Coronavirus (2021) thread

[Alan Harper's Tash]

Mad question, but why are vaccines still designed to the original wuhan variant, we've has beta, delta now Omicron, no wonder it stops working after 10 weeks,

Why have not started to change it after 2 years and god knows how many variants

Difficult to preempt a new variant.

They work round the clock in tweaking and changing the vaccines. They then need to be tested etc before being given a licence.

 

[malg]

I wonder what the bit regarding negative COVID test means when it says ‘self diagnostic tests not valid‘. Does that mean you have to get a PCR?

Should do really.

 

[Octavian]

I really hope so, hopefully, a mixture of Vaccines, immunity, hands, face, space and many thousands of vulnerable dead means we are slowly moving to the other side. I expect more variants and more boosters but less and less deaths. Sometime in the future the pandemic will be downgraded to level 1 and we can all be free again including all the vulnerable people shielding not just the ones who are too selfish to care.

This is a big combination of a vaccinated population (apart from the odd ****) and the new variant being significantly milder.

Every pandemic that is comparable to this one went the same way, in that they mutated weaker and weaker until being a routine winter illness that didn’t affect that many deaths.

I get the feeling this is the beginning of Covid doing the same, let’s hope anyway!

 

[uweblue]

Difficult to preempt a new variant.

They work round the clock in tweaking and changing the vaccines. They then need to be tested etc before being given a licence.

I get that,but the vaccines haven't changed in over 12 months,

Just the same vaccines used against the wuhan one

 

[grunge]

About 50% of those infected with Omicron are presenting with cold-like symptoms according to Zoe, rather than the 3 main classic Covid symptoms. Absolutely ridiculous that the guidance hasn’t changed yet to include for the main Omicron symptoms:

Omicron’s cold-like symptoms mean UK guidance ‘needs urgent update’ | Omicron variant | The Guardian

Lead scientist on Zoe Covid study says ‘misinformation’ in official messaging must be addressed to save lives

amp.theguardian.com

I don’t think the changed it for delta that had varying symptoms from alpha.

 

[Alan Harper's Tash]

I get that,but the vaccines haven't changed in over 12 months,

Just the same vaccines used against the wuhan one

They worked up until Omicron. (And still do to a limited degree)

They are now working on one for Omicron.

 

[grunge]

I get that,but the vaccines haven't changed in over 12 months,

Just the same vaccines used against the wuhan one

omicron is the 1st variant that has had any real immunity evasion so never has a need before now. Takes at least 100 days and all the testing phases for a new one. No point in going through all that for a few %.

 

[M18CTID]

I don’t think the changed it for delta that had varying symptoms from alpha.

Thanks - I wasn’t aware of there being much of a difference between Delta and Alpha symptoms. I think there’s a much bigger shift towards different symptoms with Omicron though.

 

[M18CTID]

Been a bit out of touch with case numbers for other countries lately but I’ve just seen that there were over 90,000 cases in France yesterday and over 70,000 in Spain. Safe to say that Omicron has arrived in big numbers in both those countries. Can’t see any big rises in Germany yet

 

[Healdplace]

Ref Deaths being down today mentioned earlier.

Just checked my post from last Friday on the data thread and it says there were 111 then.

So deaths are up today by 26. Which is no surprise from the numbers I posted earlier on the data thread as England hospitals was up 100 to 106,Wales 3 to 10 and Scotland 7 to 10. Only N Ireland was level at 3.

The others will be out of hospital numbers added to the 106 in England.

But definitely up not down. Deaths have been rising most of the last week. Slowly but surely. As I noted in my England hospital deaths post on the data thread earlier.

They are down on yesterday - possibly what was meant. But that is not a meaningful comparison as they are usually lower on Fridays than Thursdays. Week to week is the only true measure of trends. And that is up.