Mutant Virus DOOM

[Hobosapien]

See above.

Until it mutates. See London and South East case rate panic in government.

Will likely mean occasional vaccine jabs like the flu where they predict the most prevalent strain of the season. How long a covid-19 season is has yet to be determined...

[rogerfederer]

Bullshine. They're using it as a scapegoat for national restrictions that are still all about protecting the NHS.

An NHS that is barely fit for purpose in a normal winter. Years of mismanagement and waste and no-one with the balls to sort it out. That business fella went in thinking it would be simple, a few years ago now, and gave up after seeing the inept troughers running the show used to having billions of public money to waste.

How many of those nightingales are currently in use and full or near capacity? I expect the answer is closer to nil than all of them. There aren't the staff to run them, and any staff have to be taken from the nearby main hospitals, so no point having extra bed capacity without the extra staff capacity.

So instead of the government admitting this is the real weakness in the whole approach they'll just fear monger the dumb public into trashing their lives and mental health to save the NHS that will end up privatised anyway as part of the USA trade deal.

I don't like this concentration on the Nightingale make-shift centres. They're hardly hospitals and, let's be realistic, if they were already filling up or full that would obviously be far too late in the calendar to be increasing restrictions. The more covid19 spreads in an area, the longer it takes for the rate of increase of cases to reduce and for the hospitals to then discharge patients. There comes a point when many people won't be able to get seen at all by medics.

The current hotspot map looks really bad, especially so in north east England and southern England. That's why they're trying to stamp cases down now, and so be it. If we did let hospitals become full, just to prove a point, the toll on the medical staff and beyond would be extremely negative.

[AtW]

New 8-10 weeks strict lockdown is necessary - during which mass vaccinations of vulnerable groups should be done, then by March we should be in decent shape with the weather hopefully helping and vaccination preventing hospitalisations in most vulnerable groups - then the Govt can let the virus rip the rest and let virus get those who don’t want safe vaccine ...

[rogerfederer]

For the time being - yes, owing to lack of mass reports (almost zero really) of proven re-infections of those who had been infected before.

Unclear how long it will last though, but we are nearly a year inti this tulip now, so will know next year.

What is being suggested in medical research circles is that it's possible to have a substantially different strain of covid19 a second or even third time. For most people their immune system will fight it off. However they do also shed the virus, but in lesser volumes. That being the case, I think the current advice to not self-isolate if you have already had it months ago, but are now living with someone who has just tested positive recently, is stupid and ignores the reality that people who caught it March and had a bad illness could be spreading it again now as super spreaders or general asymptomatics.

A bit like the whole "it's not airborne!" crowd before. It hadn't been proven at the time because there was no data yet, but the virulence and stats suggested it was airborne. If we wait for evidence of the past months to react to the notion people can have covid19 more than once and spread it on the second or third time whilst asymptomatic then we'll likely have a worse outcome. Better to assume that you are positive if you live with someone who has tested positive recently and isolate.

[AtW]

Didn't you have it back in March-April yourself?

[AtW]

" The new strain – now officially named VUI-202012/01 - may be “up to 70 per cent” more transmissible than earlier strains "

"The new strain first occurred in September in the South East, Sir Patrick said. By the middle of November, it accounted for 28 per cent of all new Covid infections in the capital, rising to 62 per cent by December 9."

New coronavirus strain ‘moves fast’ and is becoming the dominant variant

[AtW]

70% more transmissible (I think) means 70% more people infected by 1 person, so for any "lockdown" measure that bring spread to R1 that means spread will be R1.7?

[clearedforlanding]

Netherlands suspends flights from UK

Covid-19 : les Pays-Bas suspendent les vols en provenance du Royaume-Uni

I think this will be the first of many.

[BlueSharp]

Covid-19 : les Pays-Bas suspendent les vols en provenance du Royaume-Uni

I think this will be the first of many.

“An infectious mutation of the Covid-19 virus is circulating in the UK. They say it spreads easier and faster and is harder to detect, ” the Dutch health ministry said in a statement.

Err I don't recall that in any of our press releases. First leak it has mutated enough to render detection and possibly the vaccine less effective?

[AtW]

Might be that some tests were targeting bits that got changed in mutation