COVID 19 GLOBAL

[boydeste]

11 minutes ago, Washedup said:

Just read a terrible story of a 39 year old police officer from Manchester passing away leaves wife and 2 young daughters..heartbreaking. it's not just the elderly at risk. Yes you are right its bloody scary 

This new strain seems to be worse for younger people than the original and is more contageous.

[Washedup]

Deadliest day today in California over 700 deaths..bloody awful 

[lazarus]

Biden takes office in the US & tightens things up...why-tf wasn't this happening before?

Effective January 26, 2021 travelers arriving in the U.S. must:

1) Get tested for COVID-19 no more than 3 days before departing to the United States and show a negative test result to the airline before boarding OR 2) show documentation of recent recovery from COVID-19 to the airline before boarding.

This new order applies to all air passengers — including U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents — aged 2 years and older. It also applies regardless of the length of time spent outside of the United States.

Acceptable documentation of recovery from COVID-19 includes both a positive viral test result within 3 months of travel (or the time period specified in current CDC guidance) AND a letter from a healthcare provider or public health official stating that the passenger is cleared to end isolation.

Passengers who have tested positive for COVID-19 will need to delay their travel until they meet the criteria to end isolation; learn more here:

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/travelers/testing-international-air-travelers.html#general

[boydeste]

10 minutes ago, Washedup said:

Deadliest day today in California over 700 deaths..bloody awful 

Uk peaked at over 1800 deaths one day this week.

[Washedup]

5 minutes ago, boydeste said:

Uk peaked at over 1800 deaths one day this week.

Terrible 

[coxyhog]

44 minutes ago, Washedup said:

Deadliest day today in California over 700 deaths..bloody awful 

Started in Kent....now where are all those illegals coming in??

[fforest]

41 minutes ago, lazarus said:

Biden takes office in the US & tightens things up...why-tf wasn't this happening before?

Effective January 26, 2021 travelers arriving in the U.S. must:

1) Get tested for COVID-19 no more than 3 days before departing to the United States and show a negative test result to the airline before boarding OR 2) show documentation of recent recovery from COVID-19 to the airline before boarding.

This new order applies to all air passengers — including U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents — aged 2 years and older. It also applies regardless of the length of time spent outside of the United States.

Acceptable documentation of recovery from COVID-19 includes both a positive viral test result within 3 months of travel (or the time period specified in current CDC guidance) AND a letter from a healthcare provider or public health official stating that the passenger is cleared to end isolation.

Passengers who have tested positive for COVID-19 will need to delay their travel until they meet the criteria to end isolation; learn more here:

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/travelers/testing-international-air-travelers.html#general

O Boy this should help the destruction of the world economy.....This will make people scared to fly international for any reason.........Hey lets pour some more gasoline on the fire.....As the sheep cheered ........lol......

Edited January 22, 2021 by fforest

[Lemondropkid]

2 hours ago, boydeste said:

Just seen that current stats in the Uk are that for a 60 year old, you have a 1 in 100 chance of dying if you catch the original strain, but the new strain is killing 14 people in every 1000. This is quite scary as previously it appeared that only the 75 and above were that venerable.

That was on the briefing this evening from Patrick Valance for over 60s original strain 10 in 1000 (note that's 1,000), new variant 13-14 per 1000 but not enough evidence yet to know the correct figure.

Sadly that comes out as an awful lot of people applied to the whole population. But on an individual level given at present "only" 1 in 50 have got.

However you will be fine🙂All that fishing and red wine, you've got to have a very robust consitution.

 

[boydeste]

2 minutes ago, Lemondropkid said:

That was on the briefing this evening from Patrick Valance for over 60s original strain 10 in 1000 (note that's 1,000), new variant 13-14 per 1000 but not enough evidence yet to know the correct figure.

Sadly that comes out as an awful lot of people applied to the whole population. But on an individual level given at present "only" 1 in 50 have got.

However you will be fine🙂All that fishing and red wine, you've got to have a very robust consitution.

 

55555555

Personally, I would rather not put it to the test.

[Stillearly]

1 hour ago, coxyhog said:

Started in Kent....now where are all those illegals coming in??

BoJo and chums have let anybody in through the ports and airports over the last 12 months , no Covid checks or restrictions  ... trying to pin it on a few illegals is slightly desperate 

[Esco]

2 hours ago, Stillearly said:

BoJo and chums have let anybody in through the ports and airports over the last 12 months , no Covid checks or restrictions  ... trying to pin it on a few illegals is slightly desperate 

Yes it could come from anywhere really. 

Meanwhile the pharmaceuticals are researching if they can change the vaccine to cope with the new known strains (UK, SA, Brazil), but how many more can we expect? This virus wont stop mutating any time soon. 

Still a lot of questions to answer I reckon.

I've written off 2021 in terms of travel but fortunately am right where I want to be. 

[fygjam]

NEWS 21 JANUARY 2021

Fast-spreading COVID variant can elude immune responses

Evidence that a variant of the coronavirus identified in South Africa might compromise immunity sparks concerns about vaccine effectiveness.

Evidence is growing that some coronavirus variants could evade immune responses triggered by
vaccines and previous infections. Researchers are trying to make sense of a tsunami of lab studies
released this week that raise concerns about some emerging variants and mutations.

“Some of the data I’ve seen in the last 48 hours have really scared me,” says Daniel Altmann, an
immunologist at Imperial College London, who worries that some of results could portend a reduction
in the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00121-z
 

 

[Toy Boy]

Interesting that the UK, US and parts of the EU are now implementing or considering implementing much the same controls and measures against the virus that places like Thailand and Australia put in place already last March/April.

At the time, they said such measures would be far too costly for open trading nations to tolerate, so they must learn to live with the virus while suppressing it, rather than trying to eradicate it like the dumb ol' Thais. Well now we can see which approach was the best one, and that (surprising though it may seem) the Thai government actually things just about right from the very start. It's a tragic way for them to learn that the Thais aren't quite so dumb after all.

[forcebwithu]

Other than the transport of goods, is there a compelling reason people need to travel internationally during a pandemic. Even with the transport of goods, a system could be set up where once the shipping container arrives it's handed over to locals for onward shipping. Those delivering the container to the border would stay in isolated housing, and then once rested would leave without ever having entered the country. Same system could be used for isolating regions within a country that is experiencing an outbreak of infections.

[Jambo]

4 hours ago, fforest said:

O Boy this should help the destruction of the world economy.....This will make people scared to fly international for any reason.........Hey lets pour some more gasoline on the fire.....As the sheep cheered ........lol......

Given the fact that in a few short weeks the USA will have achieved half a million deaths from Covid19 through not taking prudent actions to restrict the spread of the pandemic the belated introduction of a raft of restrictions is long overdue.

Paying the price for putting dogmatic politics above sensible healthcare precautions.

[fygjam]

Note. This is from a preprint and has not been peer reviewed.

Posted January 19, 2021.

To date severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) has infected nearly 100 million individuals resulting in over two million deaths. Many vaccines are being deployed to prevent coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) including two novel mRNA-based vaccines. These vaccines elicit neutralizing antibodies and appear to be safe and effective, but the precise nature of the elicited antibodies is not known. Here we report on the antibody and memory B cell responses in a cohort of 20 volunteers who received either the Moderna (mRNA-1273) or Pfizer-BioNTech (BNT162b2) vaccines. Consistent with prior reports, 8 weeks after the second vaccine injection volunteers showed high levels of IgM, and IgG anti-SARS-CoV-2 spike protein (S), receptor binding domain (RBD) binding titers. Moreover, the plasma neutralizing activity, and the relative numbers of RBD-specific memory B cells were equivalent to individuals who recovered from natural infection. However, activity against SARS-CoV-2 variants encoding E484K or N501Y or the K417N:E484K:N501Y combination was reduced by a small but significant margin. Consistent with these findings, vaccine-elicited monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) potently neutralize SARS-CoV-2, targeting a number of different RBD  epitopes in common with mAbs isolated from infected donors. Structural analyses of mAbs complexed with S trimer suggest that vaccine- and virus-encoded S adopts similar conformations to induce equivalent anti-RBD antibodies. However, neutralization by 14 of the 17 most potent mAbs tested was reduced or abolished by either K417N, or E484K, or N501Y mutations. Notably, the same mutations were selected when recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus (rVSV)/SARS-CoV-2 S was cultured in the presence of the vaccine elicited mAbs. Taken together the results suggest that the monoclonal antibodies in clinical use should be tested against newly arising variants, and that mRNA vaccines may need to be updated periodically to avoid potential loss of clinical efficacy.

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.15.426911v1

 

Notation like N501Y denotes an amino acid substitution in the protein, in this case the spike protein. Google something like "single letter amino acid codes" and you will find any number of tables which identify the amino acids in question. The 501 identifies the nucleotide position where the substitution occurred.

 

 

[fygjam]

24 minutes ago, forcebwithu said:

Other than the transport of goods, is there a compelling reason people need to travel internationally during a pandemic. Even with the transport of goods, a system could be set up where once the shipping container arrives it's handed over to locals for onward shipping. Those delivering the container to the border would stay in isolated housing, and then once rested would leave without ever having entered the country. Same system could be used for isolating regions within a country that is experiencing an outbreak of infections.

In Australia the crew of ships are not allowed to disembark. They stay onboard until the ship either loads or unloads then departs.

For aircrew, they are placed in isolation until they depart.

 

[fygjam]

Warning. Viewer discretion advised.

The following, although written by a pom, may contain suggestions which could be construed by the overly sensitive and emotional as Britain Bashing.

The author is a virologist and as such probably has a better understanding of how viruses mutate to escape the immune response compared to a general physician who swapped stethoscope for the editor's pencil at the BMJ.

Musings of an anonymous, pissed off virologist
5 JANUARY 2021

Dr. Bieniasz is Professor and Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Rockefeller University.

As viruses go, SARS-CoV-2, is quite easy to neutralize with antibodies and, it turns out, straightforward to generate effective vaccines based on the spike protein. Perhaps, even probably, those two properties are causally related. Moreover, it appears that it is quite hard (albeit not impossible) to generate resistant spike variants that evade the polyclonal antibody responses elicited by said vaccines. This is all excellent news.

However, if I had a nefarious nature and wanted to ensure that the new SARS-CoV-2 vaccines were rendered impotent, these are a few things I would try.

First, we’d want to maximize the viral population size and diversity. Because SARS-CoV-2 has a proofreading polymerase, we might have to work hard to do this. The four measures outlined below might help accomplish this, assisting the virus to explore as much genetic diversity as possible, generating every conceivable point mutation as frequently as possible.

1. Delay the rollout of testing, so that the virus could spread undetected, seeding outbreaks in geographically, demographically and culturally diverse host populations, rendering it virtually impossible to quash with test-trace-isolate approaches.
2. Implement partial and patchy restrictions on movement and social interactions, thus maintaining consistently large pools of infected individuals.
3. Keep schools open, claiming that children don’t frequently transmit SARS-CoV-2. Because children have generally mild and perhaps more frequently asymptomatic infections, diversifying viral populations are more likely to spread undetected.
4. Start a rumor-mill, making full use of social media and other outlets, with topics such as masks are unnecessary or don’t work, that PCR tests are too sensitive or unreliable, that infection-induced ‘herd immunity’ is a reasonable strategy, or even that SARS-CoV-2 isn’t real. Undermining already inadequate public health measures helps keep viral population sizes large.

Second, during or after the establishment of large and diverse viral populations, we’d begin to apply selection pressure to enrich antibody resistance mutations. For that, we would elicit the help of the medical establishment to implement measures 5 and 6. They, laudably, want to help as many people as possible as quickly as possible — we could exploit this.

5. Treat tens of thousands of people with uncharacterized convalescent plasma of weak/unknown potency, without proper clinical trials, to get the ball rolling in applying some selection pressure to enrich for antibody resistant variants. (Again, I don’t know how effective this would be since it is mostly done in hospitals, where onward transmission would presumably be rare, but it would certainly be worth a try) Immunocompromised individuals with persistent infection might be especially helpful here.

6. Finally, and here’s the kicker: having developed a remarkable two-dose vaccine, that is extraordinarily effective, ADMINISTER IT TO MILLIONS OF PEOPLE – BUT DELAY THE SECOND DOSE. Generating a pool of hosts with just the right amount of neutralizing antibody to apply selection pressure, but also maintain sufficient levels of partially antibody-resistant virus to allow onward transmission is key here. We might not achieve this shortly after the first dose, but if we let immunity wane for a little while, say 4 to 12 weeks, we just might hit the sweet spot.

Of course, I don’t know if the above would be successful, but that’s what I’d try if I wanted to generate vaccine-resistant SARS-CoV-2 variants.

 

[Zeb]

The US now has about the same number of Covid Cases as the total population of Australia.

The UK has more deaths per 1 million of population than the US.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Poor buggers, particularly those working in the Health System.

[Lemondropkid]

6 hours ago, Toy Boy said:

Interesting that the UK, US and parts of the EU are now implementing or considering implementing much the same controls and measures against the virus that places like Thailand and Australia put in place already last March/April.

At the time, they said such measures would be far too costly for open trading nations to tolerate, so they must learn to live with the virus while suppressing it, rather than trying to eradicate it like the dumb ol' Thais. Well now we can see which approach was the best one, and that (surprising though it may seem) the Thai government actually things just about right from the very start. It's a tragic way for them to learn that the Thais aren't quite so dumb after all.

Yep- see below Heathrow Airport Arrivals. Have seen worse pictures of crammed platforms and trains on the London Underground. Meanwhile the Police are issuing fines to people outdoors!!

 

https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-crowds-at-heathrow-airport-spark-social-distancing-concerns-12196069

[Washedup]

I'm sure I read that Heathrow to Dubai was now the busiest flight path in the world..mental 😡

[Esco]

1 hour ago, Lemondropkid said:

Yep- see below Heathrow Airport Arrivals. Have seen worse pictures of crammed platforms and trains on the London Underground. Meanwhile the Police are issuing fines to people outdoors!!

 

https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-crowds-at-heathrow-airport-spark-social-distancing-concerns-12196069

The article says departures mate. 

[Esco]

17 minutes ago, Washedup said:

I'm sure I read that Heathrow to Dubai was now the busiest flight path in the world..mental 😡

I know several people who went to Dubai for a break. They had a fab time too. You do need a PCR test to get in by the way. 

[Washedup]

Curfew for the Netherlands coming into force today..looks like EU locking down 

[Lemondropkid]

2 hours ago, Esco said:

The article says departures mate. 

Good point😀 Admit I didn't read the article, put the link to give the source of the picture.

However that  looks very much like arrivals in T2. Been through their dozens of times, am 95% sure that's where the photo is taken. That's the massive queue that always use to form for the non- EU passport holders, guess it's grown post Brexit!!!

I've seen other images showing various parts of Heathrow, equally as bad.

The big point is it shows just how well Boris's sham policies are enforced in real life or below Monday on the Tube(picture lifted from the Standard online)