SmallTown
Well-known member
Ah apologies. I read the first sentence here as one instance of you getting the flu vaccine and being ill
Variant of concern in South Africa
- Thread starter Subbuteo_171
- Start date
the_holgate_roof
Well-known member
Are we thinking some form of restrictions leading up to Christmas then, with the government stating they are determined to act quickly this time and Whitty saying we must be more ‘muscular’ against new variants?
Expat Smoggie
Well-known member
Sometime next week apparently
ThePrisoner
Well-known member
Relax. We've had freedom day, everyone is back at work and in the pub and nobody wears masks any more. Nothing can go wrong. Bozza said so.
dooderooni
Well-known member
Where's Bruce Campbell?
Omicron, Necronomicon, Evil Dead, Bruce Campbelltastic.
Omicron, Necronomicon, Evil Dead, Bruce Campbelltastic.
Chris_Boro
Well-known member
magic
Well-known member
Admit it you’re praying for another lockdown aren’t you?? If you came out from behind your settee and joined the real world you’d realise most of us have moved on and decided we can put up with a virus with a 99.8% survival rate
Can't wait for another scotch egg moment. There will more calls for measures which completely failed previously. e.g. border closures.
MolteniArcore
Well-known member
Chris Witty isn’t worried yet according to The Telegraph. I’ll take that.
Good. Maybe we're getting the March 2020 Chris Whitty back.
jam69
Well-known member
As long as you and your loved ones don't fall into that 0.2% eh .
Knobhead
gregorgregorovich
Well-known member
Why do you think someone is praying for another lockdown simply because they are questioning how we've dealt with it previously. I''ll "come out from behind my settee" and join my real world, not yours. My wife worked on a covid ward for almost a year, working 12 hour shifts wearing masks that ****. can't be arsed to wear for 15 or so minutes while they are doing a bit of shopping. I've worked, as have lots of others delivering to people with covid. I've had my 2 jabs, caught covid, got over it and had my booster. We've all put up with restrictions on our movements and on our behaviour, which has restricted the spread of the virus, which is a major reason that along with the the vaccine is a reason so many less people are dying from it. We've relaxed every measure we took to drive down the impact of covid and look what's happening. You might be able to put up with a 99.8% survival rate, although I would love to see your provenance for that, but I would rather carry on wearing a mask, wash my hands regularly, socially distance where I can and have people working from home if they possibly can, than kill 2 people out of every thousand just so I could "move on". Jam69 may have put my reply rather more succinctly.
dooderooni
Well-known member
South Africa has something like a 25% vaccination rate which is probably why this variant has been able to mutate and spread. We need to be mindful of that and not be so dismissive of new variants just because we've been lucky enough to have wide access to vaccines.
If, and that's a big if, this turns out to be able to evade the vaccines then we'll need to be prepared to enforce measures again.
If, and that's a big if, this turns out to be able to evade the vaccines then we'll need to be prepared to enforce measures again.
Is it 99.8% though? That claim has been refuted many times. Here's just one example, from fullfact.org.
CoVid-19 survival rate is less than 99.8%
As it states:
Also, that's only for the UK. Worldwide, the survival rate is closer to 98.8%. That still may sound fairly high but you've also got to factor in the transmissiblity of the disease and the sheer number of people who are likely to get infected - especially since this new omicron variant is estimated to be several times more transmissible than even the delta variant was.
The population of the world is nearly 8 billion - even if only around 50% of the world's people end up getting CoVid-19 (and some scientists now think almost everyone will eventually get it, the way things are going) you're still talking about a total of over 45 million deaths.
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Laughing
Well-known member
That would be nearly 700k deaths in the uk assuming everybody eventually got infected. That's a lot.
It also allows for mutations which may eventually become more deadly.
Lock downs, whilst they don't effect me, I am married with kids and can work from home, and indeed have been for nearly 2 years. I realise for some they are emotionally and financially devastating
The government should have left simple measures in place and the decision not to was driven by a handful on idealogical grounds.
Hopefully this variant is no worse than delta and its not back to the start with vaccinations.
Andy_W
Well-known member
They can detect it on the PCR, without it being sequenced I think, but they do sequence a hell of a lot of PCR's in the UK. That's how I have interpreted it anyway.
Andy_W
Well-known member
The IFR from the UK studies was estimated a 1.1% last year, reliable study, good healthcare, large amount of infection, large amount of data. So 98.9% survival would be more accurate. Most others were in the 1-1.4% range, depending on various other factors and differing degrees of healthcare.
But, that 98.9% is for situations where healthcare is not overwhelmed, but no lockdowns = overwhelmed healthcare, so the IFR could have easily doubled for us. India had an estimated IFR of 4% in their April wave.
The mutation for Omicron is seemingly from Alpha lineage (pre-vaccines), but dates back over a year from when case 1 got the infection, but this was also in a country that had not started vaccine rollout.
I first read this from Francois Balloux, or got the link from him, and the other geneticists are thinking that it has come from an immuno compromised Aids carrier, who has basically had it for a year, and has mutated and mutated, which is why it has the 30 odd mutations. So this mutation has likely not been effected at all by vaccines, or vaccine evasion, it's came from someone before there was even vaccines available.
Delta was the same, they think this mutated prior to wide vaccine rollout where it was mutated. The mutations would happen regardless, the way I understand it.
Obviously early days on this, but there's some info here:
Laughing
Well-known member
Lets hope that is the case and the mutations don't affect vaccines. 30 mutations is a lot, I would have thought though. Whilst the mutations may not have had the vaccine petri dish to mutate in, it is, as you say, early days.
Heres hoping.
Watching the WHO news conference, the guy presenting it, and his accent was strong, so it was a struggle, suggested that they were deciding whether it was a variant of concerrn. Listening to otherr news channels, they seem to be doom and gloom about this, sensationalising the ass out of it. They ma, of course, turn out to be right, but the WHO seem to be advocating a watching and monitoring brief at the moment.
Heres hoping.
Watching the WHO news conference, the guy presenting it, and his accent was strong, so it was a struggle, suggested that they were deciding whether it was a variant of concerrn. Listening to otherr news channels, they seem to be doom and gloom about this, sensationalising the ass out of it. They ma, of course, turn out to be right, but the WHO seem to be advocating a watching and monitoring brief at the moment.
