This is a bit scary. It's a bit wordy and lots of science so could do with a bit of help understanding it please. From a virologist who has worked on vaccine development but thinks vaccinating during high levels of circulating virus is a bad idea and is leading to younger people being more ill than if they hadn't been vaccinated(if I've read this correctly)
https://www.geertvandenbossche.org/?fbclid=IwAR2q1oVnipMBNqb0ePGX7lZIMtfmzrVxMlU5YtJ50i_MEnYZjSPqrk_CvVg
Aye, but who would they lickdown? 🤣
Might motivate people to stay at home if men/women in uniform are coming round to check your lickdown?
So the app is to be modified then? With cases dropping it only seems to follow the usual government MO...
I didn't read the article in full myti because I've seen, read and heard many other expressing similar views in more moderate terms. Mutations are inevitable and vaccine evassion is a possibility but whether a vaccine avoiding variant would be more deadly is by no means a certainty. Probably not. Updated vaccines will be needed to keep up but I see no reason to think vaccination with the ones we have now is a bad thing.
Mass infection prevention and mass vaccination with leaky Covid-19 vaccines in the midst of the pandemic can only breed highly infectious variants.
Mutation happens anyhow whether people are vaccinated or not. It's alarmist when it's going to happen anyhow. The Indian Delta variant came from a population with a low level of vaccination.
The variants in any population may be more or less infectious but the more infectious are more likely to gain ground. Whether those variants will be more or less deadly is uncertain but the trend is generally towards less deadly.
The alternative view is that fewer people will have transmissible levels of the virus with vaccination so there is a lower risk of mutation.
Good points thanks.
Its the Trump approach... just stop counting
So the app is to be modified then? With cases dropping it only seems to follow the usual government MO…
It should have happened sooner. An entirely voluntary app whose advice you don't need to follow is completely useless if people just delete it. The whole isolating message was idiotic, it should have just been a tool to encourage people to be more careful if they'd potentially been in contact with an infected person.
Mass infection prevention and mass vaccination with leaky Covid-19 vaccines in the midst of the pandemic can only breed highly infectious variants.
I find this assertion a wee bit off tbh, all we are ever told about covid, is that it gets more infectious? Is that really true? I'm mean viruses can mutate in a variety different ways, why is covid unique adept at only becoming more infectious? Surely the there's a bigger story to these mutations? Can someone point me towards the research, I would like to read it.
Genuine question, I'm not dismissing anything about how current variations have gone, but strikes me that it can only become more infectious is a bit off?
For the record I'm someone that's fully behind vaccination, I'm doubled up, and following restrictions, mask wearing etc. We just seem somewhat limited in this mutation discussion tbh is my instinct.
Surely the possibility for what ever type of mutation isn't so linear?
ie if it's getting better at infectiousness, is it still as deadly for example? has it changed in other ways?
It's a question I'd like to understand more about.
The whole isolating message was idiotic
Isolating potential carriers is the entire point of a track/trace/isolate programme. Get ahead of the virus and break the chain of transmission. Without isolating those likely to be passing the virus on, it’s money down the drain. It never really worked here anyway, as many people can’t afford to isolate, and weren’t supported to do so.
ie if it’s getting better at infectiousness, is it still as deadly for example? has it changed in other ways?
The theory is that it's a turbocharged natural selection process, with thousands of potential mutations being trialled every time an 'error' creeps into the replication process. The ones that are more successful take over (and a virus's main aim is to replicate and continue) ; those that don't work die out.
The second part of the theory is that in order to replicate it needs to be infectious, but killing the host doesn't benefit. If the virus caused you to die in seconds, how do you contact enough people to pass it on? Wander round with a runny nose and a cough spreading the virus particles all over the place, OTOH.....
New hospital admissions in England look to be falling now, and number of patients in hospital has stopped growing. As expected/hoped. Good news.
theotherjonv
Full Member
ie if it’s getting better at infectiousness, is it still as deadly for example? has it changed in other ways?The theory is that it’s a turbocharged natural selection process, with thousands of potential mutations being trialled every time an ‘error’ creeps into the replication process. The ones that are more successful take over (and a virus’s main aim is to replicate and continue) ; those that don’t work die out.
The second part of the theory is that in order to replicate it needs to be infectious, but killing the host doesn’t benefit. If the virus caused you to die in seconds, how do you contact enough people to pass it on? Wander round with a runny nose and a cough spreading the virus particles all over the place, OTOH…..
aye but that sounds suspiciously like the virus has some kinda intelligence, knows what it wants to do and has a goal, rather than just random mutations of trial and error. 😆 Like I say whole conversation seems off. I'm gonny have to educate myself on it.
Isolating potential carriers is the entire point of a track/trace/isolate programme. Get ahead of the virus and break the chain of transmission. Without isolating those likely to be passing the virus on, it’s money down the drain. It never really worked here anyway, as many people can’t afford to isolate, and weren’t supported to do so.
The app is even more useless than track and trace. That at least had legislation to attempt to make people comply and allowed you to claim statutory sick pay. Without that and/or support to isolate it only really has value as a tool to make people be slightly more careful. As 95% of those "pinged" don't go on to record a positive test it'd seem the sensible option.
Track and trace only really works as a concept with very low infection numbers, once in even the hundreds people have passed it on before they know they're infectious and there's no real hope of tracing their contacts.
This is interesting IMO.
Despite what i'm reading here, research in Canada, Scotland and Singapore is showing the Delta strain appears to be associated with a higher risk of hospitalisation and death.
make people be slightly more careful
That’s not much use with this virus, sadly.
Track and trace only really works as a concept with very low infection numbers
True. It also doesn’t work if close contacts of people known to be infectious don’t isolate, and that’s more likely to happen the more cases there are (and if people aren’t supported ot compelled by law to isolate, as you say).
Delta strain appears to be associated with a higher risk of hospitalisation and death.
There is no evolutionary pressure for this virus to become less deadly. It can already be spread easily even by those that go onto die with it. The more transmissible it becomes, the truer that becomes. But we have vaccines (and not only in their current forms, many now in use can very easily be updated in future) to reduce deaths. Of course dumb luck might also deliver a new variant that is both more transmissible and less deadly, but planning based on the assumption that isn’t coming anytime soon is the path most countries are taking (including ourselves).
aye but that sounds suspiciously like the virus has some kinda intelligence, knows what it wants to do and has a goal, rather than just random mutations of trial and error.
No, just that natural selection will eventually mean that the mutations with the best outcomes will prevail.
Whether we can wait for the contest to play out in the meantime, while it trials random transmissible AND deadly but ultimately less beneficial to its overall goal versions is another question.
The app was doing the job it was designed to do. Those pushing the 'pingdemic' message must be very pleased with themselves. It's put the burden of responsibility on the individual and shifted it away from employers. If people delete the app there's no question. Whereas if I get pinged by the app, tell my boss, and he suggests i continue working the responsibility is on him if one or more of my workmates goes down with it as a result.
The app was doing the job it was designed to do. Those pushing the ‘pingdemic’ message must be very pleased with themselves. It’s put the burden of responsibility on the individual and shifted it away from employers. If people delete the app there’s no question. Whereas if I get pinged by the app, tell my boss, and he suggests i continue working the responsibility is on him if one or more of my workmates goes down with it as a result.
Granted the whole "pingdemic" was something some jurno came up with but as with all machine learning over time it needs to be tweaked to become optimal. I think I read it was saying 2k additional people a day were being told to isolate despite not needing to. My wife is currently isolating despite taking 4 lateral flows and a pcr all of which are negative, so clearly she doesn't have covid but it still required to isolate. As we all know the rules are stupid. Further more shes NHS so can theoretically go to work (psychologist so can do work via zoom) but so can be out all day seeing loads of people but then isnt allowed to go to dinner with friends or me. its mental.
Seaosamh, there isn't an intelligence to it.
If a mutation is more infectious, it infects more people and there are more versions of it out there, infecting more people.
If the mutation is less infectious than another mutation then it infects less people than the other one.
Play this out over time and you end up with a more infectious version.
No intelligence to it as the mutations are random. Just that some mutations are more beneficial to it.
No intelligence to it as the mutations are random. Just that some mutations are more beneficial to it.
This. Very much this.
Think about what a virus does. A few particles (relatively) get inside your body's cells. They then hijack those cells and turn them haywire, making them into, effectively, dedicated factories for the construction of thousands(?) millions(?) of copies of the virus. Before bursting due to the effort. This cell destruction is part of what causes inflammation associated with having a virus. The rest of it and the rest of feeling shit is your body trying to play catch up and mobilising energy to initiate and build an immune response - but I digress. Think about the numbers here:
Let's just say a hijacked cell can be forced to make 1000 copies of a virus before it is destroyed. Let's just say an individual gets an exposure of 1000 particles from someone else and 1% of those go on to infect a cell. So 10 infected cells produce 10000 virus particles. Let's pretend that that is 'it' (it obviously isn't as copies within a person can go on to infect other cells - in a race against time versus the immune system). But even with my silly example, each person infected multiplies the number of virus particles by 10.
Covid also keeps you on your feet and able to spread it by having a long incubation period.
But ignore all of that. Let us just consider the sheer amount of replications that are going on. Each one prone to a tiny chance of random mutation. Even if only 1% of these confer a selective advantage (greater transmissibility, say) they are highly likely to increase their proportion of the total population. You can bet that a variant that COULD be twice as lethal has occurred in someone by now, but maybe that particle wasn't transmitted or maybe the mutation had a secondary effect that made the particle unviable.
As noted above, although 'successful' diseases don't tend to kill their host (thus taking the probability of transmission down), covid has a long asymptomatic infectious period, so the selective pressure to be non-lethal is lower.
Compare this with something like anthrax. Anthrax is endemic in some parts of Africa in cattle. Its transmissibility is poor (thankfully). Its lethality is incredibly high and fast (which further inhibits transmission). So it kills those it infects quickly, with little (comparatively) transmission. Guess which disease was initially chosen by virtually every WMD establishment as a potential weapon. Yep, anthrax.
For me, the vexed issue (and the one I believe the UK is getting very wrong) is increasing the amount of virus in circulation whilst rolling out selective pressures on transmissibility via vaccines. If non-lethality is a secondary 'advantage' to thr virus, I believe we could stand accused of generating and harbouring the next variant wave. A variant wave that will impinge on the effectiveness of the vaccines that the rest of the world are also trying to get 'out there'.
Our early access to vaccines should have conferred some responsibility onto us to keep some more restrictive measures in place. Not use it as an opportunity to steal an economic march on our self-created 'enemies' in a flurry of nationalist-populist posturing.
So with numbers dropping still and now hospitalisations also, it seems to me the end of the school term is the big big driver. What position will we be in come the new academic year? What should the government be found now to put us in a good position/better position in 5 weeks? The messaging had been vaccinate our way out of this, 5 weeks from now we are found to have double jabbed pretty much everyone that will roll up their sleeve. Will that be enough or should/could we do more? A strong messaging on the simple measures like hands, face, space and fresh air in the lead up to the school return and colder weather maybe.... Or will it just not wash anymore?
Vaccinate teens ASAP. Use less economically damaging measures (mandating masks on public transport and in shops) to get infections as low as possible before the return to school/college. Take full advantage of the summer... don't wait 'till October to work out what needed to happen before September.
I think that's a great idea. The only slight drawback is that the country is governed by a bunch of reactionary ****-wits.
Dannyh
Anthrax has been selected for bioweapons research for a number of reasons, a big one is also around denial of territory and the fact that it doesn't die and can be weaponised relatively easily without a huge reduction in viability.
Comparing that with coronviruses isn't really appropriate, if we had airborne haemorrhagic fevers a the current pandemic it would be a little more interesting
Vaccinate teens ASAP.
can't haven't got enough pfizer jabs.
That's what we hear. So plan for when we do, and tell us (parents especially) what that plan is. Don't we have 60 million more Pfizer jabs due this year?
IIRC 20 million due mid september, more later
So...
1) tell us if teens will be allowed the vaccine once we have the stocks
2) act to reduce infections in the meantime, especially on return to classrooms
Comparing that with coronviruses isn’t really appropriate, if we had airborne haemorrhagic fevers a the current pandemic it would be a little more interesting
I was only comparing it as an extreme opposite (low transmissibility, high lethality). And yes, anthrax stays dormant in soil as spores for a very long time. Hence the non existence of Gruinard Island for 60 odd years - at least as far as maps were concerned.
Vaccinate teens ASAP. Use less economically damaging measures (mandating masks on public transport and in shops) to get infections as low as possible before the return to school/college. Take full advantage of the summer… don’t wait ’till October to work out what needed to happen before September.
100%
I really wish this bunch of liars in government had been honest. The idea was to get the virus circulating before the end of the school term, in summer to help with symptoms, and whilst there was spare capacity in the NHS. They are actively going for some herd immunity in lieu of younger people being vaccinated sooner. Herd immunity is now such a toxic term that it cannot be uttered.
My worry (as above) is that we are combining high infection rates (and higher chance of creating a new variant) whilst rolling out a selective pressure to favour a new variant with greater transmissibility.
whilst rolling out a selective pressure to favour a new variant with greater transmissibility.
Or are we?
Read all the contribution over the last two pages again. By "selective" pressure I assume you mean vaccination. So you really need to be worried about vaccine avoidance rather than transmisibility. A trend towards increased transmissibilty will happen with or without vaccination and you can argue that with fewer cases due to vaccination the risk of mutation is lower.
Edit: in the good news category we have current vaccine protection. Two French ITU docs on news reports this evening with the same to report - numbers admitted rising fast, number of vaccinated admitted, zero.
Sigh.... 233 new cases in NSW today
Two deaths: a woman in her 80s, and a bloke in his 20s which is a bit of a shock - went downhill very rapidly by all accounts.
Sorry to hear that batfink, going to be an uphill struggle over there.
BBC article this morning is suggesting our relaxation in England was a lucky/well planned guess, but more caution still needed with autumn approaching. Though he has always been on message in the last few months.
BBC News - Covid cases and hospital admissions down - is it over?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-58078900
We were told case numbers are irrelevant now: it's all about reducing deaths.
Deaths are rising. 123 yesterday. Highest since march.
Conveniently forgotten.
Deaths will also be falling later this month. It's what happens a few weeks into the next academic year that will tell us where we are (if we're still mass testing students... otherwise we won't know for a further few weeks).
The switchero begins...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58080232
UK experts are set to recommend all 16 and 17-year-olds should be offered a Covid vaccine, the BBC has been told.
The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation stopped short of making the move last month, saying it was still assessing the benefits and risks.
About 1.4 million teenagers will be included in the new rollout but it is not known when the jabs will start.
can’t haven’t got enough pfizer jabs.
Unfortunately, lack of Pfizer right now means that any initiative to jab the teens would bump into the need to booster the oldies, which has to be a priority, given the risk to this group with potentially waning immunity.
Feels like we're riding the knife edge again in terms of keeping on top of it into the autumn.
Yesterday was the weekend catch up for deaths, plus deaths lag a week or two behind hospitalisation, so may not have peaked yet.
We need to see where the average deaths go in the next week or two.
Whilst I despise the government's poor handling of this and the huge numbers of unnecessary deaths it has caused, the pragmatist in me has to accept that if deaths are down to the levels we may see from flu, then that is probably as good as it will get.
Edit: yes, it's how things pan out as schools and businesses return in the autumn that will be the true test. Let's see where we are by mid October. But as the experts have said all along, it won't go away, there will still be deaths.
"Acceptable deaths.
Just like flu."
This year's "Eat out to help out."
“Acceptable deaths.
Just like flu.”This year’s “Eat out to help out.”
I totally get the flippant comment and obvs its not nice for the family when someone dies, but we do sorta have to get to a point where we live with this. We can't have a state of rolling lockdowns its here to stay just gotta find a way to live with it minimising the risks.
No one wants more lockdowns. We have the means to “minimise the risk” already in the UK… it’s just that we’ve thrown away the basic physical measures (I’m the only person on this train wearing a mask apart from the staff) before we have finished vaccinating enough people.
The winter lockdown was a result of the summer policy.
About six months for that to come home to roost.
About enough time to distract sight of "cause and effect".
Repeat, and blame the next new variant.
The winter lockdown was a result of the summer policy.
About six months for that to come home to roost.
We didn't have the vaccine last winter. Unless there's a vaccine resistant and/or more severe variant this winter, it "should" go a lot better, and "shouldn't" need such strict restrictions.
But up to 20,000 people die of the flu in a bad winter, despite vaccination. Yes, the government has taken cavalier risks at times, and I'll be remaining cautious with masks, hygiene and distancing where I can, but at some point we'll all have to pull up our big boy/girl pants and get used to the idea that we now have a 5th(?) coronavirus to live with.
No one wants more lockdowns. We have the means to “minimise the risk” already in the UK… it’s just that we’ve thrown away the basic physical measures (I’m the only person on this train wearing a mask apart from the staff) before we have finished vaccinating enough people
By UK you mean England, I can't speak for Wales or NI, but that's definitely not the case up here.
