Pandemic 2020

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Sunbiz1

Sunbiz1

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Fogdog said:
what manipulation or incompetence are you talking about? No sweeping generalizations please.
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Allowing states' respective governors to unilaterally impose restrictions without the consent of state legislatures.
This corrupts the entire reason we elect bodies of senators and representatives, to create balance in government.
I won't even go into how the Federal Reserve/Washington has mortgaged our children's future away by printing too many greenbacks, making the cost of the average home $450K; unaffordable for most younger people. Stimulus did nothing but create inflation, anyone versed in basic finance knew this was coming a year ago.
 
injinji

injinji

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Fogdog said:
AT 1%-2% survival rate, it's going to take a long time for that to happen. A more deadly variant would speed it up.

But you are right. Those with low ability to process information that leads to vaccine hesitancy might be an evolutionary dead end for some lines of the human race. .

not that it's the preferred option. But maybe it was inevitable.
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Too many have children for it to have a true evolutionary effect. Now if all those kids were to get covid and die. . . .
 
DIY-HP-LED

DIY-HP-LED

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www.nytimes.com

New Virus Variant Stokes Concern but Vaccines Still Likely to Work (Published 2021)

The Omicron variant carries worrisome mutations that may let it evade antibodies, scientists said. But it will take more research to know how it fares against vaccinated people.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com

New Virus Variant Stokes Concern but Vaccines Still Likely to Work
The Omicron variant carries worrisome mutations that may let it evade antibodies, scientists said. But it will take more research to know how it fares against vaccinated people.

Scientific experts at the World Health Organization warned on Friday that a new coronavirus variant discovered in southern Africa was a “variant of concern,” the most serious category the agency uses for such tracking.

The designation, announced after an emergency meeting of the health body, is reserved for dangerous variants that may spread quickly, cause severe disease or decrease the effectiveness of vaccines or treatments. The last coronavirus variant to receive this label was Delta, which took off this summer and now accounts for virtually all Covid cases in the United States.

The W.H.O. said the new version, named Omicron, carries a number of genetic mutations that may allow it to spread quickly, perhaps even among the vaccinated.

Independent scientists agreed that Omicron warranted urgent attention, but also pointed out that it would take more research to determine the extent of the threat. Although some variants of concern, like Delta, have lived up to initial worries, others have had a limited impact.

“Epidemiologists are trying to say, ‘Easy, tiger,’” said William Hanage, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “This could be bad. This could be very bad. But we don’t know enough to roll that tape forward.”

Dr. Hanage and other researchers said that vaccines will most likely protect against Omicron, but further studies are needed to determine how much of the shots’ effectiveness may be reduced.

As the coronavirus replicates inside people, new mutations constantly arise. Most provide the virus with no new advantage. When worrisome mutations do emerge, the World Health Organization uses Greek letters to name the variants. The first “variant of concern,” Alpha, appeared in Britain in late 2020, soon followed by Beta in South Africa.

Omicron first came to light in Botswana, where researchers at the Botswana Harvard H.I.V. Reference Laboratory in Gaborone sequenced the genes of coronaviruses from positive test samples. They found some samples sharing about 50 mutations not found in such a combination before. So far, six people have tested positive for Omicron in Botswana, according to an international database of variants.

Around the same time, researchers in South Africa stumbled across Omicron in a cluster of cases in the province of Gauteng. As of Friday, they have listed 58 Omicron samples on the variant database. But at a news conference on Thursday, Tulio de Oliveira, the director of the Centre for Epidemic Response & Innovation in South Africa, said that “close to two or three hundred” genetic sequences of Omicron cases would be released in the next few days.

The W.H.O. called for increased surveillance of the variant and laboratory experiments to better understand its biology.

“This variant did surprise us,” Dr. de Oliveira said at the news conference. “But the full significance is still uncertain.”

Dr. de Oliveira and his colleagues asked the W.H.O. to hold an emergency meeting about the variant on Friday for two reasons: the mutations in Omicron and what appears to be an alarming spread in South Africa.

The researchers found more than 30 mutations on a protein, called spike, on the surface of the coronavirus. The spike protein is the chief target of antibodies that the immune system produces to fight a Covid-19 infection. So many mutations raised concerns that Omicron’s spike might be able to evade antibodies produced by either a previous infection or a vaccine.

Dr. de Oliveira and his colleagues determined a quick way to gauge how quickly Omicron was spreading in South Africa. Although sequencing the entire genome of a virus is slow, the scientists figured out how to identify Omicron with a standard nasal swab test known as P.C.R.

The tests are fast because they look for just two of the coronavirus’s 29 genes — the spike gene and another gene called nucleocapsid. Thanks to its new mutations, Omicron does not test positive for the spike gene. So researchers could simply look for samples that tested positive for nucleocapsid, but negative for spike.
 
DIY-HP-LED

DIY-HP-LED

Well-Known Member
This one is super contagious and will get everybody by spring, let's hope they get some updated boosters out before too long! Improved vaccines won't help the cursed though, those driven by fear and seduced by bullshit, this one will get them before spring for sure. If it is indeed 5 X more contagious than delta, there will be no stopping it, slowing it down a bit perhaps, but it will arrive, the later the better. The vaccine makers seem to be reacting faster to these threats now, mRNA vaccines allow fast response to mutations and can allow multiple mRNA strands producing different antibody responses. Perhaps merely tweaking and testing a vaccine is not as regulatorily intensive and time consuming as making a new vaccine.
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www.cnbc.com

Vaccine makers move quickly against new omicron Covid variant, testing already under way

Pfizer and BioNTech said they expect more data from lab tests in two weeks at the latest.
www.cnbc.com www.cnbc.com
 
DIY-HP-LED

DIY-HP-LED

Well-Known Member
I'm optimistic about humanity defeating covid over the long term. Here is just one of many promising lines of research that could treat more than just covid. We should see a lot more treatments and effective vaccines over the next couple of years as the science pays off. A more global and comprehensive effort would be helpful, but when the right vaccine is found, it shouldn't take too long to deploy it and I expect there will be an effort made, if an effective vaccine is developed. It won't help the cursed though, the vaccine resistant, unless it is mandated.
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phys.org

COVID-19: The coronavirus's tangled strands of RNA could offer new ways to treat people who get infected

To the untrained eye, the loops, kinks and folds in the single strand of RNA that makes up the coronavirus genome look like a jumble of spaghetti or tangled yarn. But to researchers like Amanda Hargrove, a chemistry professor at Duke University, the complex shapes that RNA takes on as it folds...
phys.org phys.org
 
CunningCanuk

CunningCanuk

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Molecule Derived From Poisonous Plant Blocks All SARS-CoV-2 Variants in Cell Cultures

www.sciencealert.com

Molecule Derived From Poisonous Plant Blocks All SARS-CoV-2 Variants in Cell Cultures

The plant-based antiviral agent thapsigargin (TG), derived from a group of poisonous plants known as 'deadly carrots', appears to be effective against all variants of SARS-CoV-2 in the lab – and that includes the quick-spreading Delta variant.
www.sciencealert.com www.sciencealert.com
 
hanimmal

hanimmal

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captainmorgan

captainmorgan

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Don't worry about having to eat that poison carrot, Bob will be spending the holidays with the tRUmptards. If what they say about Bob is true and it's 5 times as infectious but the vaccinated are protected, maybe the pandemic can burn itself out this winter by staying with the retards. The one positive is that there certainly will be fewer morons running around by spring.
 
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