COVID-19: Chapter 9 - OMGicron

Have a strong feeling that he’s just being himself (a self-absorbed douchenozzle) and making snarky COVID toe jokes, when he really has a bone-related toe injury.

Though he’s clearly outed himself as a dipshit, he’s a football savant, so I do enjoy watching his interviews with Pat McAfee, as his actual football discussion is usually very interesting. They are obviously friends, so Pat has tried to tread carefully, but it’s pretty funny listening to him give Rodgers shit each interview now about COVID, Joe Rogan, etc. When they talked about Rodgers heading to the locker room early before halftime, Rodgers admitted it was to get “treatment” for his toe.

Pat asked him if they put a mask on his toe or gave it a vaccination.

I think he really has COVID toe. Ever since he said that he had a toe injury, he’s been really dodgy about it. If he simply stubbed his toe or some shit, he’d have no reason not to admit it. Shit happens, we hurt ourselves. But since it’s COVID-related, he was very evasive for a couple weeks.

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Onion!

People were pretty apathetic and loose about covid when I was there in July. This was in part because Bulgaria had a very slow, ineffective response to the pandemic. This can be owed to incompetent, corrupt politicians and being the poorest country in the EU. The numbers themselves weren’t bad when I was there and restrictions weren’t enforced in most places. However, Bulgaria now has the 2nd most COVID deaths per capita in the world and the highest case fatality rate among EU members despite being 18th in total cases per capita in the EU since the beginning of the pandemic. These results haven’t driven Bulgarians to get vaccinated as they are the least vaccinated country in Europe.

No idea what 2022 will look like but so long as you’re vaxxed + boosted and wear a mask when you’re told to, you’ll be fine.

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Sitting at a coffee shop, two ladies talking at a table next to me. They’re talking about energetic healing and acupuncture for cancer or something like that.

Then, one of the ladies talks about COVID vaccines and says something like “they ignored my religious exemption so now I’m doing my own thing. It’s medical fascism”.

They don’t even look like right wing nutters, so I’m guessing they’re on the Jill Stein side of the spectrum.

People like that used to be over 90% of the anti-vax crowd.

Now they’re a very small minority.

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I remember when antivaxxers were fringe lefties that even fascists looked down on. Wasn’t too long ago.

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Was it a hipster cafe?

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Not really. It was a little quirky, but located in a suburban strip mall next to a DMV location where I went to get my DL renewed.

Were people whispering about how they think Trump is actually great?

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Sounds ominous

Scientists have said a new Covid variant that carries an “extremely high number” of mutations may drive further waves of disease by evading the body’s defences.

Only 10 cases in three countries have been confirmed by genomic sequencing, but the variant has sparked serious concern among some researchers because a number of the mutations may help the virus evade immunity.

The B.1.1.529 variant has 32 mutations in the spike protein, the part of the virus that most vaccines use to prime the immune system against Covid. Mutations in the spike protein can affect the virus’s ability to infect cells and spread, but also make it harder for immune cells to attack the pathogen.

The variant was first spotted in Botswana, where three cases have now been sequenced. Six more have been confirmed in South Africa, and one in Hong Kong in a traveller returning from South Africa.

Dr Tom Peacock, a virologist at Imperial College London, posted details of the new variant on a genome-sharing website , noting that the “incredibly high amount of spike mutations suggest this could be of real concern”.

In a series of tweets, Peacock said it “very, very much should be monitored due to that horrific spike profile”, but added that it may turn out to be an “odd cluster” that is not very transmissible. “I hope that’s the case,” he wrote.

Description:
Conserved Spike mutations - A67V, Δ69-70, T95I, G142D/Δ143-145, Δ211/L212I, ins214EPE, G339D, S371L, S373P, S375F, K417N, N440K, G446S, S477N, T478K, E484A, Q493K, G496S, Q498R, N501Y, Y505H, T547K, D614G, H655Y, N679K, P681H, N764K, D796Y, N856K, Q954H, N969K, L981F

Conserved non-Spike mutations - NSP3 – K38R, V1069I, Δ1265/L1266I, A1892T; NSP4 – T492I; NSP5 – P132H; NSP6 – Δ105-107, A189V; NSP12 – P323L; NSP14 – I42V; E – T9I; M – D3G, Q19E, A63T; N – P13L, Δ31-33, R203K, G204R

Currently only 4 sequences so would recommend monitoring for now. Export to Asia implies this might be more widespread than sequences alone would imply. Also the extremely long branch length and incredibly high amount of spike mutations suggest this could be of real concern (predicted escape from most known monoclonal antibodies)

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Coolcoolcoolcoolcool

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They’ve found variants like this before that didn’t go anywhere, so wouldn’t panic yet. Does show that immune escape variant is a real potential issue as we happily let cases run amok worldwide.

Yeah, this. There are more catalogued variants in the US than even Churchill has noted ITT, and none of them have amounted to anything since delta took over, because they have all failed to out compete delta. The relevant metric is not the number of mutations but growing in abundance relative to delta. That will probably happen sometime, eventually, but it seems like delta is potent enough that any one new variant is an underdog to do that.

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Dude these articles seem to come out every week to scare people and delta still wins out.

I’ll see it when I believe it. Back to your fearmongering.

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Sure it’s most likely yet another failed challenger to Delta but I think news about new variants with potentially troubling mutations are pretty relevant to this thread.

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Of course they are but the media constantly presents them as a panic.

I think this can be overstated. The main way COVID variants compete with each other is by sparking a cross-protective immune response. Absent that (or dying), you can just get infected by both variants. If a variant develops that specializes in defeating immunity (either from Delta infection or from the vaccine), it might not compete that much with Delta. All that’s to say that it’s potentially concerning if any variant is growing in absolute numbers, even if Delta is currently growing faster.

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You’re a conservative now?