not surprised but god damnit
looks the favorite to become the dominant strain to me as it seems super contagious–way higher than any current one out there anyway
edit that is holy shit if accurate
https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1463956686075580421
Nice work anti-vaxxers. Couldn’t get a couple of stabs and follow restrictions to avoid dealing with this thing nearly 2 years after it started.
Seems that the trend is that new mutations will become more transmissible but less deadly. Eventually, it will be about as deadly as the flu but it’ll take a lot of lives before that happens.
According to Our World In Data, 23.51% of people in South Africa were fully vaccinated against covid-19 as of November 24th.
So far the following countries have imposed curbs on travel from southern Africa:
- The UK has placed restrictions on six countries including South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Lesotho and Eswatini
- Singapore has placed seven countries on its red list despite saying it has no cases of the new variant
- Japan has implemented restrictions from six countries, according to a local news source
- Israel has barred South African travellers and banned its citizens from visiting seven countries in the southern African region
- Germany is banning travel from South Africa allowing only German nationals to enter the country
- Italy has barred entry to anyone who has visited southern African countries in the last two weeks
- The Czech Republic has also put in place a ban which takes effect on Saturday
I mean 23%, 35% either one is way too low. And those countries are where the mutations will arise.
Isn’t this the second one from South Africa that had a significant impact on the world?
Same Guardian article quoted above…
Prof Francois Balloux, the director of the UCL Genetics Institute, said the large number of mutations in the variant apparently accumulated in a “single burst”, suggesting it may have evolved during a chronic infection in a person with a weakened immune system, possibly an untreated HIV/Aids patient.
Being Anti-vax is obviously indefensible but if you can’t have the vaccine or it doesn’t work in you (Chemo), less so. I don’t think we can blame the anti-vax for every mutation when most are reported as coming from the above.
I’m skeptical of this chart. The asterisk is a little unclear, but it suggests they’re confirming B1.1.529 cases differently than other variants. If they’re counting all the test results that have a detectable signature on PCR vs Delta cases that are sequenced, that seems like it would hugely skew the results.
It’s also slightly sensationalist to present rising positive tests as doom and gloom. Its bad news, but we also know that vaccines reduce the worst outcomes even for people that get the virus. The general public doesn’t parse this information well and this kind of framing enables antivaxxer narratives. THE VACCINES DON’T EVEN WORK!
It’s high vax rates that protect the immune weak by lowering community spread. By definition they are to blame (in locations with ample vaccine supply).
I think we all know by now that even if 100% of the people the vax would work in were vaxxed, covid would still spread to the immuno-compromised and others that couldn’t take the vax - sure, it may take a while longer to reach them but until vaccines prevent transmission, covid will still circulate.
With no-one ITT that is anti-vax, it’s unuseful targetting posts towards them. If the science or death stats won’t change their mind, I don’t think we can assume our unread posts will either.
If there are 10% or 1% the case load then it’s harder for them to get it.
If there is a high vaccine rate it should at least slow down a partial escape mutant.
A few months is a long time, that time can buy a vax development cycle. It can make travel restrictions more effective. Oh and re-enact lol NPIs
Tautological arguments don’t factor that in. I think it’s still worth the effort. Otherwise we’d be better off to just let ‘er rip and cull the weak ASAP.
I think there’s also something of a founder effect going on. A fortnight ago Gauteng had 117 confirmed cases, constituting 33% of South Africa’s daily total. A week ago it had 372 cases, constituting 63%.
Yesterday it had 1,953 cases constituting 79%.
There’s also a fair chance that discovery of this new variant has redoubled testing efforts in that region specifically as compared to others.
Yeah for my trip to Germany next week.
Now waiting to see the actual immune escape and morbidity data on this thing ….
It’s got our attention for sure. The press is reporting on it and the governments/WHO seem to be focusing.
Man there is absolutely no will among Americans to do this again. This strain could be deadlier than Ebola and mitigation measures still won’t be meaningful.
Also Democrats are going to get obliterated.
I posted something from that thread already. The second tweet is super important for context
Fuck sake:
https://twitter.com/ariehkovler/status/1464190991204859919
https://twitter.com/ariehkovler/status/1464191482311720992
Edit: Important to note that there’s no news on if they’re showing any symptoms yet.
We don’t know this at all. If 100 percent of the population was fully vaxxed (defining fully vaxxed as vaccinated and boosted), then it seems pretty unlikely that Covid would be able to efficiently spread in that population even if 1 percent or so where immunocompromised and thus not protected. This argument is moot though, since we’ll never be able to test this theory because of anti-vaxxers. But they absolutely should continue to be blamed.
Edit: Well at least for original Covid and variants through Delta. Too soon to say about this new one.
If it gets that bad, many people will shelter ahead of policy.
What there is no will for is CARES 2. If this turns out to be bad, it is burn through the savings to stay home from work time for the general populace. Aid will be highly targeted.
Also supply chain about to get real real bad.
So lets hope this isn’t what it looks like
None of these are being implemented in a way that is likely going to make a difference if this is what we fear it could be I.e. no one is going full 14 day min quarantine with testing in on airborne safe facility. Not like many of those countries using this to buy time and in conjunction with new general population mitigation.