BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 24 Jan 22 - 03:10 PM

If you were in the US you would fall firmly in the Libertarian brand of politics - an unpleasant group that are known for their thumb-in-the-eye approach to politics and social issues. Laisse-faire and the hell with everyone else.

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 24 Jan 22 - 04:03 PM

I'm fully-vaccinated, I test myself three times a week, I've obeyed every mandate to the letter and I always wear my mask where required, and often even when I don't have to if it makes people feel more comfortable. Is that the American definition of libertarianism?

As I said, I'll stay civil with you whatever YOU say...

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 24 Jan 22 - 04:04 PM

"So I'll cling on to my prejudice that widespread outdoor mask-wearing looks just a tad neurotic."

That doesn't sound too far from the kind of thing Boris Johnson was prone to say about Muslim women who choose to wear a mask .

One benefit of the pandemic has been that by normalising mask wearing to some extent it should have cut down the hostility and suspicion of such women.

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 24 Jan 22 - 04:45 PM

That thought's crossed my mind too. Though I'm not quite catching your other point. At least you can disagree politely, which kind of leaves the door a bit wider open. Must be summat to do with being fellow Guardian letter-writers... ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: Donuel
Date: 24 Jan 22 - 06:39 PM

In America politeness does not include bowing and scraping.

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 24 Jan 22 - 07:22 PM

Your point being?

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: Donuel
Date: 25 Jan 22 - 10:17 AM

point? Your accusation we are being impolite to you is bogus.

Omicron vaccine is already in its clinical trial phase.
The safe bet is that there will be all sorts of varients. Perhaps an endless supply, perhaps not.

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 25 Jan 22 - 11:17 AM

Ah, the second of your number to employ the royal "we..." :-)

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 25 Jan 22 - 01:50 PM

" Your accusation we are being impolite to you is bogus."

I must have missed that one. Unless maybe I failed to see anything in it to cause offence.

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: Mrrzy
Date: 25 Jan 22 - 11:58 PM

Elton John has it.

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 26 Jan 22 - 04:04 AM

I heard on Wireless 4 this morning that 99% of cases in the UK are omicron, with delta demoted to 1%. In addition, well over half of those who have had omicron have been infected by covid-19 before.

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 26 Jan 22 - 06:50 AM

Apparanty the torygraph is suggesting that Jacinda Ardern has lost control of the pandemic in New Zealand, The accumulated deaths there have reach a total of 46 since the start of the pandemic, and on one day alone there were 219 reported new cases in one day in January.

She needs to bring johnson in to take over managing public health in New Zealand.

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: Donuel
Date: 26 Jan 22 - 06:51 AM

I have probably underestimated the angst Brits are having over Boris in charge of the pandemic response. He is now the focus of most of the contradicting attitudes.

The US response is complicated by an age old dislike of big government control even when it is the best way forward.

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: Donuel
Date: 26 Jan 22 - 07:18 AM

"Covid as a blood born virus is not suitable..."

Supream ignorant quote from Amy Coney Barrett associate justice for the Supream Court on decideing case regarding vaccine mandate for large corporations. https://www.c-span.org/video/?516920-1/supreme-court-oral-argument-covid-19-vaccine-mandate-large-employers

She decided to overule the mandate for corporation but upheld it for health care workers only.

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: Rain Dog
Date: 26 Jan 22 - 09:47 AM

"I have probably underestimated the angst Brits are having over Boris in charge of the pandemic response."

You probably have not underestimated the angst 'Brits' are having over Boris....

Meanwhile, in a mostly angst free England...

From the BBC

"Retailers Sainsbury's, John Lewis and Waitrose will continue to ask customers in England to wear masks in their shops when Plan B rules end on Thursday.

Rail operators also said passengers would be expected to wear masks when the legal requirement for face coverings in public places is dropped.

However, supermarket Morrisons said its customers would not be expected to.

Those keeping the policy in place said they would encourage, not force, customers to comply.

Plan B rules, imposed in early December to battle the Omicron variant, are being lifted because inflections have peaked nationally.

But the government is still advising people to wear masks in enclosed or crowded spaces and when meeting strangers.

Trade union Usdaw, which represents 360,000 retail workers, has urged customers to continue to "observe Covid safety measures", despite the mandatory requirement for masks ending."

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: Mrrzy
Date: 26 Jan 22 - 09:58 AM

Research has identified 4 factors in whether Covid is likely to become long-term Covid. I quote from the newspaper story about it:
One of the four factors researchers identified is the level of coronavirus RNA in the blood early in the infection, an indicator of viral load. Another is the presence of certain autoantibodies — antibodies that mistakenly attack tissues in the body as they do in conditions like lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. A third factor is the reactivation of Epstein-Barr virus, a virus that infects most people, often when they are young, and then usually becomes dormant.
The 4th is being Type II diabetic but they don't know if that is the only disease involved. The other 3 factors are how a body reacts TO the virus.
Blicky to actual study.

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 26 Jan 22 - 11:23 AM

Will Morrisons issue their worker which disinfectant aerosol sprays that they can use on unmasked customers, or is it their duty to put their own lives at risk to continue to serve those who don't give a toss about their safety?

This is something unions should pick up on, and hold a ballot for a national strike is Morrisons do not protect their staff.

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 26 Jan 22 - 11:25 AM

I don't think "angst" is quite the right term for what many British people feel in respect of Boris (probably about 60% recent polls indicate can't wait to see him gone, with actual supporters only making up a minority of the remaining 40%). It's more a matter of just not trusting him to be honest in anything. Or competent in his job.

If he got back to being a public entertainer, free from any responsibility, he'd still be quite popular, I think. He can be very funny. A bit of a card.

I'd say that most people here, right across the political spectrum, are quite at ease with the idea of what gets called big government in a time of national emergency. In fact the kind of thing being referred to by that term doesn't need to be organised in a centralised way. A good part of nostalgia still felt about the last war period, including by people born many generations after it, is for a society which was in many ways very authoritarian.

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 26 Jan 22 - 11:35 AM

Just to be clear, the good bits of our pandemic response have come from amazing scientists who have developed superb vaccines in record time, the pharmaceutical companies who have bulked them up and got them distributed, the armies of unpaid volunteers who have kept thousands of vaccination and testing centres running, the care workers, doctors and nurses who have selflessly run themselves into the ground in the face of terrible risks to themselves in order to keep the health service afloat, and the British people who, by and large, have followed all the rules and overwhelmingly opted to take the vaccines. The bad bits of our pandemic response have all come from Boris Johnson, who has constantly sent out mixed messages and vacillated over lockdowns again and again, who sent thousands of untested, elderly, vulnerable people back into care homes from hospital (a policy which very likely killed tens of thousands of people), who presides over our NHS and care sector that the Tories have systematically run down for twelve years, who has allowed dodgy deals to be done with his profiteering Tory mates for PPE, and who has partied while the country was suffering at its worst. I'll allow him the furlough scheme, but just watch who will pay for that in the long run. Grudgingly, I'll allow him the rollout of abundant test kits, I could say free, but ditto as to the last point. It won't be him and his rich mates doing the stumping up for sure. He blows his trumpet about the bits he can't justifiably claim for his own yet won't take responsibility for his multiple failures. That's where we are with Johnson.

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 26 Jan 22 - 11:56 AM

The best you can say about Johnson is that he didn't actually get in the way of some valuable things happening, without which things could have been significantly worse. That's something to feel grateful for, but I'm not at all sure that gratitude should be directed to Johnson.

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 27 Jan 22 - 10:06 AM

I can now go maskless. Unfortunately, I have no shopping to do... Bude will survive to live another day...

Negative this morning, both of us.

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 27 Jan 22 - 10:28 AM

One thing that irritates me is when people talk as if the primary purpose of wearing masks was to protect the wearer, so that not wearing a mask was a question of exercising a right to accept a notional risk to oneself. Whereas that sould be completely irrelevant.

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 27 Jan 22 - 01:21 PM

You should feel grateful for that misconception. It's probably why the vast majority of people acquiesce in mask-wearing. Even I would admit to at least a passing and visceral feeling of being protected when some unmasked person gets a bit too upclose and personal.

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 27 Jan 22 - 02:13 PM

You may be right. I find that rather depressing.

In the last resort I accept that people can have a right to do things that involves even serious risk to themselves. But that doesn't extend to having the right to seriously risk other people.

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 27 Jan 22 - 03:21 PM

I'm tested up to the hilt and I'm fully vaccinated. Little or no threat to anyone, frankly. Actually, I think you're confusing rights with responsibilities. My sense of responsibility to others includes the testing, the vaccine, keeping my distance, shopping at quiet times. If I can pull all those off, that's not bad. Fortunately, I don't have to confront public transport...

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 27 Jan 22 - 04:27 PM

I'm inclined to see responsibilities as more fundamental in society than rights. Other people collectively carrying out their responsibilities are what my rights depend on. Other people collectively failing to carry outtgeir responsibilities, and my rights are nullified.

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 27 Jan 22 - 05:47 PM

Your rights are routinely flouted by people with coughs, colds, flu and unwashed hands. By speeding or careless drivers or by polluters. The philosophical question could be, do you grab these people by the lapels and demand that they respect your rights, or do you, perhaps by public campaigns, appeal to their better nature and try to encourage their sense of responsibility? As soon as you start talking about rights in areas of life which can't (or shouldn't: we don't want the law to be an ass...) be governed by the law, you're in danger of causing polarisation and entrenched positions. Which is precisely what has happened with the mandate for health workers to be vaccinated.

(My view on them is that their arguments against vaccination don't hold water and that they're being idiotic, but I agree with their objections to compulsion).

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 27 Jan 22 - 08:45 PM

Essentially, I don't that anyone can ever have an absolute right to harm other people.

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 27 Jan 22 - 09:12 PM

But you were talking about YOUR rights. I was talking about MY responsibility to respect your rights (in areas beyond sensible laws, such as my not sneezing over you or contaminating a supermarket trolley that you may unwittingly use). It's innate in me and millions of others to respect your rights in those ways, but millions of other people don't give a damn. It's those whose better nature we need to be appealing to.

Of course I don't think that anyone has any right to cause you harm, let alone the absolute right. However, if I don't wear a mask in Morrisons tomorrow, not by any stretch of the imagination could it be said that I'm setting out to exercise my absolute right to harm anyone. I'm jabbed and tested to the hilt and I always strive to keep my distance and I always sanitise my hands, hardly the actions of a bloke out to cause harm. It's eminently possible for me to harm someone within the crazy layout which is Bude Morrisons car park by driving into them. But by using the car park it can hardly be said that I'm exercising my absolute right to harm someone. By declining my mask and using the car park I'm simply going about ordinary life, and I have to accept, as do the people I encounter, the rough and tumble that that entails, just as we've always done. Anyway, my mask is always in my pocket, so I'll see.

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 27 Jan 22 - 10:25 PM

By "absolute" whatI mean't exactly that - we have a responsibility to exercise reasonable care to avoid causing harm to others. Accidents can happen which are not our fault.

But it is meaningless to talk about having a right to abdicate that responsibility. As meaningless as to talk about having a right of property in another person.

I'd quite accept that you are acting responsibly. But as you said, there are millions who don't give a damn. When they choose to act in accordance with that I do not accept their right to do so.

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: Donuel
Date: 28 Jan 22 - 04:59 AM

Some of us with good memories will remember the announcement that our small pox vaccine may have worn off several years ago. Well it has worn off and we have sort of forgotten about that minor detail. We don't see remnants of even the few small pox survivors anymore. Like Joeseph Stalin they died off years ago. (he was horribly small pox scared but his propoganda pictures were all airbrushed.)
Why vaccinate for a disease that doesn't exist?
Because it does exist and when frozen, is very patient.

Looking ahead 'anti vaxxers' would face the delemma of seeing is believing. Compared to the silence of the Covid dead and dieing, small pox is in your face.

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 28 Jan 22 - 05:59 AM

Of course not, Kevin, but then we are in the realms of making moral judgements (or simply not giving a damn) rather than either adhering, or not, to imposed rules or laws. We can't micromanage every aspect of life via rules and must rely on "better nature." My point being that people's better natures are there to be appealed to. Maybe we should be trying harder as a society to do that. I'll shortly be venturing to Morrisons with trepidation (mask in pocket...)

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 28 Jan 22 - 07:16 AM

Plenty of sensible people still masking-up in the Backwoods branches of Mozzer’s and Tesco this morning. Also in the town centre. Surprised and delighted.

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 28 Jan 22 - 08:49 AM

I'd be inclined to call it "sensible and socially responsible". In my opinion, obviously.

I suspect that mask wearing could continue to be quite widespread in our society - as someone in a story in today's Guardian says "i think I'll keep wearing one for the foreseeable. The number of colds and coughs I've had over the past couple of years has gone right down…I like not having a cold."

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 28 Jan 22 - 04:31 PM

”The number of colds and coughs I've had over the past couple of years has gone right down…I like not having a cold."

Quite so, Kevin. I haven’t had a cold for two years now - my last cold was early January, 2020. I’m persuaded that, along with the reduction in socialising since the start of the pandemic, wearing a mask in public has contributed to my remaining free from colds and/or other respiratory infections.

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 29 Jan 22 - 05:36 AM

What contributes to people of our age not catching colds has everything to do with the fact that we've already had most of the strains that are going round. What helps is the fact that most of us have not been going to pubs, theatres and restaurants. Also, older people mix less with children, major transmitters of cold viruses. Unlike the covid-19 virus, many cold viruses can survive for a long time on all kinds of surfaces. Picking the germs up on your hands then touching your eyes, nose or mouth is a great way of catching a cold. The relative importance of airborne transmission versus contact hasn't been determined.

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 29 Jan 22 - 07:49 AM

I'm pretty confident that wearing a mask will have significantly reduced the likelihood of picking up a cold, though I'd imagine other covid related stuff, notably social distancing and pub closures etc will have played a major part. Maybe the medical statisticians will try to measure those kind of things.

But in any case, insofar as people identify mask-wearing as saving them from colds, that is going to encourage them to continue to wear masks. It won't be everyone, but I anticipate that a relatively long consequence of the pandemic will be that mask wearing will have been normalised. Maybe, in the same way you can date a crowd picture by how many men are wearing cloth caps, you'll be able to do the same by looking for masks.

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: Mrrzy
Date: 29 Jan 22 - 09:13 AM

Ok. My last poat was actual news. Nothing since has been. Should there be a different thread for news on the pandemic and leave this one to complain about each other?

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: Donuel
Date: 29 Jan 22 - 01:16 PM

Repeat Omicron infection could be long covid, we still don't know.

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: Donuel
Date: 29 Jan 22 - 01:26 PM

Regarding the other pandemic, clinical trials of an mrna vaccive for HIV have begun.

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: Mrrzy
Date: 29 Jan 22 - 04:04 PM

New variant, more contagious.

One blicky.

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 29 Jan 22 - 04:48 PM

The speed at which these variants are turning up and spreading makes it feel like we're watching water circling the drain and it's getting faster as the unvaccinated and uninfected population level in the tub drops.

We heard about Omicron BA.2 last week. This from today's Dallas Morning News

Researchers confirmed two cases of BA.2, a sub-lineage of the omicron variant, through sequencing at the University of Texas Southwestern on Thursday.

Scientists discovered the sub-lineage in December, shortly after the original omicron lineage, called BA.1, was identified. Recent spread of the sub-lineage led the U.K. Health Security Agency to designate BA.2 as “under investigation.”

Public health experts are monitoring the strain as it spreads in several European and Asian countries. BA.2 is believed to be more transmissible than BA.1, but not much else is known about the variant.

In Denmark, BA.2 jumped from 20% of COVID-19 cases in the last week of December to 45% of cases in the second week of January, according to Danish public health organization Statens Serum Institut.

Fewer than 100 cases of BA.2 have been reported in the U.S., a mere fraction of the more than 660,000 omicron cases detected in the country in the last week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

While BA.2 has the potential to take over omicron as the dominant variant in the U.S., it’s too early to tell what impact the sub-lineage will have on the pandemic, said Dr. Wesley Long, medical director of diagnostic microbiology at Houston Methodist.

“In the U.S., we have to wait and see what the story is on BA.2 and how it compares to BA.1,” he said. “It’s worth keeping an eye on right now.”

Here’s what experts know so far about the sub-lineage — and what they know about other future COVID-19 variants.

Today we find that it is circulating in at least half of the states in the US.

Here we go again.

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 29 Jan 22 - 05:07 PM

The new variant of omicron doesn't seem to be much of a game-changer. Get the jabs (which are more effective against the variant-variant than they are against omicron) and relax, sort of, at least for now.

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: Donuel
Date: 29 Jan 22 - 06:59 PM

Omicron and its 'children' are 99.9% of the covid strains in America.
2,000 deaths per day are ebbing.

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 29 Jan 22 - 07:32 PM

"The World Health Organization has not labeled BA.2 a variant of concern." (yesterday).

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 30 Jan 22 - 07:46 AM

The variants are going to keep coming, and there could always be one that is more transferable - and even worse, more deadly as well. Which is why it is important to stay ready. And for the UK, to have a government which is capable of being trusted, however unlikely that might be.

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 30 Jan 22 - 08:00 AM

So what do you think "staying ready" means?

Work has to continue on the next generation of vaccines...

We can spend the rest of lives forever wondering whether there's an apocalypse round the corner. Or should we try to get back to something resembling normal? Just remember what damage all the lockdowns and restrictions are doing to people's physical and mental health and to the economy - jobs, cost of living, etc., and to children's schooling. The vaccines should be restoring our sense of balance. Staying ready, to me, is overwhelmingly a matter of having up-to-date vaccines and rolling them out. And by public health messages telling us how to help to stop the virus and how to be kind to each other.

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 30 Jan 22 - 09:34 AM

All those things. But also to be prepared to move sharply up to much more stringent precautions in future if that proves necessary, and that requires that there should be some possibility that most people put at least some trust in the government.

That has to be true at all times. It was obvious that we could expect a major pandemic at some time - and that's not hindsight, it was what has been widely predicted by experts in the field for decades. In fact it's been clearly obvious since the 1919 hecatomb, or indeed since the Black Death.   

In a way we have been quite lucky with Covid, with its "relatively" low mortality, especially with younger adults and especially children. Next time it could be far worse. Fortunately we are potentially better equipped to respond, thanks to the advances made in developing vaccines. Unfortunately we are collectively all too likely to think it's all done and dusted, and we've a government that is probably eager to encourage us in this.

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 30 Jan 22 - 01:42 PM

Before we move to stringent precautions again (I assume you mean more lockdowns, school closures, bans on mixing with friends and relatives, closing down all our cultural outlets, etc.), I think we should take a cool step back and ask ourselves whether all we've done so far has been worth it in terms of reducing deaths, assessed alongside the incredible damage that has been done to people's lives and the economy (which we will be paying handsomely for for years or decades), and whether we want to expose ourselves to that damage all over again. My view, unpopular though it be, is that the vaccines have changed the balance of the whole game, and that we should in future persuade people by public information campaigns to keep their jabs up to date and to use their own judgement and appeal to their sense of responsibility. Anything harsher, all over again, is going to feel like collective punishment.

Subject: RE: BS: New news on the pandemic COVID-19
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 30 Jan 22 - 05:30 PM

It is worth remembering that the death rate in this country has been pretty well the highest relative to population in the whole world - and massively higher than any other island.

Maybe delaying introducing lockdown, and relaxing them early, which seems to have been government policy throughout, were in no way factors in that high death rate.   Those were the calls made by the Prime Minister.

On the other hand, the one outstanding success of tge pandemic, the vaccine programme was the achievement of scientists technicians, NHS staff and volunteers, and the good sense of ordinary people, who ignored the attempts of ordinary people, and came for their jabs.

But in any case, that's talking about the past. A very much delayed inquiry into what happened is due to come this year which will help in finding out the truth about those kind of issues. The important thing is to be as ready as possible for whatever may be coming.