escape the vaccine. Having some new vaccines be approved would be useful as well, as a diversity of different vaccines would make the task of vaccine escape more difficult. So the recent results from CureVac, on top of the delays to Novavax, etc, are really disappointing.
Prof. Christina Pagel @chrischirp · Jun 21 24. So no, I think it's wrong and irresponsible of the govt and others to be fine with thousands - potentially soon tens of thousands - of new cases a day here just because we likely won't bring the NHS to near collapse again.
Indie SAGE's leading media star is back from two-week holiday covid kids.
Sky and BBC will need to clear the green rooms in readiness.
Good to have her back.
I look forward to wall to wall foaming at the mouth from a sector of the PB community in response to her every utterance.
Prof. Christina Pagel @chrischirp · Jun 21 24. So no, I think it's wrong and irresponsible of the govt and others to be fine with thousands - potentially soon tens of thousands - of new cases a day here just because we likely won't bring the NHS to near collapse again.
Indie SAGE's leading media star is back from two-week holiday covid kids.
Sky and BBC will need to clear the green rooms in readiness.
Good to have her back.
I look forward to wall to wall foaming at the mouth from a sector of the PB community in response to her every utterance.
I don't know why anyone would be a fan of her brand of nonsense. Do you like constant catastrophising? Do you like lockdowns? Do you want them to go on forever?
I dare say that the woman is reacting with increasing alarm to the lack of mass hospital admissions and deaths, and is falling back to the next position prepared by the lockdown ultras to try to pressure the Government into giving them what they want. Probably "cases = more variants," Long Covid in the young, or both.
If we keep listening to ISAGE then we'll be sat at home for the rest of our lives. You do that if you want to. Just don't expect the rest of us to follow suit.
So long as it isn't causing the population to start perishing again in significant numbers then it matters not a jot. See also that story from earlier today about the Plague ripping through that care home in Cornwall. Loads of double jabbed old ducks infected. All asymptomatic.
It may be best not to allow oneself to be too easily depressed by brand new posters who suddenly appear on PB at eleven o'clock at night spreading "vaccines don't work, we're all doomed" tales.
But the news is the news
"Israel's COVID-19 vaccine drive is targeting teenagers amid a rise in cases blamed on the Delta variant, prompting reluctant parents to get their children vaccinated https://reut.rs/3vLcSwN"
Married to the news of Delta Max emerging in India, this is concerning. The virus might be evolving just fast enough to escape the clutches of science. Obvs I hope this is wrong
Bring on the aliens
If we wet over every report of a variant then we'll be stuck in the doom loop forever, like the Susan Michies of this world want.
This is unnecessary. Don't give in to it.
There will always be more variants, people will always be catching this thing, and it is at least possible that some people will always keep dying of it (although, as has often been discussed before, it could simply end up as one more common cold virus a few years down the line.)
And if scares like this help to drive vax totals up then they may even do more good than harm.
There's a vaccine expert, Geert Vanden Bossche, who argues that our current vaccines just force the virus into selecting to escape.
His stuff is really complicated and so I have no idea. Seems a bit of an outlier.
Shouldn’t the virus be evolving to a milder form, with more asymptomatic infection? That way it spreads easier and its hosts are less likely to isolate, and isolation thwarts its spread. A virus that constantly evolves to become more infectious AND nastier seems odd. But I am not a virologist
Of course, if it is a genius Chinese bioweapon manque, that explains all
Covid has a large amount of pre-symptomatic spread, so developing symptoms, or not, doesn't really affect too much how many people are infected by each carrier.
In principle you could envisage a mutation that would simultaneously increase the amount of pre-symptomatic spread and coincidentally worsen the symptoms once they begin - indeed, that appears to be the case with the Delta variant. It is more infectious, and it has more severe symptoms for those infected (who haven't been vaccinated).
One of the reasons we could do with increasing the pace of vaccination globally, is that the period where a population is partially vaccinated is one in which you have the ideal conditions for a virus to evolve to escape the vaccine. Having some new vaccines be approved would be useful as well, as a diversity of different vaccines would make the task of vaccine escape more difficult. So the recent results from CureVac, on top of the delays to Novavax, etc, are really disappointing.
That's not really true: this isn't like bacterial infections. The vast, vast majority of mutations happen in people with very serious infections.
Relatedly, I haven’t seen my 15 year old daughter in Australia for nearly 2 years
This virus is horribly cruel
That is sad. My girlfriend hasn’t seen her Nan, who lives in Cork, since summer 2019, and won’t be able to see her until early 2022 at the earliest as the baby is due in October and she is unvaccinated. Means Nan hasn’t seen her only great grandchild, born in Nov 2019 either
We spin back to a pre-travel era, and I’m not sure societies will endure it
I'm not sure that will happen, but if it does the world won't stop spinning on its axis. So long as we get fully normality back in the UK ASAP, I'm pretty content to play the little Englander with fog in the channel over access to the rest of the world.
Obviously it's a bit of a pain if one is used to jetting round the world as a travel writer, but we do need to get prioritise getting the UK back to normality first - it's vastly more important.
Personally I think we should red list the entire world until the UK doesn't have a single internal Covid restriction, and then consider how far we can safely open up. Throughout this pandemic we have prioritised international travel over domestic freedom, which is complete madness.
So long as it isn't causing the population to start perishing again in significant numbers then it matters not a jot. See also that story from earlier today about the Plague ripping through that care home in Cornwall. Loads of double jabbed old ducks infected. All asymptomatic.
It may be best not to allow oneself to be too easily depressed by brand new posters who suddenly appear on PB at eleven o'clock at night spreading "vaccines don't work, we're all doomed" tales.
But the news is the news
"Israel's COVID-19 vaccine drive is targeting teenagers amid a rise in cases blamed on the Delta variant, prompting reluctant parents to get their children vaccinated https://reut.rs/3vLcSwN"
Married to the news of Delta Max emerging in India, this is concerning. The virus might be evolving just fast enough to escape the clutches of science. Obvs I hope this is wrong
Bring on the aliens
If we wet over every report of a variant then we'll be stuck in the doom loop forever, like the Susan Michies of this world want.
This is unnecessary. Don't give in to it.
There will always be more variants, people will always be catching this thing, and it is at least possible that some people will always keep dying of it (although, as has often been discussed before, it could simply end up as one more common cold virus a few years down the line.)
And if scares like this help to drive vax totals up then they may even do more good than harm.
There's a vaccine expert, Geert Vanden Bossche, who argues that our current vaccines just force the virus into selecting to escape.
His stuff is really complicated and so I have no idea. Seems a bit of an outlier.
Shouldn’t the virus be evolving to a milder form, with more asymptomatic infection? That way it spreads easier and its hosts are less likely to isolate, and isolation thwarts its spread. A virus that constantly evolves to become more infectious AND nastier seems odd. But I am not a virologist
Of course, if it is a genius Chinese bioweapon manque, that explains all
Covid has a large amount of pre-symptomatic spread, so developing symptoms, or not, doesn't really affect too much how many people are infected by each carrier.
In principle you could envisage a mutation that would simultaneously increase the amount of pre-symptomatic spread and coincidentally worsen the symptoms once they begin - indeed, that appears to be the case with the Delta variant. It is more infectious, and it has more severe symptoms for those infected (who haven't been vaccinated).
One of the reasons we could do with increasing the pace of vaccination globally, is that the period where a population is partially vaccinated is one in which you have the ideal conditions for a virus to evolve to escape the vaccine. Having some new vaccines be approved would be useful as well, as a diversity of different vaccines would make the task of vaccine escape more difficult. So the recent results from CureVac, on top of the delays to Novavax, etc, are really disappointing.
I don’t understand why the virus doesn’t evolve towards total asymptomatic spread. Surely that is the optimum model? If you have any symptoms, you stay home, mask up, isolate. Defeating the virus. If you have no symptoms, you go out and breathe over people - great news for a bug
And what does the virus gain from killing people? It makes hosts much warier, again, and of course dead hosts are pointless, and can’t spread anything
It’s almost as if this bastard bug is not natural, and has been engineered to be more pathogenic, perhaps via gain-of-function research. Thank god that’s just a conspiracy theory
So long as it isn't causing the population to start perishing again in significant numbers then it matters not a jot. See also that story from earlier today about the Plague ripping through that care home in Cornwall. Loads of double jabbed old ducks infected. All asymptomatic.
It may be best not to allow oneself to be too easily depressed by brand new posters who suddenly appear on PB at eleven o'clock at night spreading "vaccines don't work, we're all doomed" tales.
But the news is the news
"Israel's COVID-19 vaccine drive is targeting teenagers amid a rise in cases blamed on the Delta variant, prompting reluctant parents to get their children vaccinated https://reut.rs/3vLcSwN"
Married to the news of Delta Max emerging in India, this is concerning. The virus might be evolving just fast enough to escape the clutches of science. Obvs I hope this is wrong
Bring on the aliens
If we wet over every report of a variant then we'll be stuck in the doom loop forever, like the Susan Michies of this world want.
This is unnecessary. Don't give in to it.
There will always be more variants, people will always be catching this thing, and it is at least possible that some people will always keep dying of it (although, as has often been discussed before, it could simply end up as one more common cold virus a few years down the line.)
And if scares like this help to drive vax totals up then they may even do more good than harm.
There's a vaccine expert, Geert Vanden Bossche, who argues that our current vaccines just force the virus into selecting to escape.
His stuff is really complicated and so I have no idea. Seems a bit of an outlier.
IIRC the data so far suggest that complete vaccination works about as well on Delta as on Alpha or the original Plague.
We should expect escape to happen, but gradually, as with the flu. Which is why we have to go through the rigmarole of flu jabs for the vulnerable every year.
So, perhaps we end up having to do the same with Covid? Fine.
I am not sure that comparison with the flu is actually correct. For flu, the problem is that two different proteins - hemagglutinin (H) and neuraminidase (N) are expressed on the surface. There are 18 different versions of the HA hemagglutinin, and 11 different versions of the N neuraminidase, so a potential 198 different combinations of the two of which 131 have so far been seen. The antigenicity of the virus changes completely as the H and N proteins change from one version to another (H1N1, H5N3 and so on). This enables the flu virus to both flip and drift, and is what makes creating this year's flu vaccine a crap shoot based on your best guess as to which proteins will be expressed in this year's flu.
With SARS-CoV-2, we have only one protein, the Spike protein. What we are talking about is minor changes in that one protein, changes which themselves are highly constrained as, if you change the spike protein too much, it will not be able to bind to the ACE2 receptor, and so will not be able to infect.
Protein modeling indicates that there are very, very few potential mutations to the Spike protein that will both enable it to escape current vaccines and still be able to bind to the ACE2 receptor.
So long as it isn't causing the population to start perishing again in significant numbers then it matters not a jot. See also that story from earlier today about the Plague ripping through that care home in Cornwall. Loads of double jabbed old ducks infected. All asymptomatic.
It may be best not to allow oneself to be too easily depressed by brand new posters who suddenly appear on PB at eleven o'clock at night spreading "vaccines don't work, we're all doomed" tales.
But the news is the news
"Israel's COVID-19 vaccine drive is targeting teenagers amid a rise in cases blamed on the Delta variant, prompting reluctant parents to get their children vaccinated https://reut.rs/3vLcSwN"
Married to the news of Delta Max emerging in India, this is concerning. The virus might be evolving just fast enough to escape the clutches of science. Obvs I hope this is wrong
Bring on the aliens
If we wet over every report of a variant then we'll be stuck in the doom loop forever, like the Susan Michies of this world want.
This is unnecessary. Don't give in to it.
There will always be more variants, people will always be catching this thing, and it is at least possible that some people will always keep dying of it (although, as has often been discussed before, it could simply end up as one more common cold virus a few years down the line.)
And if scares like this help to drive vax totals up then they may even do more good than harm.
There's a vaccine expert, Geert Vanden Bossche, who argues that our current vaccines just force the virus into selecting to escape.
His stuff is really complicated and so I have no idea. Seems a bit of an outlier.
So long as it isn't causing the population to start perishing again in significant numbers then it matters not a jot. See also that story from earlier today about the Plague ripping through that care home in Cornwall. Loads of double jabbed old ducks infected. All asymptomatic.
It may be best not to allow oneself to be too easily depressed by brand new posters who suddenly appear on PB at eleven o'clock at night spreading "vaccines don't work, we're all doomed" tales.
But the news is the news
"Israel's COVID-19 vaccine drive is targeting teenagers amid a rise in cases blamed on the Delta variant, prompting reluctant parents to get their children vaccinated https://reut.rs/3vLcSwN"
Married to the news of Delta Max emerging in India, this is concerning. The virus might be evolving just fast enough to escape the clutches of science. Obvs I hope this is wrong
Bring on the aliens
If we wet over every report of a variant then we'll be stuck in the doom loop forever, like the Susan Michies of this world want.
This is unnecessary. Don't give in to it.
There will always be more variants, people will always be catching this thing, and it is at least possible that some people will always keep dying of it (although, as has often been discussed before, it could simply end up as one more common cold virus a few years down the line.)
And if scares like this help to drive vax totals up then they may even do more good than harm.
There's a vaccine expert, Geert Vanden Bossche, who argues that our current vaccines just force the virus into selecting to escape.
His stuff is really complicated and so I have no idea. Seems a bit of an outlier.
Shouldn’t the virus be evolving to a milder form, with more asymptomatic infection? That way it spreads easier and its hosts are less likely to isolate, and isolation thwarts its spread. A virus that constantly evolves to become more infectious AND nastier seems odd. But I am not a virologist
Of course, if it is a genius Chinese bioweapon manque, that explains all
Covid has a large amount of pre-symptomatic spread, so developing symptoms, or not, doesn't really affect too much how many people are infected by each carrier.
In principle you could envisage a mutation that would simultaneously increase the amount of pre-symptomatic spread and coincidentally worsen the symptoms once they begin - indeed, that appears to be the case with the Delta variant. It is more infectious, and it has more severe symptoms for those infected (who haven't been vaccinated).
One of the reasons we could do with increasing the pace of vaccination globally, is that the period where a population is partially vaccinated is one in which you have the ideal conditions for a virus to evolve to escape the vaccine. Having some new vaccines be approved would be useful as well, as a diversity of different vaccines would make the task of vaccine escape more difficult. So the recent results from CureVac, on top of the delays to Novavax, etc, are really disappointing.
I don’t understand why the virus doesn’t evolve towards total asymptomatic spread. Surely that is the optimum model? If you have any symptoms, you stay home, mask up, isolate. Defeating the virus. If you have no symptoms, you go out and breathe over people - great news for a bug
And what does the virus gain from killing people? It makes hosts much warier, again, and of course dead hosts are pointless, and can’t spread anything
It’s almost as if this bastard bug is not natural, and has been engineered to be more pathogenic, perhaps via gain-of-function research. Thank god that’s just a conspiracy theory
Well for a start, those who are symptomatic are usually infectious before symptoms become noticeable, And a 1% death rate is pretty well irrelevant as far as evolutionary pressure is concerned, especially since death occurs some time after the victims are infectious.
Important new data to inform SARS-CoV-2 origin discussion via Bloom lab, from recovered early samples that were previously deleted by researchers at Wuhan University: Provides new clues on early sequence of SARS-2 in China, viral lineage, and the timing of the first introductions https://twitter.com/ScottGottliebMD/status/1407451946466824196
So long as it isn't causing the population to start perishing again in significant numbers then it matters not a jot. See also that story from earlier today about the Plague ripping through that care home in Cornwall. Loads of double jabbed old ducks infected. All asymptomatic.
It may be best not to allow oneself to be too easily depressed by brand new posters who suddenly appear on PB at eleven o'clock at night spreading "vaccines don't work, we're all doomed" tales.
But the news is the news
"Israel's COVID-19 vaccine drive is targeting teenagers amid a rise in cases blamed on the Delta variant, prompting reluctant parents to get their children vaccinated https://reut.rs/3vLcSwN"
Married to the news of Delta Max emerging in India, this is concerning. The virus might be evolving just fast enough to escape the clutches of science. Obvs I hope this is wrong
Bring on the aliens
If we wet over every report of a variant then we'll be stuck in the doom loop forever, like the Susan Michies of this world want.
This is unnecessary. Don't give in to it.
There will always be more variants, people will always be catching this thing, and it is at least possible that some people will always keep dying of it (although, as has often been discussed before, it could simply end up as one more common cold virus a few years down the line.)
And if scares like this help to drive vax totals up then they may even do more good than harm.
There's a vaccine expert, Geert Vanden Bossche, who argues that our current vaccines just force the virus into selecting to escape.
His stuff is really complicated and so I have no idea. Seems a bit of an outlier.
Shouldn’t the virus be evolving to a milder form, with more asymptomatic infection? That way it spreads easier and its hosts are less likely to isolate, and isolation thwarts its spread. A virus that constantly evolves to become more infectious AND nastier seems odd. But I am not a virologist
Of course, if it is a genius Chinese bioweapon manque, that explains all
Covid has a large amount of pre-symptomatic spread, so developing symptoms, or not, doesn't really affect too much how many people are infected by each carrier.
In principle you could envisage a mutation that would simultaneously increase the amount of pre-symptomatic spread and coincidentally worsen the symptoms once they begin - indeed, that appears to be the case with the Delta variant. It is more infectious, and it has more severe symptoms for those infected (who haven't been vaccinated).
One of the reasons we could do with increasing the pace of vaccination globally, is that the period where a population is partially vaccinated is one in which you have the ideal conditions for a virus to evolve to escape the vaccine. Having some new vaccines be approved would be useful as well, as a diversity of different vaccines would make the task of vaccine escape more difficult. So the recent results from CureVac, on top of the delays to Novavax, etc, are really disappointing.
I don’t understand why the virus doesn’t evolve towards total asymptomatic spread. Surely that is the optimum model? If you have any symptoms, you stay home, mask up, isolate. Defeating the virus. If you have no symptoms, you go out and breathe over people - great news for a bug
And what does the virus gain from killing people? It makes hosts much warier, again, and of course dead hosts are pointless, and can’t spread anything
It’s almost as if this bastard bug is not natural, and has been engineered to be more pathogenic, perhaps via gain-of-function research. Thank god that’s just a conspiracy theory
Biology is complicated. You could have a change in the virus that made it deadlier and more infectious, and being deadlier was just a coincidence.
You have to remember that evolution is random. It's certainly true that, over a long enough time period a virus will be more successful if it's not too deadly, but it might get that by a zigzag route, and so the short term can be different.
Important new data to inform SARS-CoV-2 origin discussion via Bloom lab, from recovered early samples that were previously deleted by researchers at Wuhan University: Provides new clues on early sequence of SARS-2 in China, viral lineage, and the timing of the first introductions https://twitter.com/ScottGottliebMD/status/1407451946466824196
That is a really excellent thread, and also points to *how* we might be able to resolve the question in the future.
Important new data to inform SARS-CoV-2 origin discussion via Bloom lab, from recovered early samples that were previously deleted by researchers at Wuhan University: Provides new clues on early sequence of SARS-2 in China, viral lineage, and the timing of the first introductions https://twitter.com/ScottGottliebMD/status/1407451946466824196
That is a really excellent thread, and also points to *how* we might be able to resolve the question in the future.
Very impressive work. Note their conclusion, which is sensible, given it’s possible to interpret this news in two very different ways. We should therefore avoid dogmatic arguments about #SARSCoV2 origins / early spread, and instead focus on following two questions: (1) How can we get more data? (2) How can we better analyze the data we have? (24/n)
So long as it isn't causing the population to start perishing again in significant numbers then it matters not a jot. See also that story from earlier today about the Plague ripping through that care home in Cornwall. Loads of double jabbed old ducks infected. All asymptomatic.
It may be best not to allow oneself to be too easily depressed by brand new posters who suddenly appear on PB at eleven o'clock at night spreading "vaccines don't work, we're all doomed" tales.
But the news is the news
"Israel's COVID-19 vaccine drive is targeting teenagers amid a rise in cases blamed on the Delta variant, prompting reluctant parents to get their children vaccinated https://reut.rs/3vLcSwN"
Married to the news of Delta Max emerging in India, this is concerning. The virus might be evolving just fast enough to escape the clutches of science. Obvs I hope this is wrong
Bring on the aliens
If we wet over every report of a variant then we'll be stuck in the doom loop forever, like the Susan Michies of this world want.
This is unnecessary. Don't give in to it.
There will always be more variants, people will always be catching this thing, and it is at least possible that some people will always keep dying of it (although, as has often been discussed before, it could simply end up as one more common cold virus a few years down the line.)
And if scares like this help to drive vax totals up then they may even do more good than harm.
There's a vaccine expert, Geert Vanden Bossche, who argues that our current vaccines just force the virus into selecting to escape.
His stuff is really complicated and so I have no idea. Seems a bit of an outlier.
Shouldn’t the virus be evolving to a milder form, with more asymptomatic infection? That way it spreads easier and its hosts are less likely to isolate, and isolation thwarts its spread. A virus that constantly evolves to become more infectious AND nastier seems odd. But I am not a virologist
Of course, if it is a genius Chinese bioweapon manque, that explains all
Covid has a large amount of pre-symptomatic spread, so developing symptoms, or not, doesn't really affect too much how many people are infected by each carrier.
In principle you could envisage a mutation that would simultaneously increase the amount of pre-symptomatic spread and coincidentally worsen the symptoms once they begin - indeed, that appears to be the case with the Delta variant. It is more infectious, and it has more severe symptoms for those infected (who haven't been vaccinated).
One of the reasons we could do with increasing the pace of vaccination globally, is that the period where a population is partially vaccinated is one in which you have the ideal conditions for a virus to evolve to escape the vaccine. Having some new vaccines be approved would be useful as well, as a diversity of different vaccines would make the task of vaccine escape more difficult. So the recent results from CureVac, on top of the delays to Novavax, etc, are really disappointing.
I don’t understand why the virus doesn’t evolve towards total asymptomatic spread. Surely that is the optimum model? If you have any symptoms, you stay home, mask up, isolate. Defeating the virus. If you have no symptoms, you go out and breathe over people - great news for a bug
And what does the virus gain from killing people? It makes hosts much warier, again, and of course dead hosts are pointless, and can’t spread anything
It’s almost as if this bastard bug is not natural, and has been engineered to be more pathogenic, perhaps via gain-of-function research. Thank god that’s just a conspiracy theory
Biology is complicated. You could have a change in the virus that made it deadlier and more infectious, and being deadlier was just a coincidence.
You have to remember that evolution is random. It's certainly true that, over a long enough time period a virus will be more successful if it's not too deadly, but it might get that by a zigzag route, and so the short term can be different.
And evolution rarely achieve universal optima, but rather local optima which become evolutionary dead-ends. Think of it as you adapt to be a better fit to your ecology by climbing a hill. Once you've got to the top, there is nowhere up left to go. But from the top of your hill, you can see that there are higher hills around you. The problem is that you can't get to them, as evolution won't let you go down your hill again to cross the valley to climb the higher hills.
So long as it isn't causing the population to start perishing again in significant numbers then it matters not a jot. See also that story from earlier today about the Plague ripping through that care home in Cornwall. Loads of double jabbed old ducks infected. All asymptomatic.
It may be best not to allow oneself to be too easily depressed by brand new posters who suddenly appear on PB at eleven o'clock at night spreading "vaccines don't work, we're all doomed" tales.
But the news is the news
"Israel's COVID-19 vaccine drive is targeting teenagers amid a rise in cases blamed on the Delta variant, prompting reluctant parents to get their children vaccinated https://reut.rs/3vLcSwN"
Married to the news of Delta Max emerging in India, this is concerning. The virus might be evolving just fast enough to escape the clutches of science. Obvs I hope this is wrong
Bring on the aliens
If we wet over every report of a variant then we'll be stuck in the doom loop forever, like the Susan Michies of this world want.
This is unnecessary. Don't give in to it.
There will always be more variants, people will always be catching this thing, and it is at least possible that some people will always keep dying of it (although, as has often been discussed before, it could simply end up as one more common cold virus a few years down the line.)
And if scares like this help to drive vax totals up then they may even do more good than harm.
There's a vaccine expert, Geert Vanden Bossche, who argues that our current vaccines just force the virus into selecting to escape.
His stuff is really complicated and so I have no idea. Seems a bit of an outlier.
Shouldn’t the virus be evolving to a milder form, with more asymptomatic infection? That way it spreads easier and its hosts are less likely to isolate, and isolation thwarts its spread. A virus that constantly evolves to become more infectious AND nastier seems odd. But I am not a virologist
Of course, if it is a genius Chinese bioweapon manque, that explains all
Covid has a large amount of pre-symptomatic spread, so developing symptoms, or not, doesn't really affect too much how many people are infected by each carrier.
In principle you could envisage a mutation that would simultaneously increase the amount of pre-symptomatic spread and coincidentally worsen the symptoms once they begin - indeed, that appears to be the case with the Delta variant. It is more infectious, and it has more severe symptoms for those infected (who haven't been vaccinated).
One of the reasons we could do with increasing the pace of vaccination globally, is that the period where a population is partially vaccinated is one in which you have the ideal conditions for a virus to evolve to escape the vaccine. Having some new vaccines be approved would be useful as well, as a diversity of different vaccines would make the task of vaccine escape more difficult. So the recent results from CureVac, on top of the delays to Novavax, etc, are really disappointing.
I don’t understand why the virus doesn’t evolve towards total asymptomatic spread. Surely that is the optimum model? If you have any symptoms, you stay home, mask up, isolate. Defeating the virus. If you have no symptoms, you go out and breathe over people - great news for a bug
And what does the virus gain from killing people? It makes hosts much warier, again, and of course dead hosts are pointless, and can’t spread anything
It’s almost as if this bastard bug is not natural, and has been engineered to be more pathogenic, perhaps via gain-of-function research. Thank god that’s just a conspiracy theory
Biology is complicated. You could have a change in the virus that made it deadlier and more infectious, and being deadlier was just a coincidence.
You have to remember that evolution is random. It's certainly true that, over a long enough time period a virus will be more successful if it's not too deadly, but it might get that by a zigzag route, and so the short term can be different.
Of course
But then, this
‘Video Shows Wuhan-Linked Researcher Peter Daszak Describing ‘Killer’ Viruses Altered By ‘Colleagues In China’’
When someone boasts of engineering a killer coronavirus with unusual pathogenicity, in a lab in the city of Wuhan, China - and then a few months later a killer coronavirus, with unusual pathogenicity, emerges in, uh, Wuhan, China, perhaps we should pay attention
‘The revelation that Chinese genome sequences from early on in the pandemic got deleted makes no difference about our understanding of the pandemic's timeline at this stage. Though, I suspect it will dramatically change the mood in the scientific community. Brace yourself ...’
How Immunity Generated from COVID-19 Vaccines Differs from an Infection https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2021/06/22/how-immunity-generated-from-covid-19-vaccines-differs-from-an-infection/ … In their new study, published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, Bloom, Greaney, and colleagues looked again to the thousands of possible RBD variants to understand how antibodies might be expected to hit their targets there [1]. This time, they wanted to explore any differences between RBD-directed antibodies based on how they were acquired.
Again, they turned to deep mutational scanning. First, they created libraries of all 3,800 possible RBD single amino acid mutants and exposed the libraries to samples taken from vaccinated individuals and unvaccinated individuals who’d been previously infected. All vaccinated individuals had received two doses of the Moderna mRNA vaccine. This vaccine works by prompting a person’s cells to produce the spike protein, thereby launching an immune response and the production of antibodies.
By closely examining the results, the researchers uncovered important differences between acquired immunity in people who’d been vaccinated and unvaccinated people who’d been previously infected with SARS-CoV-2. Specifically, antibodies elicited by the mRNA vaccine were more focused to the RBD compared to antibodies elicited by an infection, which more often targeted other portions of the spike protein. Importantly, the vaccine-elicited antibodies targeted a broader range of places on the RBD than those elicited by natural infection.
These findings suggest that natural immunity and vaccine-generated immunity to SARS-CoV-2 will differ in how they recognize new viral variants. What’s more, antibodies acquired with the help of a vaccine may be more likely to target new SARS-CoV-2 variants potently, even when the variants carry new mutations in the RBD…
How Immunity Generated from COVID-19 Vaccines Differs from an Infection https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2021/06/22/how-immunity-generated-from-covid-19-vaccines-differs-from-an-infection/ … In their new study, published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, Bloom, Greaney, and colleagues looked again to the thousands of possible RBD variants to understand how antibodies might be expected to hit their targets there [1]. This time, they wanted to explore any differences between RBD-directed antibodies based on how they were acquired.
Again, they turned to deep mutational scanning. First, they created libraries of all 3,800 possible RBD single amino acid mutants and exposed the libraries to samples taken from vaccinated individuals and unvaccinated individuals who’d been previously infected. All vaccinated individuals had received two doses of the Moderna mRNA vaccine. This vaccine works by prompting a person’s cells to produce the spike protein, thereby launching an immune response and the production of antibodies.
By closely examining the results, the researchers uncovered important differences between acquired immunity in people who’d been vaccinated and unvaccinated people who’d been previously infected with SARS-CoV-2. Specifically, antibodies elicited by the mRNA vaccine were more focused to the RBD compared to antibodies elicited by an infection, which more often targeted other portions of the spike protein. Importantly, the vaccine-elicited antibodies targeted a broader range of places on the RBD than those elicited by natural infection.
These findings suggest that natural immunity and vaccine-generated immunity to SARS-CoV-2 will differ in how they recognize new viral variants. What’s more, antibodies acquired with the help of a vaccine may be more likely to target new SARS-CoV-2 variants potently, even when the variants carry new mutations in the RBD…
That's not particularly unsurprising, but is good news nonetheless.
So long as it isn't causing the population to start perishing again in significant numbers then it matters not a jot. See also that story from earlier today about the Plague ripping through that care home in Cornwall. Loads of double jabbed old ducks infected. All asymptomatic.
It may be best not to allow oneself to be too easily depressed by brand new posters who suddenly appear on PB at eleven o'clock at night spreading "vaccines don't work, we're all doomed" tales.
But the news is the news
"Israel's COVID-19 vaccine drive is targeting teenagers amid a rise in cases blamed on the Delta variant, prompting reluctant parents to get their children vaccinated https://reut.rs/3vLcSwN"
Married to the news of Delta Max emerging in India, this is concerning. The virus might be evolving just fast enough to escape the clutches of science. Obvs I hope this is wrong
Bring on the aliens
If we wet over every report of a variant then we'll be stuck in the doom loop forever, like the Susan Michies of this world want.
This is unnecessary. Don't give in to it.
There will always be more variants, people will always be catching this thing, and it is at least possible that some people will always keep dying of it (although, as has often been discussed before, it could simply end up as one more common cold virus a few years down the line.)
And if scares like this help to drive vax totals up then they may even do more good than harm.
There's a vaccine expert, Geert Vanden Bossche, who argues that our current vaccines just force the virus into selecting to escape.
His stuff is really complicated and so I have no idea. Seems a bit of an outlier.
Shouldn’t the virus be evolving to a milder form, with more asymptomatic infection? That way it spreads easier and its hosts are less likely to isolate, and isolation thwarts its spread. A virus that constantly evolves to become more infectious AND nastier seems odd. But I am not a virologist
Of course, if it is a genius Chinese bioweapon manque, that explains all
Covid has a large amount of pre-symptomatic spread, so developing symptoms, or not, doesn't really affect too much how many people are infected by each carrier.
In principle you could envisage a mutation that would simultaneously increase the amount of pre-symptomatic spread and coincidentally worsen the symptoms once they begin - indeed, that appears to be the case with the Delta variant. It is more infectious, and it has more severe symptoms for those infected (who haven't been vaccinated).
One of the reasons we could do with increasing the pace of vaccination globally, is that the period where a population is partially vaccinated is one in which you have the ideal conditions for a virus to evolve to escape the vaccine. Having some new vaccines be approved would be useful as well, as a diversity of different vaccines would make the task of vaccine escape more difficult. So the recent results from CureVac, on top of the delays to Novavax, etc, are really disappointing.
I don’t understand why the virus doesn’t evolve towards total asymptomatic spread. Surely that is the optimum model? If you have any symptoms, you stay home, mask up, isolate. Defeating the virus. If you have no symptoms, you go out and breathe over people - great news for a bug
And what does the virus gain from killing people? It makes hosts much warier, again, and of course dead hosts are pointless, and can’t spread anything
It’s almost as if this bastard bug is not natural, and has been engineered to be more pathogenic, perhaps via gain-of-function research. Thank god that’s just a conspiracy theory
The latest conspiracy theory is the virus evolved to infect bats, not humans.
So long as it isn't causing the population to start perishing again in significant numbers then it matters not a jot. See also that story from earlier today about the Plague ripping through that care home in Cornwall. Loads of double jabbed old ducks infected. All asymptomatic.
It may be best not to allow oneself to be too easily depressed by brand new posters who suddenly appear on PB at eleven o'clock at night spreading "vaccines don't work, we're all doomed" tales.
But the news is the news
"Israel's COVID-19 vaccine drive is targeting teenagers amid a rise in cases blamed on the Delta variant, prompting reluctant parents to get their children vaccinated https://reut.rs/3vLcSwN"
Married to the news of Delta Max emerging in India, this is concerning. The virus might be evolving just fast enough to escape the clutches of science. Obvs I hope this is wrong
Bring on the aliens
If we wet over every report of a variant then we'll be stuck in the doom loop forever, like the Susan Michies of this world want.
This is unnecessary. Don't give in to it.
There will always be more variants, people will always be catching this thing, and it is at least possible that some people will always keep dying of it (although, as has often been discussed before, it could simply end up as one more common cold virus a few years down the line.)
And if scares like this help to drive vax totals up then they may even do more good than harm.
There's a vaccine expert, Geert Vanden Bossche, who argues that our current vaccines just force the virus into selecting to escape.
His stuff is really complicated and so I have no idea. Seems a bit of an outlier.
Shouldn’t the virus be evolving to a milder form, with more asymptomatic infection? That way it spreads easier and its hosts are less likely to isolate, and isolation thwarts its spread. A virus that constantly evolves to become more infectious AND nastier seems odd. But I am not a virologist
Of course, if it is a genius Chinese bioweapon manque, that explains all
Covid has a large amount of pre-symptomatic spread, so developing symptoms, or not, doesn't really affect too much how many people are infected by each carrier.
In principle you could envisage a mutation that would simultaneously increase the amount of pre-symptomatic spread and coincidentally worsen the symptoms once they begin - indeed, that appears to be the case with the Delta variant. It is more infectious, and it has more severe symptoms for those infected (who haven't been vaccinated).
One of the reasons we could do with increasing the pace of vaccination globally, is that the period where a population is partially vaccinated is one in which you have the ideal conditions for a virus to evolve to escape the vaccine. Having some new vaccines be approved would be useful as well, as a diversity of different vaccines would make the task of vaccine escape more difficult. So the recent results from CureVac, on top of the delays to Novavax, etc, are really disappointing.
I don’t understand why the virus doesn’t evolve towards total asymptomatic spread. Surely that is the optimum model? If you have any symptoms, you stay home, mask up, isolate. Defeating the virus. If you have no symptoms, you go out and breathe over people - great news for a bug
And what does the virus gain from killing people? It makes hosts much warier, again, and of course dead hosts are pointless, and can’t spread anything
It’s almost as if this bastard bug is not natural, and has been engineered to be more pathogenic, perhaps via gain-of-function research. Thank god that’s just a conspiracy theory
The latest conspiracy theory is the virus evolved to infect bats, not humans.
Turns out the Chinese were deleting data about this bug in Q3 2019. Why would you do that, if you have nothing to hide?
It came from the lab. The circumstantial evidence for this is pretty overwhelming now
New York City Democratic Primary - June 22 - polls close at 9pm EDT = 2am BST
Initial, first preference unofficial PARTIAL vote for Mayor and other offices expected later tonight, final results from Ranked Choice Voting not expected for a week or more.
Note that Republican mayoral primary is only between two candidates, so should have unofficial results tonight.
‘The revelation that Chinese genome sequences from early on in the pandemic got deleted makes no difference about our understanding of the pandemic's timeline at this stage. Though, I suspect it will dramatically change the mood in the scientific community. Brace yourself ...’
Here's a thread on the paper he's referring to. This sounds intriguing:
Therefore, we’d expect the first #SARSCoV2 sequences would be more similar to bat coronaviruses, and as #SARSCoV2 continued to evolve it would become more divergent from these ancestors. But that is *not* the case!
So long as it isn't causing the population to start perishing again in significant numbers then it matters not a jot. See also that story from earlier today about the Plague ripping through that care home in Cornwall. Loads of double jabbed old ducks infected. All asymptomatic.
It may be best not to allow oneself to be too easily depressed by brand new posters who suddenly appear on PB at eleven o'clock at night spreading "vaccines don't work, we're all doomed" tales.
But the news is the news
"Israel's COVID-19 vaccine drive is targeting teenagers amid a rise in cases blamed on the Delta variant, prompting reluctant parents to get their children vaccinated https://reut.rs/3vLcSwN"
Married to the news of Delta Max emerging in India, this is concerning. The virus might be evolving just fast enough to escape the clutches of science. Obvs I hope this is wrong
Bring on the aliens
If we wet over every report of a variant then we'll be stuck in the doom loop forever, like the Susan Michies of this world want.
This is unnecessary. Don't give in to it.
There will always be more variants, people will always be catching this thing, and it is at least possible that some people will always keep dying of it (although, as has often been discussed before, it could simply end up as one more common cold virus a few years down the line.)
And if scares like this help to drive vax totals up then they may even do more good than harm.
There's a vaccine expert, Geert Vanden Bossche, who argues that our current vaccines just force the virus into selecting to escape.
His stuff is really complicated and so I have no idea. Seems a bit of an outlier.
Shouldn’t the virus be evolving to a milder form, with more asymptomatic infection? That way it spreads easier and its hosts are less likely to isolate, and isolation thwarts its spread. A virus that constantly evolves to become more infectious AND nastier seems odd. But I am not a virologist
Of course, if it is a genius Chinese bioweapon manque, that explains all
Covid has a large amount of pre-symptomatic spread, so developing symptoms, or not, doesn't really affect too much how many people are infected by each carrier.
In principle you could envisage a mutation that would simultaneously increase the amount of pre-symptomatic spread and coincidentally worsen the symptoms once they begin - indeed, that appears to be the case with the Delta variant. It is more infectious, and it has more severe symptoms for those infected (who haven't been vaccinated).
One of the reasons we could do with increasing the pace of vaccination globally, is that the period where a population is partially vaccinated is one in which you have the ideal conditions for a virus to evolve to escape the vaccine. Having some new vaccines be approved would be useful as well, as a diversity of different vaccines would make the task of vaccine escape more difficult. So the recent results from CureVac, on top of the delays to Novavax, etc, are really disappointing.
I don’t understand why the virus doesn’t evolve towards total asymptomatic spread. Surely that is the optimum model? If you have any symptoms, you stay home, mask up, isolate. Defeating the virus. If you have no symptoms, you go out and breathe over people - great news for a bug
And what does the virus gain from killing people? It makes hosts much warier, again, and of course dead hosts are pointless, and can’t spread anything
It’s almost as if this bastard bug is not natural, and has been engineered to be more pathogenic, perhaps via gain-of-function research. Thank god that’s just a conspiracy theory
The latest conspiracy theory is the virus evolved to infect bats, not humans.
Turns out the Chinese were deleting data about this bug in Q3 2019. Why would you do that, if you have nothing to hide?
It came from the lab. The circumstantial evidence for this is pretty overwhelming now
The new question is: engineered or not?
No idea but the point is that the virus evolved for bats. All your questions about why it kills hosts so quickly rather than spreading asymptomatically should be applied to bats not humans. Even if it's been mucked about with in the lab, you need a bat vet.
‘The revelation that Chinese genome sequences from early on in the pandemic got deleted makes no difference about our understanding of the pandemic's timeline at this stage. Though, I suspect it will dramatically change the mood in the scientific community. Brace yourself ...’
Here's a thread on the paper he's referring to. This sounds intriguing:
Therefore, we’d expect the first #SARSCoV2 sequences would be more similar to bat coronaviruses, and as #SARSCoV2 continued to evolve it would become more divergent from these ancestors. But that is *not* the case!
‘The revelation that Chinese genome sequences from early on in the pandemic got deleted makes no difference about our understanding of the pandemic's timeline at this stage. Though, I suspect it will dramatically change the mood in the scientific community. Brace yourself ...’
Here's a thread on the paper he's referring to. This sounds intriguing:
Therefore, we’d expect the first #SARSCoV2 sequences would be more similar to bat coronaviruses, and as #SARSCoV2 continued to evolve it would become more divergent from these ancestors. But that is *not* the case!
I may be jumping to conclusions, but if it's true that the later sequences are closer to bat coronavirus than the early ones, is it possible that someone tried to cover up the leak of a lab-engineered variant by leaking a natural bat variant?
‘The revelation that Chinese genome sequences from early on in the pandemic got deleted makes no difference about our understanding of the pandemic's timeline at this stage. Though, I suspect it will dramatically change the mood in the scientific community. Brace yourself ...’
Here's a thread on the paper he's referring to. This sounds intriguing:
Therefore, we’d expect the first #SARSCoV2 sequences would be more similar to bat coronaviruses, and as #SARSCoV2 continued to evolve it would become more divergent from these ancestors. But that is *not* the case!
I may be jumping to conclusions, but if it's true that the later sequences are closer to bat coronavirus than the early ones, is it possible that someone tried to cover up the leak of a lab-engineered variant by leaking a natural bat variant?
Hadn’t thought of that. Plausible
We are close to proving lab leak, either way. The consequences might be momentous
‘The geopolitical implications of hard evidence for China having actively suppressed early evidence about known circulation of SARSCoV2 would be massive. Being perceived as a pariah state would not help their economy based primarily on exports.’
America has seized dozens of Iranian media website domains, apparently.
On Tuesday morning, in a coordinated move, the dot-com and dot-net websites of Iran's Press TV, Al-Masirah, Al-Alam, and Al-Maalomah, Bahrain's Lualua television, and others, all displayed a message saying that the sites had been seized by the US Bureau of Industry and Security, the Office of Export Enforcement, and the FBI.
So far the enforcement action appears to have had limited success. Most of the outlets have simply switched to .ir domains, and PressTV is also operating now from a .co.uk domain, although one suspects that one won't last long either. The station blamed the US government. https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/22/iran_media_websites_us_government_seized/
‘The revelation that Chinese genome sequences from early on in the pandemic got deleted makes no difference about our understanding of the pandemic's timeline at this stage. Though, I suspect it will dramatically change the mood in the scientific community. Brace yourself ...’
Here's a thread on the paper he's referring to. This sounds intriguing:
Therefore, we’d expect the first #SARSCoV2 sequences would be more similar to bat coronaviruses, and as #SARSCoV2 continued to evolve it would become more divergent from these ancestors. But that is *not* the case!
I may be jumping to conclusions, but if it's true that the later sequences are closer to bat coronavirus than the early ones, is it possible that someone tried to cover up the leak of a lab-engineered variant by leaking a natural bat variant?
Hadn’t thought of that. Plausible
We are close to proving lab leak, either way. The consequences might be momentous
‘The geopolitical implications of hard evidence for China having actively suppressed early evidence about known circulation of SARSCoV2 would be massive. Being perceived as a pariah state would not help their economy based primarily on exports.’
The implications for the world economy of China being a pariah state are also pretty momentous, in an extremely negative way, at least in the short term.
Make no mistake - I think its worth the hit to win the war. I don't want a future dominated by China and its style of politics. If we have to take the economic hit to win in the long term, so be it. But its not going to be pretty. Its going to make the covid hit look like the Brexit hit.
Comments
Israel faces Covid surge as virus circulates even among vaccinated
Delta variant blamed after clusters identified around schools, with health ministry calling for inoculation of children as young as 12
Israeli teenagers are being vaccinated following Covid outbreaks in schools CREDIT: REUTERS
Campbell MacDiarmid, Middle East Correspondent
22 JUNE 2021 • 4:07 PM
Israel has recommended vaccinating teenagers following several coronavirus outbreaks clustered around schools, with even fully vaccinated people contracting the virus as authorities blame the more infectious delta variant.
I reckon Portugal.
England withdrew their near-COVID people, which meant that we had to keep them in, and they were actually crap.
How dare he bastard English manipulate the selection of the Scottish team in this deplorable manner.
Wait, there isn't one?
Fancy that.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-sees-highest-covid-daily-infections-in-two-months-as-delta-variant-spreads-1.9928700
Penalties etc.
It may be best not to allow oneself to be too easily depressed by brand new posters who suddenly appear on PB at eleven o'clock at night spreading "vaccines don't work, we're all doomed" tales.
@PoliticsForAlI
Police cars revolving lightPolice cars revolving light | BREAKING: “It’s all over, the link between cases and deaths is broken” - Government source
Via
@DailyMailUK
Seriously, there's a lot to get fed up about in the world - and I'm still concerned that more excuses *might* be found to put July 19th off, for example. But I don't think a few infections in Israel are particularly scary. Vaccines are very far from a total barrier against infection. We knew this already.
"Israel's COVID-19 vaccine drive is targeting teenagers amid a rise in cases blamed on the Delta variant, prompting reluctant parents to get their children vaccinated https://reut.rs/3vLcSwN"
https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1407462148410810368?s=20
Married to the news of Delta Max emerging in India, this is concerning. The virus might be evolving just fast enough to escape the clutches of science. Obvs I hope this is wrong
Bring on the aliens
The son was the one who introduced it, there was an outbreak at his medical school finals, in a year that was jabbed with Astra Zenica. A small sample, but it does get me wondering.
This is unnecessary. Don't give in to it.
There will always be more variants, people will always be catching this thing, and it is at least possible that some people will always keep dying of it (although, as has often been discussed before, it could simply end up as one more common cold virus a few years down the line.)
And if scares like this help to drive vax totals up then they may even do more good than harm.
There are substantial groups in Israel where vaccination rates are extremely low, and Covid is endemic - in particular ultra-Orthodox communities.
@chrischirp
·
Jun 21
24. So no, I think it's wrong and irresponsible of the govt and others to be fine with thousands - potentially soon tens of thousands - of new cases a day here just because we likely won't bring the NHS to near collapse again.
Indie SAGE's leading media star is back from two-week holiday covid kids.
Sky and BBC will need to clear the green rooms in readiness.
Unfortunately, this game is in Munich.
A draw isn't inconceivable, but a win would be an extraordinary result.
And, even then, they'd need the other result to go for them.
PS. They are in our WC qualifying group too.
His stuff is really complicated and so I have no idea. Seems a bit of an outlier.
Just hope he is wrong.
https://mobile.twitter.com/GVDBossche
Luckily Johnson and Hancock are in charge.
I look forward to wall to wall foaming at the mouth from a sector of the PB community in response to her every utterance.
Of course, if it is a genius Chinese bioweapon manque, that explains all
We should expect escape to happen, but gradually, as with the flu. Which is why we have to go through the rigmarole of flu jabs for the vulnerable every year.
So, perhaps we end up having to do the same with Covid? Fine.
Logs off.
We spin back to a pre-travel era, and I’m not sure societies will endure it
If there is a vicious new wave this autumn, there will be war and strife
This virus is horribly cruel
In principle you could envisage a mutation that would simultaneously increase the amount of pre-symptomatic spread and coincidentally worsen the symptoms once they begin - indeed, that appears to be the case with the Delta variant. It is more infectious, and it has more severe symptoms for those infected (who haven't been vaccinated).
One of the reasons we could do with increasing the pace of vaccination globally, is that the period where a population is partially vaccinated is one in which you have the ideal conditions for a virus to evolve to escape the vaccine. Having some new vaccines be approved would be useful as well, as a diversity of different vaccines would make the task of vaccine escape more difficult. So the recent results from CureVac, on top of the delays to Novavax, etc, are really disappointing.
I dare say that the woman is reacting with increasing alarm to the lack of mass hospital admissions and deaths, and is falling back to the next position prepared by the lockdown ultras to try to pressure the Government into giving them what they want. Probably "cases = more variants," Long Covid in the young, or both.
If we keep listening to ISAGE then we'll be sat at home for the rest of our lives. You do that if you want to. Just don't expect the rest of us to follow suit.
A wounded Putin might easily lash out. Belarus might take on a Baltic
Iran is in turmoil: never good.
Ethiopia is already at war. Israel fights daily. Etc
Obviously it's a bit of a pain if one is used to jetting round the world as a travel writer, but we do need to get prioritise getting the UK back to normality first - it's vastly more important.
Personally I think we should red list the entire world until the UK doesn't have a single internal Covid restriction, and then consider how far we can safely open up.
Throughout this pandemic we have prioritised international travel over domestic freedom, which is complete madness.
And what does the virus gain from killing people? It makes hosts much warier, again, and of course dead hosts are pointless, and can’t spread anything
It’s almost as if this bastard bug is not natural, and has been engineered to be more pathogenic, perhaps via gain-of-function research. Thank god that’s just a conspiracy theory
With SARS-CoV-2, we have only one protein, the Spike protein. What we are talking about is minor changes in that one protein, changes which themselves are highly constrained as, if you change the spike protein too much, it will not be able to bind to the ACE2 receptor, and so will not be able to infect.
Protein modeling indicates that there are very, very few potential mutations to the Spike protein that will both enable it to escape current vaccines and still be able to bind to the ACE2 receptor.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/science/coronavirus-herd-immunity-is-within-reach-but-what-happens-if-we-fall-short/2021/06/09/7cfed134-59f9-49f6-81a2-666b3829ede8_video.html
And a 1% death rate is pretty well irrelevant as far as evolutionary pressure is concerned, especially since death occurs some time after the victims are infectious.
https://twitter.com/ScottGottliebMD/status/1407451946466824196
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.18.449051v1
I aspire to a Hollywood leading role.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/57575896
You have to remember that evolution is random. It's certainly true that, over a long enough time period a virus will be more successful if it's not too deadly, but it might get that by a zigzag route, and so the short term can be different.
https://twitter.com/jbloom_lab/status/1407445604029009923
That assumption might not be totally incorrect.
Note their conclusion, which is sensible, given it’s possible to interpret this news in two very different ways.
We should therefore avoid dogmatic arguments about #SARSCoV2 origins / early spread, and instead focus on following two questions: (1) How can we get more data? (2) How can we better analyze the data we have? (24/n)
But then, this
‘Video Shows Wuhan-Linked Researcher Peter Daszak Describing ‘Killer’ Viruses Altered By ‘Colleagues In China’’
https://twitter.com/dailycaller/status/1403091741486587925?s=21
When someone boasts of engineering a killer coronavirus with unusual pathogenicity, in a lab in the city of Wuhan, China - and then a few months later a killer coronavirus, with unusual pathogenicity, emerges in, uh, Wuhan, China, perhaps we should pay attention
https://twitter.com/ballouxfrancois/status/1407471441214386178?s=21
How Immunity Generated from COVID-19 Vaccines Differs from an Infection
https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2021/06/22/how-immunity-generated-from-covid-19-vaccines-differs-from-an-infection/
… In their new study, published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, Bloom, Greaney, and colleagues looked again to the thousands of possible RBD variants to understand how antibodies might be expected to hit their targets there [1]. This time, they wanted to explore any differences between RBD-directed antibodies based on how they were acquired.
Again, they turned to deep mutational scanning. First, they created libraries of all 3,800 possible RBD single amino acid mutants and exposed the libraries to samples taken from vaccinated individuals and unvaccinated individuals who’d been previously infected. All vaccinated individuals had received two doses of the Moderna mRNA vaccine. This vaccine works by prompting a person’s cells to produce the spike protein, thereby launching an immune response and the production of antibodies.
By closely examining the results, the researchers uncovered important differences between acquired immunity in people who’d been vaccinated and unvaccinated people who’d been previously infected with SARS-CoV-2. Specifically, antibodies elicited by the mRNA vaccine were more focused to the RBD compared to antibodies elicited by an infection, which more often targeted other portions of the spike protein. Importantly, the vaccine-elicited antibodies targeted a broader range of places on the RBD than those elicited by natural infection.
These findings suggest that natural immunity and vaccine-generated immunity to SARS-CoV-2 will differ in how they recognize new viral variants. What’s more, antibodies acquired with the help of a vaccine may be more likely to target new SARS-CoV-2 variants potently, even when the variants carry new mutations in the RBD…
It came from the lab. The circumstantial evidence for this is pretty overwhelming now
The new question is: engineered or not?
Initial, first preference unofficial PARTIAL vote for Mayor and other offices expected later tonight, final results from Ranked Choice Voting not expected for a week or more.
Note that Republican mayoral primary is only between two candidates, so should have unofficial results tonight.
https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/decision-2021/2021/06/18/primary-day-live-blog
Therefore, we’d expect the first #SARSCoV2 sequences would be more similar to bat coronaviruses, and as #SARSCoV2 continued to evolve it would become more divergent from these ancestors. But that is *not* the case!
Instead, early Huanan Seafood Market #SARSCoV2 viruses are more different from bat coronaviruses than #SARSCoV2 viruses collected later in China and even other countries. @lpipes @ras_nielsen give nice technical analysis at https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/38/4/1537/6028993
https://twitter.com/jbloom_lab/status/1407445619325628419
biorxiv.org/content/10.110…’
So fucking sketchy
https://twitter.com/pmddomingos/status/1407483876885229568?s=21
We are close to proving lab leak, either way. The consequences might be momentous
‘The geopolitical implications of hard evidence for China having actively suppressed early evidence about known circulation of SARSCoV2 would be massive. Being perceived as a pariah state would not help their economy based primarily on exports.’
https://twitter.com/ballouxfrancois/status/1407481598178643969?s=21
On Tuesday morning, in a coordinated move, the dot-com and dot-net websites of Iran's Press TV, Al-Masirah, Al-Alam, and Al-Maalomah, Bahrain's Lualua television, and others, all displayed a message saying that the sites had been seized by the US Bureau of Industry and Security, the Office of Export Enforcement, and the FBI.
So far the enforcement action appears to have had limited success. Most of the outlets have simply switched to .ir domains, and PressTV is also operating now from a .co.uk domain, although one suspects that one won't last long either. The station blamed the US government.
https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/22/iran_media_websites_us_government_seized/
Make no mistake - I think its worth the hit to win the war. I don't want a future dominated by China and its style of politics. If we have to take the economic hit to win in the long term, so be it. But its not going to be pretty. Its going to make the covid hit look like the Brexit hit.
https://www.onebritainonenation.com/campaigns/obon-day-25th-june-2021-campaign