New Covid19 Strain is more transmissible... - Page 2 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15144227
Istanbuller wrote:How did it arise? Where does the virus come from? What are causes behind its spreading? These questions never answered as far as I know.


I don't see what these points matter in regards to a vaccine. But its cause for the spreading is aerosol droplets like all coronaviruses and it's orgins are likely from a livestock market near or in Wuhan where a bat - or whatever it was - virus transferred or evolved into a human one and infected a host sometime last year. They are still investigating, but I don't think it matters whether they find out the truth or not to be honest.
#15144245
Istanbuller wrote:It is interesting that nobody talk about root cause of coronaviruses. I don't see any scientific explanation where it comes from. How can you develop a vaccine when you don't know root causes?


They think the virus came from a bat. But it is useless at this point to go after bats. The focus now is on containing the spread. Scientists are still studying the virus and trying to understand how it's able to spread so quickly and how mutations arise and so on. There are still so many unanswered questions.

They developed the Moderna and Pfizer vaccine using mRNA from the virus itself.
#15144246
Looks like we are going to have a trial run for cutting all links to the British isles ahead of Brexit. Is this the first time they actually closed the channel tunnel?

EU to hold crisis talks as countries block travel from UK over new Covid strain

EU to hold crisis talks as countries block travel from UK over new Covid strain
WHO tells members to redouble efforts to stop spread as Israel turns away UK passport holders

EU ambassadors are to hold a crisis meeting in Brussels on Monday to discuss travel restrictions on the UK as multiple countries began closing their doors to travellers from Britain after the discovery of a fast-spreading strain of Covid-19.

As the World Health Organization called on European members to step up measures, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands on Sunday announced the suspension of air links – and in some cases rail and ferry routes – from Britain.

The bans were mostly scheduled to last about 48 hours as a precaution while the threat of the new strain was evaluated and a coordinated response worked out at a European level, national governments said.

An EU official told Agence France-Presse that representatives from the 27-member states would meet on Monday under the bloc’s integrated political crisis response mechanism designed to swiftly react to crises.

France said it was suspending all passenger and human-handled freight transport, whether by road, air, sea or rail, coming from the UK to France for 48 hours from midnight on Sunday.

Eurotunnel’s last shuttle left the UK for France at 9.34pm, while the Dover port authority said its ferry terminal was closed to “all accompanied traffic leaving the UK until further notice due to border restrictions in France”.

Germany, which is suspending flights from midnight on Sunday, has not yet detected the new strain but is taking reports from the UK “very seriously”, its health minister Jens Spahn said.

A German government source said the restriction could be adopted by the entire 27-member EU bloc and that countries were also discussing a joint response over sea, road and rail links with Britain.

The German chancellor Angela Merkel held a conference call with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the EU chiefs Ursula von der Leyen and Charles Michel about the matter.

The Spanish government said it had asked the European commission and council to come up with a “joint, coordinated response” to the situation, but that it would “act in defence of the interests and rights of Spanish citizens” if one was not forthcoming.

Belgium is also suspending flight and Eurostar arrivals from Britain from midnight. The prime minister, Alexander De Croo, said the ban would initially be in place for at least 24 hours.

Italy, which said it had detected the new strain of the coronavirus in a patient who had recently returned from Britain, blocked all flights departing from Britain and barred anyone who had transited through the country in the last 14 days from entering Italian territory.

The foreign minister, Luigi Di Maio, said the government had decided to act after the UK raised the alarm about the new strain.

“As a government we have the duty to protect Italians and for this reason, after having warned the British government, the health ministry will sign a provision for the suspension of flights with the UK,” he said. “Our priority is to protect Italy.”

Austria and Sweden also said they were preparing decisions to ban flights from the UK, but were still working out the details.

The Dutch ban, which came into effect from 6am local time on Sunday, will last until 1 January. Ireland will impose restrictions on flights and ferries from Britain from midnight, while Bulgaria is suspending flights from and to the UK from midnight until 31 January. Romania also said it had banned all flights to and from the UK for two weeks starting on Monday afternoon.

The WHO said it was in close contact with British officials, and that outside the UK nine cases of the new strain had been reported in Denmark, one in the Netherlands and one in Australia. “Across Europe, where transmission is intense and widespread, countries need to redouble their control and prevention approaches,” a spokeswoman for WHO Europe said.

Were it to continue into January, the travel disruption could exacerbate transport problems caused by Brexit as Britain leaves the EU’s single market, which guarantees movement within its borders.

Israel, too, imposed new measures on Sunday, barring entry to non-citizens arriving from the UK, Denmark and South Africa, citing fears about Covid variants. Israeli citizens arriving from those countries will have to enter isolation at state-run quarantine hotels for up to 14 days.

The hastily enacted decision led to confusing scenes at Israel’s international airport, where according to domestic media about 130 passengers on two flights from London were informed of the new quarantine requirements on arrival. Police were called to the scene after several people refused, Channel 12 news reported, and 12 decided to return to the UK.

Ellen Steel, a British–Israeli citizen on one of the flights, said she was ordered to board a crowded bus without being told where she was going. “At Luton, check-in was normal, but then they called boarding 1.5 hours early. At the gate, they turned everyone away [all non-Israelis] who had a British passport,” she told the Times of Israel.

“When we landed someone from the health ministry came on [the plane] and announced we’d all have to go to hotels. If we wanted to have a fight about it we could but only at the hotel and not before,” she said. Police escorted the buses, she added.

The UK government announced emergency restrictions after Public Health England said it had identified more than 1,100 cases of a new variant of coronavirus that may be speeding up the spread of the virus, particularly in south-east England.


It is actually very hard to predict virus properties such as infectiousness from mutations of the virus' genetic code. It's not impossible that the change to the spike protein could increase infectiveness, but when Johnson said it is 70% more infectious, he just pulled a figure out of his ass. Nobody can know that at this point. The growth of infections could be due to other factors such as cold weather, etc. Johnson may just use the new variant as reason to explain the failure of previous measures and justification for the introduction of tougher restrictions. If that's the case, he may not have anticipated the travel restrictions imposed by other countries on the UK.
#15144248
Istanbuller wrote:
It is interesting that nobody talk about root cause of coronaviruses. I don't see any scientific explanation where it comes from. How can you develop a vaccine when you don't know root causes?


The Huanan meat and animal market is the most likely source, where the bat virus jumped to humans from some exotic animals they sold at the market. Environmental samples, taken mostly from drains and sewage of the market, tested positive for the virus. Probably some wild animal sellers got infected first and the virus spread to other workers at the market from their faeces as market vendors shared toilets, according to a female vendor who worked side by side with wild animal meat sellers. During the original SARS epidemic, we talked about China's cultural problem. There is a culture where people eat bats and snakes, and these viruses are transmitted from the animal to the people. That’s why China has been the source of a lot of these viruses like SARS, MERS, and now Covid-19.





In Wuhan, researchers will take a closer look at the Huanan meat and animal market, which many of the earliest people diagnosed with COVID-19 had visited. What part the market played in the virus’s spread remains a mystery. Early investigations sampled frozen animal carcasses at the market, but none found evidence of SARS-CoV-2, according to a 5 November report of the WHO mission’s terms of reference. However, environmental samples, taken mostly from drains and sewage, did test positive for the virus. “Preliminary studies have not generated credible leads to narrow the area of research,” the report states.

The WHO mission will investigate the wild and farmed animals sold at the market, including foxes, raccoons (Procyon lotor) and sika deer (Cervus nippon). They will also investigate other markets in Wuhan, and trace the animals’ journeys through China and across borders. The investigators will prioritize animals that are known to be susceptible to the virus, such as cats and mink.

The team will also look at Wuhan’s hospital records, to find out whether the virus was spreading before December 2019. The researchers will interview the first people identified to have had COVID-19, to find out where they might have been exposed, and will test blood samples from medical staff, laboratory technicians and farm workers collected in the weeks and months before December, looking for antibodies against SARS-CoV-2. The report acknowledges that some of this work might already be under way in China.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03165-9
#15144349
ThirdTerm wrote:The Huanan meat and animal market is the most likely source, where the bat virus jumped to humans from some exotic animals they sold at the market.


It's been known since January that this is not true. The Huanan market was a superspreader event, but the virus jumped the species barrier before it entered the market. There were several documented cases in early December that weren't connected to the market. The virus most likely originated in one of China's 20k plus wild animal farms in September or October.

Meanwhile, back to the UK:

Covid and Brexit are about to collide

We are back in a full-scale economic crisis. In London and the south east, the richest part of the UK and engine of the economy, normal commerce has been suspended by the imposition of Tier 4. And the decision of much of the EU and a growing number of rich countries to put the whole UK into quarantine is devastating for trade.

What are the immediate priorities? Probably the most important one is basic: the creation of a facility to give rapid Covid-19 tests to all lorry drivers leaving the UK so that the transport of freight can be restarted as quickly as possible. Second, to end the cancerous uncertainty for businesses about how they will be buying from and selling to EU countries in just ten days time, after the transition to full Brexit ends.

Right now, the border closure means importers and exporters are frantically trying to work out how to ship anything. So it is grotesquely irresponsible to keep them in the dark about what the terms of trade will be on 1 January with customers in their biggest market.

For what it is worth, there is no ability to extend the status quo — the transition — by more than a few days and on an extemporised emergency basis. Or at least so UK and EU sources tell me. And a few extra days of talks are very unlikely to give UK and EU leaders the space and time to conclude negotiations much more rationally than is the case right now.

So the PM has to stop prevaricating and choose. He either has to accept the terms, especially on fishing and future competition, from which he instinctively recoils — and risk months of attacks from his Brexiteer colleagues saying he capitulated under duress, and which may terminate his time as PM (especially as many of those Brexiteer MP critics also loath his stewardship of the Covid-19 response).

Or the PM needs to mandate the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Michael Gove, to frantically try and nail down a raft of mini deals to lessen the inevitable disruption of failing to agree an overarching free trade deal and security — and do so in a way that doesn't turn the UK into a pariah in its relationship with the EU.

What is happening to the UK could hardly be more serious. Much of any government response, like testing lorry drivers, is obvious and uncontroversial.

But in respect of the future relationship with the EU — and in the context of the Covid-19 crisis — the outstanding elements of the free trade deal are relatively trivial. The PM knows the important elements of the available deal. He simply has to decide whether he wants them. It is his decision, and his alone.


This confirms what I have said before: a series of mini deals is the most likely outcome. I think for the EU it is also the most desirable.
#15144352
@Istanbuller I recall reading about 1-2 weeks ago that China has finally allowed independent scientist under the banner of the WHO to enter Wuhan and investigate the origins further. It took a year, but looks like it's being allowed now.
#15144353
B0ycey wrote:There is nothing else you can do as clearly lockdowns haven't done shit.

No, that's not true; the effect of the November lockdown was clearly visible in case numbers.

Image
Other countries also used heavier restrictions around that time, and cut their rates too. And lower rates mean lower deaths, until the at-risk groups have been vaccinated.
#15144355
Prosthetic Conscience wrote:No, that's not true; the effect of the November lockdown was clearly visible in case numbers.


It is what is known in laymen terms as kicking the can down the road. What I mean when I said lockdowns have done shit was they have done shit and nothing more. For every restriction you release the R0 goes up. And as your chart shows every restriction you put on it goes down. Is that a surprise? Not really. But given lockdowns have other repercussions eventually you have to release restrictions so how can anyone conclude they have done anything at all but delay infection by two weeks or a solution to anything at all? So you are doomed into this endless cycle of stupidity.

Nonetheless I am not against mitigation or preventive measures in any case. But until the government actually make people accountable for their own health, they are in a hole until they are honest with themselves and to the public as we can all visually see today, and as such are also doomed to fail.
#15144391
For many years it has been a heart's desire of the swivel-eyed loons to control the borders of the British isles, now they are raging with fury because other countries want to protect their own borders from the British virus. :lol:

Nigel Farage mocked after complaining about EU controlling their borders

Brexiteers have been mocked after fuming about EU countries closing their borders to England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland - after previously complaining the EU prevents countries exerting their own control.

France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Ireland and Bulgaria have all imposed restrictions on UK travel, while the Port of Dover announced its ferry terminal was closing to all traffic leaving the UK due to French border restrictions.

The EU's 27 members states are expected to hold an emergency meeting on Monday to discuss a blanket ban on travel from the UK.

The reports have angered anti-EU voices who have claimed that it is "Brexit revenge".

Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage said Boris Johnson must walk away from talks without a deal, "We are dealing with thugs and bullies who want to make us sign a bad deal. Time to walk away, to hell with the EU."

Former Labour MEP Seb Dance responded: "I’m pleased you see your lifelong wish for closed borders to be the utter self-defeating idiocy it always was. But wouldn’t it be a better idea if we were to stay in the institutions that could actually work to overcome arbitrary border closures?"

Comedian James Felton wrote: "Yesterday you were wanking on about how China let the disease spread and now you’re crying your tits off about France closing their borders because of a potentially fast-spreading new strain in the UK, you grifting charlatan bag of shit."

"I thought he was in favour of countries controlling their own borders," queried another.

"I'm no expert but I thought Nigel would've been in favour of sovereign nations implementing control of their borders," commented Nika Mironova.

Chris York said: "If there's one thing we're learning right now it's that you most certainly can be part of the EU and control your own borders."

Mike Holden quipped: "We hold all the cards, they need us more than we need them."


The Covid-19 pandemic was the undoing of the orange ape at the WH, could it be that his clone at No. 10 suffers the same fate? :excited:
#15144403
This is the new variant from South Africa. The changes to its genetic code are different but they are also at the spike.

Emergence and rapid spread of a new severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) lineage with multiple spike mutations in South Africa

Continued uncontrolled transmission of the severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in many parts of the world is creating the conditions for significant virus evolution. Here, we describe a new SARS-CoV-2 lineage (501Y.V2) characterised by eight lineage-defining mutations in the spike protein, including three at important residues in the receptor-binding domain (K417N, E484K and N501Y) that may have functional significance. This lineage emerged in South Africa after the first epidemic wave in a severely affected metropolitan area, Nelson Mandela Bay, located on the coast of the Eastern Cape Province. This lineage spread rapidly, becoming within weeks the dominant lineage in the Eastern Cape and Western Cape Provinces. Whilst the full significance of the mutations is yet to be determined, the genomic data, showing the rapid displacement of other lineages, suggest that this lineage may be associated with increased transmissibility.


@B0ycey, this is exactly what I explained above: new variants appear because of "continued uncontrolled transmission" and not because of the covid restrictions as you claimed.
#15144415
AFAIK wrote:@B0ycey
How do you feel about the lockdowns various far eastern countries pursued. Governments can stamp out the disease if they're willing to put their foot down.


I know you didnt' ask me but it would be good if we could that. However, our governments are unwilling to provide the support needed to people to be able to achieve that. Hell, the relief bill that just got passed in the US only pays out $600 to people, and apparently the politicians in support of direct payments like that had to fight like fucking hell to get it in there. Our government is much more concerned with corporations.

Also, the culture doesn't support it, too many rugged individualists.
#15144466
AFAIK wrote:@B0ycey
How do you feel about the lockdowns various far eastern countries pursued. Governments can stamp out the disease if they're willing to put their foot down.


If the pursuit was to eliminate rather than control, there is some understanding in them. I would still mitigate given this will be a lifelong issue. Trying to say what Wuhan and South Korea did is even comparable to the Western custerfuck is frankly laughable.
#15144468
Atlantis wrote:@B0ycey, this is exactly what I explained above: new variants appear because of "continued uncontrolled transmission" and not because of the covid restrictions as you claimed.


No, what I said was if you create an environment where a virus needs to be more transmissible, you get a virus that is more transmissible. This isn't even a secret given its basic evolution science. And that is what the WHO will concluse in time. I have never said we shouldn't try and control the virus given that this will create and accelerate biodiversity. Another evolution statement.
#15144488
B0ycey wrote:
No, what I said was if you create an environment where a virus needs to be more transmissible, you get a virus that is more transmissible. This isn't even a secret given its basic evolution science. And that is what the WHO will conclude in time. I have never said we shouldn't try and control the virus given that this will create and accelerate biodiversity. Another evolution statement.



It is quite common for a mutation to make a disease less virulent.

You seem to be arguing that the virus has intent, when it's simply random mutations that only occasionally have an impact on us either way.
#15144491
B0ycey wrote:No, what I said was if you create an environment where a virus needs to be more transmissible, you get a virus that is more transmissible. This isn't even a secret given its basic evolution science. And that is what the WHO will concluse in time. I have never said we shouldn't try and control the virus given that this will create and accelerate biodiversity. Another evolution statement.

I fully agree! I want to add that a virus that is very deadly is less transmissible than a virus that does not kill. If the infected person dies quick that person has no chance to infect others.
#15144493
late wrote:It is quite common for a mutation to make a disease less virulent.

You seem to be arguing that the virus has intent, when it's simply random mutations that only occasionally have an impact on us either way.


No, what I am saying is a virus is like every other living thing and that a mutation that is beneficial for the conditions it finds itself in will benefit the virus and thus multiply that mutation. We cannot expect normal conditions or evolution steps to apply when we create new and artifical conditions for coronaviruses. The Spanish Flu should have been a warning of what you can expect in new viral environments when we created the perfect conditions for viruses in general as the more deadly variants were able to multiply by keeping the less deadly variants in isolation via trenches. And now this. But considering that the UK death rate hasn't kept up with case rates, we should be grateful for this as the indication are that this is isn't a more deadly variant and may well be less deadly than other strains and perhaps may well be a blessing given it might increase herd immunity without scarifying deaths per case rate as the current data indications suggest.
#15144545
B0ycey wrote:No, what I am saying is a virus is like every other living thing and that a mutation that is beneficial for the conditions it finds itself in will benefit the virus and thus multiply that mutation. We cannot expect normal conditions or evolution steps to apply when we create new and artifical conditions for coronaviruses. The Spanish Flu should have been a warning of what you can expect in new viral environments when we created the perfect conditions for viruses in general as the more deadly variants were able to multiply by keeping the less deadly variants in isolation via trenches. And now this. But considering that the UK death rate hasn't kept up with case rates, we should be grateful for this as the indication are that this is isn't a more deadly variant and may well be less deadly than other strains and perhaps may well be a blessing given it might increase herd immunity without scarifying deaths per case rate as the current data indications suggest.


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