Coronavirus, ? stronger measures to be announced

[medsec222]

Cromwell - I wouldn't want Boris Johnson's job for a million pounds. The Sword of Damocles is constantly above his head. Whatever the catastrophe, he is personally blamed for it. All four nations are in a similar position but the other three Leaders appear to have emerged relatively unscathed. I didn't vote for Johnson but he must have felt elated when the Conservative Party was returned with such a huge majority. Not so now, as his success seems to be crumbling to dust in his hands. For all our sakes it is essential for this government to succeed and pull us through these devastating times.

[Workingman]

Where is the evidence for the 70% claim? Will it too later prove to be wildly inaccurate?

Try the SAGE report or the NERVTAG research produced over a week ago. We have known about this for quite some time and the Johnson is playing with himself and with many lives and livelihoods.

[cromwell]

Meds, I wouldn't want his job either. But he has to get brave enough to start making his own decsions and not U-turning at the last minute.
WM you seem to believe what SAGE are saying. Given the 500,000 claim, the 4,000 deaths a day claim, the dodgy graphs etc etc I am saying that there is more than ample evidence to doubt it, given their track record so far.
Anyway, I think I'm banging my head against a brick wall here so I'll give it a rest for a bit.

[Workingman]

Good grief, Cromwell, I am not believing everything SAGE! Some of their stuff has been laughable, esp the input from Prof. Panicdemic of Imperial. However, some of it has been borne out and a lot of the stuff about the new variant comes from other sources.

I am sincerely hoping that what is being said about its fatality rate and reaction to the vaccines is true, but it is too early to tell for sure. Others, outside the UK, are taking it seriously, their actions show that.

[Suff]

My how history has changed in the last 5 days.

Calum Semple, professor of outbreak medicine at the University of Liverpool and a member of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), insisted that public should not worry about the new variant.

Here is the article without the pictures...

The emergence of a new coronavirus strain “is not a disaster” for the UK and won’t lead to “a breakdown in all our plans”, a scientific adviser to the government has said.

A total of 1,108 cases related to the variant have been identified, predominantly in the south and east of England, Public Health England (PHE) announced on Monday.

Scientists at the Covid-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) consortium are investigating the new strain, which carries a set of mutations in the spike protein that Sars-CoV-2 uses to attach to human cells.

However, COG-UK said there is currently no evidence to suggest that this variation will have any impact on disease severity, antibody response or vaccine efficacy.

Efforts are underway to confirm whether or not any of the mutations are contributing to increased transmission, as previously stated by health secretary Matt Hancock.

Calum Semple, professor of outbreak medicine at the University of Liverpool and a member of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), insisted that public should not worry about the new variant.

"People should not be losing sleep about this, they really need to leave the virology to the scientists because we're at the very early stages of understanding what's going on here," he told the BBC on Tuesday.


"What I can say is that coronavirus, like many other viruses, mutate all the time. And without the presence of community immunity – that's because we don't have herd immunity and won't have for many, many months – the virus essentially is free to change and become more comfortable with the humans with which it is living.


"That's what the virus is doing – it is learning how to become slightly better at living with us and becoming slightly more infectious. But that does not mean it's harming us more or causing more severe illness in people."

Prof Semple said it is "the million-dollar question" how the Covid vaccines in development will fare against the new variant, though he insisted he was confident they would remain efficacious.

"Some of the mutations are occurring in the key that the virus uses to unlock the cells,” he said. “And we see this with flu each year and that's why the flu vaccine has to change year on year."

"I would expect the vaccine still to be reasonably effective because it's currently 95 per cent effective. Even if we dropped a few percentage points, it's still going to be good enough, and much better than many other vaccines on the market.

"And the next bit of good news is that the new vaccines are essentially like emails that we send to the immune system, and they're very easy to tweak.

"So if we know that the lock has changed very slightly, we just have to edit that email, change a word or two and then the vaccine that will be ready in six to eight weeks' time after that, will be competent and better targeted to the new strain.

"So this is this is not a disaster. This isn't a breakdown in all our plans. This is just what we expect with a new virus, and it's what the scientists and the doctors have come to understand, and we will adapt."

“The speed at which this has been picked up on is also testament to this phenomenal research effort,” he said. “However, there is no room for complacency. We have to remain humble and be prepared to adapt and respond to new and continued challenges as we move into 2021. “

Jonathan Stoye, a virologist at the Francis Crick Institute in London, explained that variants and new strains typically arise in viruses as “a result of errors in copying viral genetic material”. This, he said, led to small changes in virus proteins.

Wow, what a change in 5 days. As a result of this work the government initiates Tier 4 restrictions and the EU shuts the border and it's all the fault of the PM. Who woulda thunk it???

This is not "we found it in September and didn't bother telling anyone". This is "we found 1,108 cases 5 days ago in December and we are working out what it means". Leave it to the scientists and we'll get back to you.

Send "3s 6d , we're going to a dance"

[Workingman]

Experts eh? Brilliant when they chime with our own personal views, total plonkers when they don't

Here's a couple for you to have a rant at:

We should all be very concerned about new strain - and we must reduce contact further if we're going to prevent deaths, says expert

A scientist from the group Nervtag, which provided evidence of a mutant strain of coronavirus in the UK, has issued a warning to the public.

"I'm sorry to say we should all be very concerned [about the new strain]," Professor Andrew Hayward said.

"This is really terrible news in terms of the pandemic... If the vaccine is the best news, this is the worst news and we really, really need to tighten down the hatches to stop the spread of this strain while we are vaccinating as many people as possible."

He explained it is "hard to overestimate" the impact of a new strain which is 70% more transmissible, saying the number of deaths from COVID-19 is linked to how transmissible the virus is and how much social contact we have.

"If we're going to prevent very many deaths, we're going to need to reduce contact further," he said.

Pointing to how the second national lockdown has not managed to impact cases much in some areas, Professor Hayward said: "What this shows is even though we were having relatively strong measures that were enough to suppress the previous virus, they weren't enough to suppress this."

He said areas with lower levels of infections are possibly three weeks behind those with the highest levels, meaning more places could soon face tougher restrictions.

Explaining how Nervtag discovered the new strain, Professor Hayward said there is evidence people infected with the strain VUI-202012/01 have higher levels of virus when they are swabbed. ]

And

Former chief scientific adviser calls for lockdown and says 'we shouldn't wait'

In an interview where he was heavily critical of the government's response to the pandemic, former chief scientific adviser Sir David King has told Sky News there is now "only one course of action" to deal with the new strain of coronavirus.

"I think there's no doubt about it - we need to go into lockdown and we need to go into lockdown sooner than the government is tending to do," he said.
Sir David said it is important to act quickly to stop a surge in infections, and he believes "almost certainly" the new variant is spreading across the country already.

The new variant has been know about since mid September, not five days. We had plenty of time to study and plan.

[Suff]

The one I posted was from a member of SAGE.

So now we have two advisory groups, one showing common sense and simple statements of fact (for once), the other sewing chaos and fear.

I'll take common sense every day of the week. I already knew viruses mutate over their lifetime and that most of them become more benign. Also if you had been reading from the beginning you would know that vaccines which work are more likely to work against mutated strains than not. But we are seeing other vaccines which also have an effect on Covid. So why would we assume that a targeted vaccine would be of no use at all?

That is histrionics. All lockdowns do is slow transmission somewhat. The vaccination itself is a huge potential transmission event. The SAGE scientist adds up. The Nervtag one doesn't. As for the retired one? Not listening to retiree's. They have never had to deal with a global pandemic so their experience is already light years behind today.

[Workingman]

Semple's view was a personal one, as was King's, not official in any way. Take them or leave them - either way.

The Nervtag one, also personal but semi-official, is based on the data as follows:
By mid November (no actual date given) the new variant was known to be responsible for 28% of cases in the London area. That had risen to 62% by some time around the 10th to 13th of December - HMG's own figures. That's five weeks knowledge of inexorable rises, not five days. Five days is how long it took for any action.



Those same groups have also found that the new variant pushes the R number up by between 0.4 and 0.9 depending on the locality looked at. With the current strain it is thought to be between 1.2 and 1.4.

Johnson, in a round about way, just confirmed the above in his stumbling, bumbling news conference. Then Patrick Vallance when asked about T3 stated that because of the new variant's properties more measures and new rules will have to be taken to control the virus - the hint was more places in T4.

[Suff]

It is interesting that scientists around the world are already saying that the Only reason that the UK has been the first to announce this variant is that the UK has the best genome sequencing alliance in the world. Providing 50% of the world store of sequencing information for Covid-19.

If we didn't have that, we would be blind, like everyone else was and just coping with the virus as everyone else is.

What is left? Lock the whole country down and pray that we can vaccinate before the economy goes bust? Everyone has been playing a balancing act with the number of people dying against trying not to kill the economy or start riots everywhere since this all began. Apart from China that is, they just stuck guns in people's faces.

On a side note, my parents have had their first vaccination.

[Workingman]

Suff, you know that I have a problem with lockdowns, and that is because we haven't had any. We did Lockdown Lite and Lockdown Lighter than Lite and we have fiddled about a bit with tiers. What we, and almost every other country, have not done is get a grip.

Some countries such as China, Australia, Taiwan, Vietnam and so on have come down very hard on areas showing a rapid rise in cases. They have locked them down - nobody in and nobody out - and those actions looked to have worked. The local economies have been hit, sure, but the general economy and wider public have been able to function even if at a lower level than normal. They are rolling programmes and move from area to area. Becky, who is in Vietnam, has been through two of them, one in Da Nang and the other in her part of Hanoi. They are very tough, but they have been largely successful.