Covid-19 #41: Collateral Damage

[Filippa Eilhart]

let’s not get ahead of ourselves. There is no proof at all that it’s replacing Delta.

[rotting sea cow]

Nature has an short article

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03552-w

It has been detected in Honk-Kong already. Chances are it's spreading elsewhere too. S. Africa is starting its bi-annual surge, like a clock.

Edit: There are claims that Delta is mutating itself into extinction in Japan.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2021/11/18/national/delta-variant-self-destruction-theory/

It would be cool that something like that happens elsewhere. Japan is really a weird case in the pandemic.

 

[The Anti-Targ]

Awesome. At least we are not opening our border to all travellers until April. So by then we should have a bit of an idea whether B.1.1.529 needs special caution. They key question about any new variant is how effective are the vaccines as preventing infection, illness, hospitalisation and death?

[williamjm]

1 hour ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

Covid: New heavily mutated variant B.1.1.529 in South Africa raises concern

Not looking good. Not looking good at all.

It seems to be replacing delta quickly.

Maybe the world should not make the same mistake again and assume the worst. Time to ground planes again I suspect. Better safe than sorry delta is much worse than people suspected initially after all.

The UK have just banned flights from Southern Africa.

[Luzifer's right hand]

6 minutes ago, williamjm said:

The UK have just banned flights from Southern Africa.

All countries need to act fast I feel. We can't wait. Better safe than sorry.

[Luzifer's right hand]

57 minutes ago, Filippa Eilhart said:

let’s not get ahead of ourselves. There is no proof at all that it’s replacing Delta.

It already happened in parts of SA from the stuff I read. We can't gamble again like with delta.

[Paxter]

Wouldn't it be much more surprising if new variants didn't emerge? This is hardly news to me, especially when the West is determined to boost. 

ETA: Removed some text as I am starting to play like a broken record. 

 

[Impmk2]

This is an extremely worrying set of mutations. However its so early sorting signal from noise is impossible. Caution is warranted on all fronts. 

 

14 minutes ago, Paxter said:

Wouldn't it be much more surprising if new variants didn't emerge? This is hardly news to me, especially when the West is determined to boost. 

ETA: Removed some text as I am starting to play like a broken record. 

 

South Africa is rejecting vaccine shipments due to hesitancy. Don't think availability is the problem in this particular case. 

[Padraig]

2 hours ago, Consigliere said:

And to make matters worse, vaccine skepticism in South Africa is far, far worse than what it is in the US for instance. The inoculation campaign has slowed down so much due to this that the government has asked J&J and Pfizer to delay deliveries because there is too much stock (158 days of stock at current use) and very low demand.

I had a look at the stats.  23% vaccinated.  Certainly not a good figure to be struggling at.  That's worse than Bulgaria.  And really does expose South Africa to another surge (although, there probably is a lot of post infection immunity around).

I know it happened this time last year also but it is South Africa's summer.  Last year Beta drove things.  Now it could be nu, or whatever they name it.

The numbers are still very low there.  They did go from 2000 to 20000 in a week, which is not reassuring at all.  But that could be a reporting issue more than an actual trend.

Either way, certainly makes sense to stop flights until we know more.

[The Anti-Targ]

2 hours ago, Filippa Eilhart said:

let’s not get ahead of ourselves. There is no proof at all that it’s replacing Delta.

By the time you get proof it will be too late to do anything about it. That's what taking precautions means. When something looks like it could be a problem, you take steps to make sure it doesn't actually become one. A pity that wasn't quite what happened in Jan-March 2020.

[williamjm]

23 minutes ago, Padraig said:

The numbers are still very low there.  They did go from 2000 to 20000 in a week, which is not reassuring at all.  But that could be a reporting issue more than an actual trend.

Either way, certainly makes sense to stop flights until we know more.

Some websites are showing 18000 cases yesterday but this seems to be misleading:

In retrospect they might be feeling they could have picked a better day to update their records.

[Paxter]

1 hour ago, Impmk2 said:

This is an extremely worrying set of mutations. However its so early sorting signal from noise is impossible. Caution is warranted on all fronts. 

South Africa is rejecting vaccine shipments due to hesitancy. Don't think availability is the problem in this particular case. 

Availability isn't the only area in which the West can assist. In a lot of developing countries, foreign aid in relation to distribution would help a lot. But we don't seem to care. 

This from the OECD Sec-Gen:

Quote

“Governments globally have provided 16 trillion dollars’ worth of COVID stimulus measures yet we have only mobilised 1% of this amount to help developing countries cope with a crisis that is unprecedented in our lifetimes,” Mr Gurría said. “This crisis is a major test for multilateralism and for the very concept of foreign aid. We need to make a much greater effort to help developing countries with vaccine distribution, with hospital services and to support the world’s most vulnerable people’s incomes and livelihoods tobuild a truly global recovery.”

 

[Luzifer's right hand]

The UK government seems to be going for the "be fast, have no regrets." approach which is a wee bit surprising. Israel is less surprising.

Hopefully it is another false alarm but betting on that seems incredible dangerous at this point.

 

[JGP]

Yeah, I'm not educated enough to check the data, but it sure sounds like something everyone should be a little worried about.

Not going to lie, this thread is scary:

 

[Filippa Eilhart]

is this based on the 22 sequenced cases?

Im not saying we shouldn’t be concerned but it’s definitely too early to draw any kind of conclusions. Remember that time in Luxembourg when the previous SA (or was it Brazil?) variant totally took over Delta for 3 weeks and then disappeared? 

All I’m saying we shouldn’t be panicking and let the scientists do their work. Priority is of course to see how vaccines hold up against it. 

 

And it if is 500% more infectious thanDelta then at least it will all be over in a month or two 

[rotting sea cow]

31 minutes ago, JEORDHl said:

Yeah, I'm not educated enough to check the data, but it sure sounds like something everyone should be a little worried about.

 

Eric Feigl-Ding is a doomer and has been proven wrong with many of his scary predictions. Nonetheless, he has been right on few things and he was one of the first to really sound the alarm regarding SARS-CoV-2.

23 minutes ago, Filippa Eilhart said:

is this based on the 22 sequenced cases?

Im not saying we shouldn’t be concerned but it’s definitely too early to draw any kind of conclusions. Remember that time in Luxembourg when the previous SA (or was it Brazil?) variant totally took over Delta for 3 weeks and then disappeared? 

All I’m saying we shouldn’t be panicking and let the scientists do their work. Priority is of course to see how vaccines hold up against it. 

You are right to a certain extend however I think it's correct to take measures NOW before it became a problem. Governments waited far too long to take measures against vanilla SARS-CoV-2 even as the data that was coming from China indicated that things were very bad. They did the same mistake with Alpha, when they suspended flight from the UK was way too late and the same with Beta, Gamma and ultimately Delta. Current standard travel controls have been useless in containing the variants, but even stricter ones like those in New Zealand have ultimately failed.

I've read that Africa is particularly prone to create nasty variants due to poverty and crowding as well as frequent contact with multiple animals. Another problem is the high prevalence of HIV, meaning immunocompromised individuals on antiviral therapies, breeding ground for mutations. In fact, once I saw a speculation that COVID patient zero might have been an HIV positive person. 

 

23 minutes ago, Filippa Eilhart said:

And it if is 500% more infectious thanDelta then at least it will all be over in a month or two 

Well, that is something.

One thing that worries me is that eventually a variant might be able to use another receptor other than ACE2 for cell entry, affecting pathology. The question will be, if it's deadlier we are screwed, but if it's milder, what should we do? Should we let it spread?

At some point this bloody virus has to attenuate itself, it happened with OC43, the most probable causative agent of the Russian flu pandemic. Now it's cold.

 

 

 

[rotting sea cow]

BTW, there might be other reasons why it's replacing Delta, not only out-competing them.

As I posted above, Delta seems to be destroying itself in Japan leading to nearly extinction. It might be happening elsewhere, specially if there is a large number of immune individuals. At that point immune escape is more beneficial than high infectiousness.

[RhaenysBee]

Studies also show that our generally high pandemic-skepticism doubled compared to the second wave. Twice as many people believe that covid doesn’t really exist and the pandemic is an authoritarian global ploy. Ridiculous. And sad. 

[Luzifer's right hand]

2 hours ago, Filippa Eilhart said:

is this based on the 22 sequenced cases?

Im not saying we shouldn’t be concerned but it’s definitely too early to draw any kind of conclusions. Remember that time in Luxembourg when the previous SA (or was it Brazil?) variant totally took over Delta for 3 weeks and then disappeared? 

All I’m saying we shouldn’t be panicking and let the scientists do their work. Priority is of course to see how vaccines hold up against it. 

 

And it if is 500% more infectious thanDelta then at least it will all be over in a month or two 

Stopping flights it is not panicking at all at this stage of the pandemic. It is a very prudent measure than can be lifted quickly again if it is a false alarm or if it is too late. Vaccines are not the only important part as the anti-vaxxers are already overwhelming our health care system even without a variant that might be worse. The wait and see approach has failed us multiple times in this crisis. The situation might be much better in Luxemburg of course. 

[rotting sea cow]

Mutant is already in Israel

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-detects-first-case-of-new-highly-mutated-covid-19-strain/

I was wondering why we haven't heard of new variants. At this time of the past year, they started to sprout like mushrooms and now there was nothing, except those Delta children and here we go again.