New covid variant-the B.1.1.529 Omicron variant
 

Flights cancelled and Sth.A. now on red list-
It will never end; viruses will just keep mutating as it's in their nature.
This sounds like the death knell of the freedom to overland :hang:
I have been lucky enough in my life to enjoy an 'almost open road' freedom and I am grateful to have had the opportunity.
But things are not looking good.
Hey ho, everything passes, even time.
Time to contemplate Life-

While I do agree that the new variant is bad news. I don't think it's the end of overland.

Soon we will have yearly vaccines, just like for the flu and everyone who is vaccinated will be able to travel.

Yeah, we don't know anything about what the new variant does yet - not worth getting worked up over unknowns, just gotta be patient ;)

The future might not be as dismal as you suggest.

Likely one of two things will happen:

1) We'll learn in a couple of months that the new variant is not the end of the world, existing vaccines provide protection, or;

2) We'll learn that the new variant is the end of the world, which means that the vaccine manufacturers will need to come up with a new flavour of vaccine, which will probably take them about 6 months* to accomplish, at which point we will be back to where we were a month ago.

Such is life.

Michael

*EDIT (an hour later): Pfizer has stated that they expect it will take 100 days to bring a new vaccine to market if that becomes necessary.

Pre-post Disclaimer;

I am vaccinated and believe in vaccinations as the appropriate response to a pandemic.

:)

What will be interesting, with the benefit of hindsight, is whether the world response to Covid - locking down the world, trying to contain the virus while developing vaccines, was the correct approach.

It would now seem that letting it run its course and burning out fast may have been preferable to the constant mutating that the virus does.

Maybe locking down and protecting the vulnerable may have been a better option?

Will be interesting to watch. Poor bloody Africans.


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I'm not sure that "letting it run its course and burning out fast" actually means much in epidemiological terms. In fact, I haven't heard of anywhere in the world it has burned itself out, despite the wide variety responses from strict lockdowns and mass vaccinations to valiant attempts to ignore the whole thing.

Instead, I've seen some unmistakable cause-and-effect relationships: lockdowns and vaccinations result in fewer infections, hospitalizations, and deaths. Or if you prefer, absence of lockdowns and failures to vaccinate result in increased infections, hospitalizations, and death rates.

Seems pretty compelling to me.

I think there was a lot of hubris at the start of the pandemic - a feeling that we, the human race backed up by the power of medical science, will soon see this off. But as the military know, plans rarely survive first contact with the enemy, and so it has it turned out. The bug has proved to be more resilient than anyone, myself included, ever imagined it would be. I thought it would a three month wonder like SARS or MERS, but this time what the medical authorities feared those bugs could be has come to pass.

It hasn't helped of course that the vaccination programme has ended up tangled up in politics in a way that hasn't really happened before. These things are always predictable with hindsight but who had heard of antivaxers two years ago. There have been good things that have come out of it - some significant advances in anti viral drugs (which are themselves becoming mired in politics) and some massive improvements in the way vaccines are developed and produced.

mRNA vaccine tech - Pfizer and Moderna's approach - has probably been pushed forward about 15yrs in the last 18 months. It only took Moderna seven weeks to develop their Covid vaccine from scratch, and I suspect it would take less than that now if another vaccine was needed against the new version. There's a whole load of other diseases - including (some) cancer - where the same approach may also work and those vaccinations are being developed in parallel with the Covid version. I wonder how many anti vax demo's we'll see when there's 20 more diseases you can be vaccinated against. When, instead of months of uncertain outcome invasive surgery or 'palliative care only', it's a couple of injections.

None of that helps much at the moment and it isn't going to trickle down to the rural parts of Africa for example any time soon. I suspect the protect the vulnerable and let it burn itself out among the 'resistant' is the unspoken approach the government has been taking but the bug is nothing if not unpredictable. It remains to be seen whether we'll be starting again with a new round of jabs or whether the existing ones work against it but based on the precautions people seem to be taking in my local Sainsburys you'd get the impression it's all over already. I noticed yesterday the hand sanitiser has been shoved away into a corner to make way way for a few pallets of cut price Xmas booze. 'Eat, drink and be merry' indeed.

That's effectively the herd immunity approach which is a term that's been used since at least the 1920s.

One might say that the UK has been following a milder version of this approach since July with infections mainly affecting those who are unvaccinated (including school children), whilst most of the older vulnerable population carries on wearing masks and being ultra careful.

The UK has now recorded over 10 million cases, which might represent over 20 million cases when all the unreported and asymptomatic cases are included. That's a massive proportion of a population of around 68 million.

An interesting article in the Times suggests that due to the high level of previous infections (and booster vaccinations), the UK is less likely to suffer a devastating wave this winter, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/u...ists-njtd2wdhm

There was a lot of concern over the AY4.2 variant (Delta Plus) which was considered to be more transmissible, but it turns out it was also less dangerous and is now considered a move towards what the scientists have predicted will happen—that the virus eventually mutates to become just another background illness. The genetic traces of the 1918 Spanish Flu which killed 50 million around the globe are still with us in the seasonal flu that's going around each winter (and against which I've just had a flu jab).

It's great that we have such dedicated scientists on the ball looking for the ramifications of such a new strain, and I hope it will not be as bad as the warnings. #crossingfingersandtoes

I laughed out loud.

As boxer Mike Tyson once said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

Probably I should have said that I'm not sure what "burning out fast" means in relation to this particular virus.

Two years into the pandemic, it's clearly not burned through even the unvaccinated minority in countries with high vaccination rates, and it's re-infecting a fair number. Meanwhile, in my country alone three quarters of a million people have died from the infection--and more this year than last. I'm ignoring the presence of the new variant, which *may* not respond to existing vaccines, meaning it *may* not respond to natural immunity from past infections....although no one really knows.

I'm grateful that a wide variety of infectious diseases have not been left to "burn out fast" in the general population. As an official Old Person (tm), I had mumps, measles, chicken pox--all now preventable via vaccination--but not polio, anthrax, pertussis, shingles, hepatitis, meningitis, tetanus, diphtheria, or yellow fever, despite sometimes tempting fate. I'd love to see vaccines against malaria, giardiasis, dysentery, and various forms of food poisoning and bacterial infection. The hell with letting them "burn out fast."

I do hope you're right about three months to a fresh, targeted vaccine, but that doesn't mean I'll have it in my arm before the middle of next year, and I'm one of the privileged, early-eligibility ones.

The above should not be construed as implying anything in particular about masks, distancing, pub closures, professional sports, the Olympics, or almost anything else you can think of.

Hi Mark. You may have noted that in my initial post I suggested locking down vulnerable people, which would clearly include you. And I was specifically referring to Covid-19 not other virus.

The mutations continue to occur because countries did not lock down properly, and along with vaccine hesitancy, allows the virus to mutate.

In retrospect, which was what I was talking about, it may have been far more efficient to let the healthy get the virus while protecting the vulnerable. Simply because the current strategy of being half pregnant just makes the virus stronger.

Here in Oz we have the bizarre situation where I can fly to Singapore but despite being fully vaccinated, cant drive 20km across the border into my neighbouring state where my son lives, as they haven’t bothered to get the population vaccinated. That state will get Covid, and due to time, will have a greater chance of mutating.

Strangely, my state of NSW, has effectively let it run now for two months, and serious illness / death has remained stable.


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vax
 

I received my first shot in may this year 2nd in June wow I thought I am on top of this covid situation Yes but no I was vaccinated with Sinovac because that what was available in Colombia The PM of Canada at the time was questioned in media about what to do concerning vaccinations and he said the bests shot is the one that is available. My vaccine was not accepted in Canada /CA,NADA
So here we are the one that have, and the ones that have not, even though you have a vaccine approved by the WHO
Canada has finally approved the Sinovac as acceptable November 30 this year
I have basically been denied entrance to my County to get on with life and work because of the discrimination imposed by the powers to be. My tax paying dollars for dont justify the decisions the government made.
I am disgusted in my home land I am facing criminals every day in Colombia and supreme abuse of human rights but it is still better than the lambs going to the slaughterhouse in Canada

I'm confused (a familiar state of affairs): if you're a Canadian national or resident I believe you've been able to enter the country with or without vaccination, although subject to shifting quarantine requirements. Am I wrong about this?

Assuming I'm correct, it seems to me there is a real possibility that this new variant will be found in Colombia, at which point you really *won't* be able to enter Canada. The effectiveness of this sort of measure might be up for debate--see the posts above--but unless you'd really rather stay in Colombia until that's all sorted, perhaps it's time to head home.

Personally, I'd be inclined to keep quiet about the whole lambs-to-the-slaughterhouse thing until safely thru immigration. Those guys can make anyone's life miserable if they choose to.

Mark