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Omicron variant

The home for all non-political Coronavirus (Covid-19) discussions on The Lemon Fool
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This is the home for all non-political Coronavirus (Covid-19) discussions on The Lemon Fool
zico
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Omicron variant

#460956

Postby zico » November 25th, 2021, 9:49 pm

Kudos to the government for acting very quickly indeed to put South Africa and neighbouring countries onto the red list, within days of concerns emerging about this variant's likely increased resistance to current vaccines.
If it turns out to be an over-reaction, then no harm done, countries can be taken off the red list in a few weeks.
But it's just so refreshing to finally see decisive early action in response to potential dangers.

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Re: Omicron variant

#460961

Postby Lanark » November 25th, 2021, 9:56 pm

This was always likely in a continent with hardly any vaccinations.

Meanwhile in Japan where they have 70%+ vaccination rate and widespread mask wearing (even outdoors) the virus has disappeared:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1GF0H9V_1g

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Re: Omicron variant

#460964

Postby onthemove » November 25th, 2021, 10:10 pm

Lanark wrote:Meanwhile in Japan where they have 70%+ vaccination rate and widespread mask wearing (even outdoors) the virus has disappeared:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1GF0H9V_1g


But some scientists aren't convinced that that is the explanation...


"Why did Japan’s fifth and biggest wave of the coronavirus pandemic, driven by the supercontagious delta variant, suddenly come to an abrupt end following a seemingly relentless rise in new infections? And what made Japan different from other developed countries that are now seeing a fresh surge in new cases? According to one group of researchers, the surprising answer may be that the delta variant took care of itself in an act of self-extinction."

"While much of the rest of the world with similarly high vaccination rates, including South Korea and some Western countries, are suffering from record waves of new infections, Japan appears to be a peculiar case in that COVID-19 cases have remained subdued despite trains and restaurants filling up following the end of the most recent state of emergency.“If the virus were alive and well, cases for sure would increase as masking and vaccination do not prevent breakthrough infections in some cases,” Inoue said"

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2021/ ... on-theory/

zico
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Re: Omicron variant

#460968

Postby zico » November 25th, 2021, 10:22 pm

Lanark wrote:This was always likely in a continent with hardly any vaccinations.


Actually, the likeliest place for a vaccine-resistant strain to emerge is in a country with high vaccination rates, but also very high infection rates - like the UK. We're just lucky this latest variant hasn't developed here, but recent history shows that more infectious variants eventually dominate across the world. Delaying gives time to develop new vaccines and treatments.

Very much hoping this variant is a false alarm, but it has lots of mutations, and it looks very worrying.

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Re: Omicron variant

#460969

Postby servodude » November 25th, 2021, 10:28 pm

zico wrote:
Lanark wrote:This was always likely in a continent with hardly any vaccinations.


Actually, the likeliest place for a vaccine-resistant strain to emerge is in a country with high vaccination rates, but also very high infection rates - like the UK. We're just lucky this latest variant hasn't developed here, but recent history shows that more infectious variants eventually dominate across the world. Delaying gives time to develop new vaccines and treatments.

Very much hoping this variant is a false alarm, but it has lots of mutations, and it looks very worrying.


Probably want to add high degree of immunocompromised to the mix for creating a super-version
- that pushes the odds towards South Africa (which I think still has the highest HIV prevalence globally)

- sd

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Re: Omicron variant

#460990

Postby Mike4 » November 25th, 2021, 11:36 pm

zico wrote:Kudos to the government for acting very quickly indeed to put South Africa and neighbouring countries onto the red list, within days of concerns emerging about this variant's likely increased resistance to current vaccines.
If it turns out to be an over-reaction, then no harm done, countries can be taken off the red list in a few weeks.
But it's just so refreshing to finally see decisive early action in response to potential dangers.



Refreshing my pink marshmallow. They are just terrified of messing up Christmas.

onthemove
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Re: Omicron variant

#460994

Postby onthemove » November 25th, 2021, 11:56 pm

zico wrote:Kudos to the government for acting very quickly indeed to put South Africa and neighbouring countries onto the red list, within days of concerns emerging about this variant's likely increased resistance to current vaccines.
If it turns out to be an over-reaction, then no harm done, countries can be taken off the red list in a few weeks.
But it's just so refreshing to finally see decisive early action in response to potential dangers.



Let's put in some context...

"Whether you've had Moderna or Pfizer or Oxford-AstraZeneca, your body is learning to spot just one thing - the spike protein.

This is the critical part of the virus to make antibodies to, and the results - by keeping most out of hospital - have been spectacular."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-58270098


And now regarding this new variant, we learn...

"In a media briefing Prof de Oliveira said there were 50 mutations overall and more than 30 on the spike protein, which is the target of most vaccines and the key the virus uses to unlock the doorway into our body's cells." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-59418127


Going back to the first article above, it goes on...

"But having the other 28 proteins to target too, would give T-cells far more to go at.

"That means if you had a real humdinger of an infection, you may have better immunity to any new variants that pop up as you have immunity to more than just spike," said Prof Riley."


And also raises the prospect...

"The idea of regularly topping up immunity throughout life is not radical in other infections, such as RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) or the four other coronaviruses that infect people and cause common cold symptoms.

Each time you're exposed, the immune system gets a little bit stronger, and this continues until old age, when the immune system starts to fail and the infections become a problem again.

"This isn't proven, but it could be a lot cheaper and simpler to let that happen than spend the whole time immunising people," said Prof Finn, who warns we could end up "locked into a cycle of boosting" without seeing if it was necessary."


In other words, it's quite possible that if you've either already had covid (without any vaccine), or had the vaccine then caught covid, you might actually be in a better position regards this new variant than those who have taken care to still avoid catching covid even after being vaccinated such that they have only had the vaccine and boosters, but never been infected.

The greater number of covid cases that we've had in the UK compared to other countries, might actually work in our favour now.

And as New Zealand shows, the idea that you can keep out a virus as infectious as covid, is wishful thinking. The red list is just playing politics. The variant will make it here if it wants to, red list or no red list.

And potentially the people now with the best defences against this new onslaught could now be the ones who've already had covid for real.

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Re: Omicron variant

#461016

Postby Arborbridge » November 26th, 2021, 7:49 am

onthemove wrote:And as New Zealand shows, the idea that you can keep out a virus as infectious as covid, is wishful thinking. The red list is just playing politics. The variant will make it here if it wants to, red list or no red list.

And potentially the people now with the best defences against this new onslaught could now be the ones who've already had covid for real.


NZ is an interesting test case. It has been exceedingly successful if one's criterion is the death rate, but it's also clear that they would be forever vulnerable if they have developed no (or lower) immunity due to their isolation policy.

We shouldn't try to make out that the NZ policy was a failure, because it wasn't. However, the jury is out about the knock on effect for future outbreaks. Can they possibly isolate every time there's a threat and maintain a viable economy? (no need to answer, as it will depend on so many unknown future events.)


Arb.

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Re: Omicron variant

#461019

Postby servodude » November 26th, 2021, 7:55 am

Arborbridge wrote:Can they possibly isolate every time there's a threat and maintain a viable economy?


Do you think they would intend to?

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Re: Omicron variant

#461021

Postby Arborbridge » November 26th, 2021, 8:03 am

servodude wrote:
Arborbridge wrote:Can they possibly isolate every time there's a threat and maintain a viable economy?


Do you think they would intend to?


Maintain a viable economy? :lol:

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Re: Omicron variant

#461024

Postby servodude » November 26th, 2021, 8:20 am

Arborbridge wrote:
servodude wrote:
Arborbridge wrote:Can they possibly isolate every time there's a threat and maintain a viable economy?


Do you think they would intend to?


Maintain a viable economy? :lol:


Indeed broo! Thurs only so muny chups you can sell to locals.

But in other news.. the impression I get is the that (much like the Australian model, if a bit slower) once they're vaccinated the "COVID 0" policy is abandoned
- well that's what our pals in Auckland running a burger joint expect and hope
Even the insolationist nuts running the NT, WA and Tassie understand that we're in the end game of "COVID round one"
- if the vax rates around Oceania keep up for the third jab I don't expect too much impact from future waves (barring mental variants)

-sd

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Re: Omicron variant

#461071

Postby moorfield » November 26th, 2021, 10:06 am

zico wrote:Kudos to the government for acting very quickly indeed to put South Africa and neighbouring countries onto the red list, within days of concerns emerging about this variant's likely increased resistance to current vaccines.
If it turns out to be an over-reaction, then no harm done, countries can be taken off the red list in a few weeks.
But it's just so refreshing to finally see decisive early action in response to potential dangers.



Well a nagging thought is that over the last fortnight there have been a fair few travellers from South Africa crammed into what looked like superspreader events in Cardiff, Edinburgh and London. Its had a narrow head start but that's all it needs. It may be here already.

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Re: Omicron variant

#461133

Postby Julian » November 26th, 2021, 12:19 pm

All of my extended family that I keep in touch with live in South Africa and I have a holiday home there. I was all set to book a trip in mid January, in fact I almost bought my ticket yesterday afternoon and then this news broke. Grrrr. I suppose it's lucky that I didn't book those tickets yesterday, at least I don't have the hassle of chasing a refund or having money tied up in vouchers.

It looks as if Germany and Italy have closed borders to SA as well (https://ewn.co.za/2021/11/26/germany-it ... id-variant). I suspect that others will follow in the next few hours and/or days. What the USA does will be interesting. Right now CNN is reporting the UK's action so I assume that means that the USA hasn't closed borders yet but I'd be a bit surprised if that doesn't change soon.

I suppose the next bit of news to watch out for will be the results of in-vitro neutralising antibody titres to get some first clues about the actual escape properties of this new variant. Presumably there are labs working on that as we speak.

- Julian

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Re: Omicron variant

#461173

Postby Hallucigenia » November 26th, 2021, 1:55 pm

Test positivity is going through the roof in Gauteng(around Jo'burg) :

Image

and their R number is shooting up :
Image

That's not to say it originated in South Africa, it may just reflect better surveillance there than in surrounding countries. Israel's first case of nu was a traveller from Malawi, which isn't even on the UK red list.

South Africa ministry of health briefing :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vh4XMueP1zQ

We don't have much experimental data yet, but it has a whole heap of "bad" mutations :
Image

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Re: Omicron variant

#461189

Postby zico » November 26th, 2021, 2:53 pm

A plane landed in London from Gauteng just before the new restrictions come into effect. The captain advised passengers to self-isolate and get a test, but it's not compulsory. Then the passengers got on a shuttle bus to mix with others in the baggage hall - no attempt to separate them from other flights, or arrange taxis to their destination to reduce chance of transmission. All reminiscent of skiers from Italy being waved through UK airports at the very start of the pandemic.

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Re: Omicron variant

#461218

Postby redsturgeon » November 26th, 2021, 3:58 pm

First case reported in Belgium.

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Re: Omicron variant

#461251

Postby zico » November 26th, 2021, 6:35 pm

Pfizer have said it will take just 100 days to get a new vaccine tailored to the new variant with regulatory approval.
Aren't scientists amazing?
All governments need to do in the meantime is to take effective measures to delay the arrival and spread of the new variant.

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Re: Omicron variant

#461269

Postby Hallucigenia » November 26th, 2021, 7:26 pm

WHO have officially named it omicron, they've not called it "nu" to avoid confusion when a new variant emerges that's not nu.

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Re: Omicron variant

#461278

Postby Julian » November 26th, 2021, 8:01 pm

zico wrote:Pfizer have said it will take just 100 days to get a new vaccine tailored to the new variant with regulatory approval.
Aren't scientists amazing?
All governments need to do in the meantime is to take effective measures to delay the arrival and spread of the new variant.

Yes, it’s impressive. I saw that quote about the 100 days that was attributed to the Pfizer CEO but unfortunately it was the first few lines of an article behind a paywall so I couldn’t see more. I wonder how long each of the individual stages are which crudely I could break down into creating the new vaccine, getting the approval, and ramping up production of the new version. I did read somewhere that the first step could literally be done in a few days, it’s pretty much a case of deciding on the new coding sequence and substituting it into the already established manufacturing process. To create volume however I assume the existing manufacturing plants would need to go through some sort of very thorough sterilisation/purging process to make sure all traces of the previous vaccine were expunged so that they didn’t contaminate the new version. I suspect the approval process accounts for a very large part of that 100 day estimate.

- Julian

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Re: Omicron variant

#461280

Postby mc2fool » November 26th, 2021, 8:04 pm

Arborbridge wrote:
onthemove wrote:And as New Zealand shows, the idea that you can keep out a virus as infectious as covid, is wishful thinking. The red list is just playing politics. The variant will make it here if it wants to, red list or no red list.

And potentially the people now with the best defences against this new onslaught could now be the ones who've already had covid for real.

NZ is an interesting test case. It has been exceedingly successful if one's criterion is the death rate, but it's also clear that they would be forever vulnerable if they have developed no (or lower) immunity due to their isolation policy.

Uh? The latter doesn't lead to the former -- unless you are relying solely on immunity from infection, but they're not.

According to https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations?country=OWID_WRL NZ has more of their total population fully vaccinated than the UK, 69.44% vs 67.82%.

Edit: NZ 71% double-jabbed by their figures. https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/covid-19-novel-coronavirus/covid-19-data-and-statistics/covid-19-vaccine-data.
85% of 12+s vs 80.4% UK. https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/


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