Coronavirus All Purpose Thread: The unnecessary Dumb Dumb 4th wave

[Firebot]

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcar...e-more-vaccine

"The Mu variant has a constellation of mutations that indicate potential properties of immune escape. Preliminary data presented to the Virus Evolution Working Group show a reduction in neutralization capacity of convalescent and vaccine sera similar to that seen for the Beta variant, but this needs to be confirmed by further studies," WHO said in its weekly bulletin.

https://www.reuters.com/world/africa...ns-2021-08-30/

JOHANNESBURG, Aug 30 (Reuters) - South African scientists have detected a new coronavirus variant with multiple mutations but are yet to establish whether it is more contagious or able to overcome the immunity provided by vaccines or prior infection.

C.1.2 contains mutations present in WHO variants of concern

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-59009293

Delta 'Plus' Covid variant may be more transmissible

https://www.forbes.com/sites/william...h=5c5028104680

A new and unusual variant of SARS-CoV-2 has appeared and is on the move. First noted in South Africa in May, the C.1.2 varian is now found in eight countries. Although C.1.2 is at present a minor variant wherever it occurs, the virus shares several mutations with all of the variants of concern, Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Lambda. It also has several novel mutations that cause concern in their own right (Figure 1)..

https://www.theguardian.com/australi...-we-be-worried

The C.1.2 strain has scientists’ attention because it possesses mutations within the genome similar to those seen in variants of interest, like Delta

It's really hard to keep track, as all seem to have a constellations of mutations and all may evade immunity, and may be more transmissible. Each article is clickbait and all within recent months, all attempting to be the next delta. We were just worrying about a South African variant in August. But THIS time, it's the real deal. Fear the Omicron and its record breaking mutations!

On the naming convention chosen...it was ok to say Wuhan coronavirus until Trump said it and now it's not ok, but was ok to say British variant, a Brazil variant and a South Africa variant...until we had an Indian variant which was not ok so the WHO resorted to using the Greek alphabet to confuse everyone.

Alpha, Beta, Delta, Lambda, Mu so far so good, hmm Nu is too close and sounds like New can't use it what's next?

Turns out a major variant of concern would fall under the Xi letter...wow that would be totally offensive to use since it's the name of the president that we pay homage to and could be seen as racist. Turns out that the greek alphabet can be offensive. Let's skip it and go with Uni- I mean Omicron. We will also have no problem calling it the South African variant and doing immediate full travel bans even though they just discovered it first and it's already in all countries. We really need to distinguish that this is from Africa.

Oh it was just found in European samples weeks before South Africa even ever detected it? We must still ban South Africa flights and ostracize Africans. Sorry South Africa, you should have never tried to sequence variants, it's the south african variant now.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/omicron...-alert-raised/

This whole charade has been totally politicized and sensationalized.

[Scroopy Noopers]

That whole post is sensationalized.

[Firebot]

Originally Posted by Scroopy Noopers

That whole post is sensationalized.

From earlier last week when it was first revealed, posts like this were prevalent. The market even took a tumble as soon as this new variant was announced. Was this type of post not sensationalized?

Originally Posted by cgy-sk-import

From the information disseminating in trusted scientific channels, this is an INCREDIBLY CONCERNING variant. Makes Delta look like Chicken Pox. Wow.

Care to explain, why we skipped Nu and Xi and are now using Omicron?

It's not about downplaying the risks of Omicron as it warrants concern, it's the absurdity of selecting names that was supposed to be done in lieu of origin variants, overselling the fact it has a ton of mutations when it's still not known the impact of several of those mutations, and ostracizing a region that happens to bother sequencing its cases (and even they sequence less then 1% of cases).

And Most European countries have more cases per capita then South Africa right now well into a 5th wave.

It's totally sensationalized. Omicron was already present in Europe before it was ever detected in South Africa. South Africa could still be the source, but it doesn't matter as it's everywhere already. And it's everywhere already because most counties allow people to travel without vaccines internationally, or quarantine and now want to pretend they really care with knee jerk reactions to news. It's just absurd and political.

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by Firebot

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcar...e-more-vaccine

https://www.reuters.com/world/africa...ns-2021-08-30/

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-59009293

https://www.forbes.com/sites/william...h=5c5028104680

https://www.theguardian.com/australi...-we-be-worried

It's really hard to keep track, as all seem to have a constellations of mutations and all may evade immunity, and may be more transmissible. Each article is clickbait and all within recent months, all attempting to be the next delta. We were just worrying about a South African variant in August. But THIS time, it's the real deal. Fear the Omicron and its record breaking mutations!

LOL. All those articles refer to 2 variants of interest (neither were variants of concern). No one was closing borders for those variants, with good reason. Neither had as many mutations at sites that antibodies respond to, so there was much less reason to suspect immune evasion.

On the naming convention chosen...it was ok to say Wuhan coronavirus until Trump said it and now it's not ok, but was ok to say British variant, a Brazil variant and a South Africa variant...until we had an Indian variant which was not ok so the WHO resorted to using the Greek alphabet to confuse everyone.


Alpha, Beta, Delta, Lambda, Mu so far so good, hmm Nu is too close and sounds like New can't use it what's next?

Turns out a major variant of concern would fall under the Xi letter...wow that would be totally offensive to use since it's the name of the president that we pay homage to and could be seen as racist. Turns out that the greek alphabet can be offensive. Let's skip it and go with Uni- I mean Omicron. We will also have no problem calling it the South African variant and doing immediate full travel bans even though they just discovered it first and it's already in all countries. We really need to distinguish that this is from Africa.

Oh it was just found in European samples weeks before South Africa even ever detected it? We must still ban South Africa flights and ostracize Africans. Sorry South Africa, you should have never tried to sequence variants, it's the south african variant now.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/omicron...-alert-raised/

This whole charade has been totally politicized and sensationalized.

No, they started with the lineage name (B.1.1.7, B.1.351, P1, etc.) but it became unwieldy so the WHO switched to Greek letters. And they're skipping Nu and Xi for obvious reasons. If Biden or Trump (or basically any common name) was a Greek letter they'd skip it too.

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by Firebot

Care to explain, why we skipped Nu and Xi and are now using Omicron?

It's not about downplaying the risks of Omicron as it warrants concern, it's the absurdity of selecting names that was supposed to be done in lieu of origin variants, overselling the fact it has a ton of mutations when it's still not known the impact of several of those mutations, and ostracizing a region that happens to bother sequencing its cases (and even they sequence less then 1% of cases).

And Most European countries have more cases per capita then South Africa right now well into a 5th wave.

It's totally sensationalized. Omicron was already present in Europe before it was ever detected in South Africa. South Africa could still be the source, but it doesn't matter as it's everywhere already. And it's everywhere already because most counties allow people to travel without vaccines internationally, or quarantine and now want to pretend they really care with knee jerk reactions to news. It's just absurd and political.

Given how exponential growth works, you honestly don't see the advantage of starting with a small fraction of the imported cases that you'd have if you continued allowing travel from South Africa if the variant turns out to be as problematic as is feared? At a constant growth rate, going from 10 cases to 1,000 takes as long as going from 1,000 to 100,000.

[Firebot]

Originally Posted by opendoor

Given how exponential growth works, you honestly don't see the advantage of starting with a small fraction of the imported cases that you'd have if you continued allowing travel from South Africa if the variant turns out to be as problematic as is feared? At a constant growth rate, going from 10 cases to 1,000 takes as long as going from 1,000 to 100,000.

Personal freedom has been deemed too important to worry about spread, which is why an unvaccinated travel from Egypt to Belgium with unknown origin on how she got it was able to be a plane and without need for quarantine. Yet the incubation period makes it pretty much impossible that she got it from Egypt and she likely got it in Belgium.

Again, stopping flights from African countries on announcement of a new major variant is a knee jerk half assed reaction when you do not have proper vaccine mandates or quarantines in lieu of vaccines, as can be seen with delta.

And the whole point of trying to prevent foreign variants from coming in after being discovered is moot, when domestic covid is still let to propagate on grounds of personal freedom. Nothing is being done to stop the spread outside of visible half measures.

We were going to get major variants one way or another, another game changer at some point. Half measures and knee jerk reactions have continuously been used throughout, yet the same mistakes are made over and over. You either put in a uniform vaccine mandate and deal with this on a global scope, or you let it ride.

And don't get me wrong, I am totally on board with flights being prevented from coming in from South Africa, but I am also on board for full mandatory vaccine mandate with yearly boosters. Anything less is half assed and pointless and just another kicking the can down the road with no end goal situation caused by personal freedom.

[Firebot]

Originally Posted by opendoor

LOL. All those articles refer to 2 variants of interest (neither were variants of concern). No one was closing borders for those variants, with good reason. Neither had as many mutations at sites that antibodies respond to, so there was much less reason to suspect immune evasion.

I was pointing out how these variants generated multiple articles at the times with similar headlines about mutations despite them being ultimately unimportant.

We still know very little about Omicron other then it has a very large amount of mutations that may point to it being more infectious, but no details about lethality changes or vaccine efficacy changes. In the end it really doesn't matter if we aren't bothering to do vaccine mandates at a global level or full travel restrictions, the next variant will always be around, and this was bound to happen (if this is truly a worst case variant scenario)

[cgy-sk-import]

Looks like more and more news agencies are reporting the variant only causes very very mild symptoms. This could be fantastic if it overtakes Delta and basically turns into a normal circulating coronavirus (i.e. the common cold).

Strikingly different than initial reports a few days ago.

[Torture]

Originally Posted by Azure

The policies are all over the place.

Everything from how to count your isolation dates if you are a close contact and asymptomatic, as in do you start counting from date of exposure, or last date of exposure and another 14 days after.

Even the public health phone calls are all over the place.

Just within my family, they've been given two different dates from the SAME health office. Its so stupid its hilarious.

Like I said, because of their stupidity, people are ignoring the PCR tests because nobody wants to deal with the phone calls, inconsistent information & direction, and inability to reason properly with the people calling.

I mean it clearly says on their website that if you're double vaccinated and don't have symptoms you do not need to isolate. But hey, can't stop with the fear mongering now after doing so well with it for the past 1.5 years.



https://www.gov.mb.ca/covid19/fundam...isolation.html

I have family members that are double vaccinated, no symptoms and had COVID in the last 3 months who get daily phone calls telling them they NEED to isolate. When they tell them the guidelines clearly state that you are exempt from isolation, they said 'that isn't our protocol.' lol.

I'm not disagreeing that the rules are all over the place, unclear, and the constant moving of the bar doesn't help, but your quoted section doesn't actually say that you're exempt and do not need to isolate, it says you may be exempt from isolation. So if public health tells you that you have to isolate, you still have to isolate.

Close contacts of a COVID-19 case may be exempt from self-isolation (quarantine) if they have no symptoms AND are fully vaccinated or were recently infected with COVID-19 in the past six months.

In fact the next sentence that you didn't include in the quote says...exactly that.

Public health officials will let you know if you meet criteria for exemption.

[Acey]

Originally Posted by cgy-sk-import

Looks like more and more news agencies are reporting the variant only causes very very mild symptoms.

The concern remains this:

But they cautioned that there is too little data to draw any conclusions yet. Their bigger concern, they said, is how quickly the omicron variant, with its high number of mutations, might spread and how it will match up against vaccines.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...elief-rcna6920

Which too might be nothing but to me it sounds like it's too early to say anything yet.

[Knut]

https://yourlocalepidemiologist.subs...-update-nov-29

“Preliminary evidence suggests there may be an increased risk of reinfection with Omicron (ie, people who have previously had COVID-19 could become reinfected more easily with Omicron), as compared to other variants of concern, but information is limited.”

Keep in mind that there is a possibility (some say strong) that Omicron will be less transmissible than Delta. That’s because there’s a trade-off between immune escape (or immune corrosion) and transmissibility. We’ve seen that with other variants of concern.

[Acey]

In other words... they don't really know yet?

[AFireInside]

Originally Posted by Firebot

On the naming convention chosen...it was ok to say Wuhan coronavirus until Trump said it and now it's not ok, but was ok to say British variant, a Brazil variant and a South Africa variant...until we had an Indian variant which was not ok so the WHO resorted to using the Greek alphabet to confuse everyone.

Alpha, Beta, Delta, Lambda, Mu so far so good, hmm Nu is too close and sounds like New can't use it what's next?

Turns out a major variant of concern would fall under the Xi letter...wow that would be totally offensive to use since it's the name of the president that we pay homage to and could be seen as racist. Turns out that the greek alphabet can be offensive. Let's skip it and go with Uni- I mean Omicron. We will also have no problem calling it the South African variant and doing immediate full travel bans even though they just discovered it first and it's already in all countries. We really need to distinguish that this is from Africa.

Oh it was just found in European samples weeks before South Africa even ever detected it? We must still ban South Africa flights and ostracize Africans. Sorry South Africa, you should have never tried to sequence variants, it's the south african variant now.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/omicron...-alert-raised/

This whole charade has been totally politicized and sensationalized.

Why does the naming convention matter in terms of skipping some greek letters?? Of course they shouldn't use a greek letter if it's the same as the last name as a world leader. Imagine if there was a greek letter called Trump and the WHO used it. The outrage about the WHO trying to make Trump look bad by associating him with the name of a virus would be seen as interference, and would create so many problems. Conspiracy theorists already think the WHO is trying to control the world. No one is paying homage to Xi. That's such a silly way to look at it. Calling it Nu, would just get confusing.

There were a couple issues with Trump calling it the "Wuhan Flu" or the "China Flu". First, violence against Asians in the US started to become an issue because he was saying that to point blame. The virus had been named, and he continued to ignore that name. Calling it a British variant doesn't really cause as many problems. That aside, it seems like they name any variant of concern fairly quickly, so once it's been named, anyone in the media calling it the "South African Flu" for example, is just being ignorant, and I don't see anywhere that's ok. Since it's been named I don't think I've seen many headlines discussing the "South African Flu", it always mentions Omicrom.

You're exaggerating this issue. Almost anyone I've seen saying one side or the other is freaking out about this seem to be the ones freaking out. When governments weren't cautious enough people were upset. Now that they are being more cautious people are upset. There's no winning here.

[Knut]

https://twitter.com/user/status/1465722263291011076

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by Torture

I'm not disagreeing that the rules are all over the place, unclear, and the constant moving of the bar doesn't help, but your quoted section doesn't actually say that you're exempt and do not need to isolate, it says you may be exempt from isolation. So if public health tells you that you have to isolate, you still have to isolate.

In fact the next sentence that you didn't include in the quote says...exactly that.

Having the rules depend on who you get on the phone at public health is absurd and is a great way to undermine public support for health measures.

[PeteMoss]

I disagree that the media is over sensationalizing these variants. They may turn out to be nothing but if the virus that upended our lives is mutating in a way that could again upend our lives - its news.

You may not want to hear about it and it may turn out to be nothing - but that doesn't mean its not news.

[Bigtime]

https://twitter.com/user/status/1465772037125951493

[Azure]

Originally Posted by Torture

I'm not disagreeing that the rules are all over the place, unclear, and the constant moving of the bar doesn't help, but your quoted section doesn't actually say that you're exempt and do not need to isolate, it says you may be exempt from isolation. So if public health tells you that you have to isolate, you still have to isolate.

In fact the next sentence that you didn't include in the quote says...exactly that.

I understand that, but to suggest you 'may be exempt' and yet the people who call you literally have no clue about that at all seems pretty dumb.

People are looking up the isolation rules, finding that, asking public health about it and then being told its not really the case. Of course they get annoyed.

We've been telling everyone that is they get vaccinated, there is little to be concerned about. We allow vaccinated people to fill 20,000 seats at the Flames game, eat at restaurants in close contact, etc, etc. But when it comes to supposed close contact, public health suddenly acts like the vaccine is actually not making a difference. That kind of garbage tends to spread quickly among unvaccinated and simply adds fuel to the fire.

Its also funny, cause the university where my sister is at doesn't even have isolation rules on their side if you're double vaccinated and in close contact. Its kinda mind-boggling cause they are simply saying if the students are sick they should stay at home, and in the meantime public health is calling everyday asking if my sister is still alive while she is in isolation.

[TorqueDog]

This all strikes to the crux of the problem: the government and their arms-length advisory bodies have been flat out horrible about being consistent in their messaging and in the mitigations they've rolled out. The inconsistencies in their actions and what is actually known about COVID-19 has only provided the nutjobs with fodder and spread the law-abiding public across a spectrum ranging from 'cautious but apathetic' to 'paralyzed by irrational fear'.

[Knut]

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/omicron...-alert-raised/

Before It was detected in S. Africa the Variant was already in Europe. Could be good news as it might mean that the illness is either 1) Mild or 2) can not outcompete Delta