Coronavirus (2021) thread

[Bellamy's Caddy]

Went to the Winterwonderland event at the GMEX on Sunday 5 people I went with have tested positive this week one with new variant. Super spreader event.

Out of interest, what did they do to find out which variant they tested positive for? I know a few people who tested positive and are frustrated at the lack of transparency over which variant they had.

 

[Blue Note]

Good advice re news channels. But can I insist that you wear a black triangle on your stripey pyjamas.

Don't worry something similar is in the pipeline.

By the way I won't need one, as I'm vaccinated. I just don't believe in forcing others into doing things they don't want. People should have autonomy over their own bodies.

 

[Phil1]

Don't worry something similar is in the pipeline.

By the way I won't need one, as I'm vaccinated. I just don't believe in forcing others into doing things they don't want. People should have autonomy over their own bodies.

Unless directly impacting others, then they should just do what's right like a normal, decent human being.

 

[Gabriel]

If anyone starts to get their knickers in a twist over this covid shit, best thing to do is ignore everything you hear about it.

Turn the news off, trust me life is so much better.

It's here to stay and there's nothing we can do about it, so let's stop treating it like its the bubonic plague.

There were cases of that in Colorado and Madagascar in the last three months… ;-)

 

[Blue Note]

There were cases of that in Colorado and Madagascar in the last three months… ;-)

That's all we need

 

[blue b4 the moon]

Went to the Winterwonderland event at the GMEX on Sunday 5 people I went with have tested positive this week one with new variant. Super spreader event.

Could be fun after Saturday lunchtime.

 

[roubaixtuesday]

On severity, the UKHSA assess as "insufficient data" to know, table below.

South Africa reports of less severity vs delta are encouraging, but bear in mind:
- increase in cases has been so steep it's still very early to know
- younger people than delta reported to be infected
- there's a lot more immunity in SA, both from infection and vaccination, than there was when delta hit.
- the SA population is *much* younger than uk

So probably a reasonable basis of planning, but with a lot of uncertainty, is that there's no difference like for like in the same patient population.

This is actually very good news, if true, because it means that vaccines are holding out very well against severe disease. That wasn't a given.

There's an upside of it being milder, which would be great. There have been reports of more severe illness in children, which, if true, would be a downside.

All of this could change rapidly as more data emerges.

 

[Marvin]

Been lively on here I see.

Lots of very confident statements on the (lack of) severity of omicron.

Lots of people insulting experts.

Mixed views on whether some degree of restrictions is appropriate.

I felt myself getting sucked in to a state of frustration before, partly with posters and partly because of the damn virus. I'll make just a couple of posts, so apologies if I don't stay on for lots of debate.

Plan for the worst, hope for the best. Let's see how South Africa's hospitalisation data progresses. The booster news from Pfizer was good.

 

[N1985]

Could be fun after Saturday lunchtime.

Super Spreader Thursdays at Partners in Bury

So my mate tells me

 

[roubaixtuesday]

On current transmission, the news seems very, very bad indeed, with just a glimmer of hope from SA.

Omicron cases in the UK, quite astonishingly, continue to double every 2-3 days. That's faster than the original strain, but in our population where a very high proportion have some immunity from either vax or infection. We can expect that from today onwards to reflect in the headline overall figures as omicron is significant enough to raise the overall total.

Here's Scotland, just for example, but it seems the same everywhere. As always, there are caveats, but this seems to be far too fast to be explained by anything but genuine community spread and very high immune escape, ie previous infection and vaccination doesn't give high protection.



Cases currently maybe 5-10,000 in UK?

So 20-80,000 this time next week, on top of delta, unless something changes.

I expect people will now rapidly behave more cautiously, including the wfh mandated, but in lots of other ways too, so hopefully it'll not be that bad.

The glimmer of hope is SA where at the epicenter, cases have slowed and maybe even peaked. That's hard to explain in terms of immunity. It may be behaviour, testing limitations or something else, but just maybe there's something not well understood going on and less people are susceptible than feared.