Coronavirus around the world

There are 1,097 replies in this Thread which has previously been viewed 150,067 times. The latest Post () was by Rice.

    Quote from Rice

    The media do love to hype disasters and potential disasters. But do you remember how we all dismissed covid 22 months ago? Jan was the only one saying the sky was about to fall, and he is generally very dramatic.

    I am staking an arrogant claim here. I did not go against Jan and was calling for Chinese borders to be closed in February before the world woke up to this being a problem.


    By the way, I am now going the other way and think we are making too much of a problem about it. That may just be fatigue, though.

    Quote from daniel

    Semigoodlooking

    Like putting out a fire before it has even started!!!! I have had three jabs already for covid, when will enough be enough? This will turn into a yearly thing,

    just like the flu shot, before all is said and done.

    And I would be fine with that, if those yearly shots did allow for a normal way of life. It would certainly beat going into a lockdown every winter. Remember, what happens elsewhere during the COVID crisis comes to Argentina 3 to 6 months later. So, pay close attention to the UK and Europe because they show what will be happening here soon.

    From The Telegraph this morning:


    In Germany, Angela Merkel yesterday announced a national lockdown for those who refuse the jab and backed plans to make vaccines mandatory as an “act of national solidarity”.
    One in every 100 people is now infected with Covid, according to the health ministry. Seven are believed to be from the omicron strain.
    “The fourth wave must be broken,” said Mrs Merkel, in what may be her final act as German chancellor. 
    “In view of this it is necessary to make vaccination compulsory. We all hope it would be better accepted on a voluntary basis.”

    In Norway, an office Christmas party in Oslo led to at least 60 people testing positive for Covid. All were apparently vaccinated. At least 17 of those are now suspected to have the omicron variant.
    The government has responded quickly, making face masks mandatory in crowded places and bringing back working from home, at least for part of the week, in the capital. 

    With the UK so far finding more omicron cases     than anywhere else in the world - 42 and counting - could similar new rules soon be coming here, too?

    In The Telegraph this morning, about new measures to be taken in the UK:


    “New work-from-home guidance and vaccine passports could be announced as early as today, according to government officials, as Cabinet ministers move to counter the omicron spread.”

    Better information from today’s Times:


    Officials are drawing up plans for the introduction of vaccine passports to slow the spread of Omicron after Boris Johnson told the cabinet that evidence suggested the new variant was "more transmissible" than Delta. Ministers were split on the potential use of compulsory vaccine certification during yesterday's cabinet meeting, at which they were forced to confront the potential need to move to the government's plan B. Data suggests that more than a thousand people a day are being infected with the new variant in Britain.

    It came as the first laboratory ­experiments into the variant suggested that Omicron was able to evade immunity ­significantly better than any other ­version of the coronavirus seen so far. Tests on the blood of people who were fully vaccinated showed that their antibodies were one-fortieth as capable of latching on to Omicron and ­preventing infection compared with the original strain.

    Edited once, last by Rice: Merged a post created by Rice into this post. ().

    The world is behind and playing a desperate game of catch-up, but the end of 2021 brought Covax delivery of over 300 million doses of vaccine to countries that cannot afford this life saver.


    The Washington Post, January 1, 2022:

    “Covax delivered over 309 million coronavirusvaccine doses in December, marking a dramatic increase in the delivery rate for a global vaccine-sharing initiative that had struggled for much of 2021 amid a lack of supply and logistical problems.

    “In total, roughly 910 million doses were delivered through the U.N.-backed initiative as of Dec. 30, according to provisional tracking by UNICEF released to The Washington Post on Friday.


    “The final tally for the year is far short of the 2 billion-plus doses that Covax had initially aimed for, and is leagues below even loftier targets that some activists said it should be aiming for. But with roughly a third of doses delivered in the final month of the year, there are cautious hopes that Covax may have sidestepped some of the problems that plagued it in 2020.”

    On the night before today’s Martín Luther King holiday, the former president of the USA - - the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA! - - doubled up on his talent for riling up racism and white grievance. His exact words were “if you’re white, you don’t get the vaccine, you don’t get the therapeutics,” and he claimed, to great applause, that white people were being discriminated against and denigrated,” and being denied lifesaving therapeutics. See for yourself:


    Trump claims white people "at the back of the line" for COVID vaccines, treatments
    "The left is now rationing life-saving therapeutics based on race," Trump said during a rally in Arizona this weekend.
    www.newsweek.com


    This ‘whites-as-victims-who can’t-get-the-vaccine’ claim will be making the rounds on everything fromFuxNews to Facebook.


    And watch for other countries’ autocrats to make the same claim. The more they can divide people and provoke anger and victimism, the stronger their hold on those who want to believe. Watch for Bolsonaro to be next.

    A review of patient records points to a greater risk of Type 2 Diabetes among people who have been infected with the coronavirus. (Article is free, not paywalled)


    https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/03/21/covid-infection-diabetes/?utm_campaign=wp_todays_headlines&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_headlines&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F36607b1%2F62399e4b3e6ed13ade34301e%2F60008f55ade4e20f19e418fb%2F54%2F82%2F62399e4b3e6ed13ade34301e

    Washington Post:

    Opinion The worst virus variant just arrived. The pandemic is not over.

    Editorial BoardJuly 7, 2022 at 1:58 p.m. EDT


    The pandemic is a relentless race against Mother Nature. Waves of infection took millions of lives, and only highly effective vaccines prevented even more deaths. Now, the coronavirus is speeding up once again, mutating, evading immunity and still on the march. The arrival of subvariant BA.5 should be a reminder that the finish line in this race is nowhere to be seen.

    What’s BA.5? This is the latest subvariant of omicron, which stormed the planet late last year and caused a huge wave of infection. As of now, BA.5 and a closely related variant, BA.4, account for about 70 percent of all infections in the United States, according to estimates by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, based in part on modeling. These two newcomers are easing out an earlier variant, BA.2.

    The obscure names should not hide the punch of BA.5. Eric Topol, professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research, says that BA.5 “is the worst version of the virus that we’ve seen.” He adds, “It takes immune escape, already extensive, to the next level, and, as a function of that, enhanced transmissibility,” well beyond earlier versions of omicron. There has not been a marked increase in hospitalizations and deaths, he reports, because there is so much immunity built up from the winter omicron wave. But there are aspects of this new variant very much worth keeping an eye on as the United States remains stuck at an uncomfortably high plateau of pandemic misery. And the new variants are driving a case surge in Europe.

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    At the core of the BA.5 difference is its biology. Evolution has given it more fitness, a term that incorporates its ability to transmit, grow and evade immunity; the variant shows “marked difference from all prior variants,” reports Dr. Topol. One way it does so is by evading the body’s immune system, and BA.4 and BA.5 together are “the most immune-evasive variants” seen in multiple studies to date.

    Whether BA.5 will lead to more severe disease isn’t clear yet. But knowing that the virus is spreading should reinforce the need for the familiar mitigation measures: high-quality face masks, better air filtration and ventilation, and avoiding exposure in crowded indoor spaces.

    An important question is whether the next boosters should include the new variants. Does a booster with an earlier version of the virus make any sense if that variant has disappeared from the population? The Food and Drug Administration has recommended manufacturers build a bivalent or two-component vaccine, with old and new variants as the target. It certainly makes sense to be flexible — as Wayne Gretzky put it, to skate where the puck is going, not where it has been. But time is short, and who knows what variants will be present later this year? In the longer term, variant chasing is hardly ideal. The greatest need is for next-generation vaccines that are more broadly protective, more durable (with longer-lasting immunity) and that can dampen transmission. There is a major research effort underway to achieve this, but the finish line is not yet in sight.