Covid - Plan B & Omicron

[Leon103]

The UK has recorded the highest number of daily Covid-19 cases since the beginning of the pandemic, with 78,610 new cases on Wednesday.
The previous record was 68,053 on 8 January - when the UK was in lockdown.
Speaking at a news conference, England's chief medical officer Prof Chris Whitty warned that records will be broken a lot in the next few weeks.
PM Boris Johnson said it is absolutely vital that everyone gets a booster jab.
He warned that in some areas the doubling rate was now under two days.
Mr Johnson said: "I'm afraid we're also seeing the inevitable increase in hospitalisations up by 10% nationally, week on week, and up by almost a third in London."
Prof Chris Whitty said the country is experiencing with two separate epidemics, one driven by the "very rapidly-growing" Omicron variant and the other by the Delta variant.
He said: "I'm afraid we have to be realistic that records will be broken a lot over the next few weeks as the rates continue to go up."
The scientist added Delta cases appear to still be flat while Omicron is growing.

• How many cases are there in my area?
• How do I book a booster?
• Where will I need a Covid pass?

Cases have risen by nearly 20,000 in one day - on Tuesday, 59,610 confirmed cases were confirmed by the government.
The jump in cases follows the introduction of new measures in recent days, with mandatory face masks in most indoor settings and Covid passes for large events in England.
Health Secretary Sajid Javid refused to rule out introducing new restrictions over the coming weeks, but insisted the measures in place currently are the right ones.
Asked if more guidance would be issued instead of legislation, he told reporters: "We keep the whole situation under review. It is fast moving, I think people understand that."
Mr Javid also said around 60% of cases in London are now of the Omicron variant.
Also on Wednesday, the UK gave out 656,711 booster or third doses of a vaccine - up by over 140,000 on the day before.
There were 165 deaths of people who tested positive for Covid in the previous 28 days.

Concerns over the speed at which the Omicron variant is spreading in the UK have been expressed by scientists and government advisers.
Earlier head of the UK Health Security Agency, Dr Jenny Harries, warned Omicron is "probably the most significant threat" since the pandemic began.
The chief executive of NHS England said the case numbers "should worry all of us" and emphasised they show how important the booster programme is.
Amanda Pritchard told the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee: "That is a stark reminder of why the current national mission to get Covid vaccination is the right one."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59673150

You have to question some of the results from the tests of the vaccines, I would like to see how many of these have had the vaccine. Have they developed the vaccine any further? Perhaps we are still using all that stock we bought up.

 

[Flat Foot]

The problem is the numbers are high, but the population numbers are even more.

There's 68 million people in the UK.

Of which 58 million have had at least one dose.

And 11 million have had a positive test for covid.

Whilst 70,000 new infections in a day is high, if you maintained that number daily you'd still be looking at three years before the whole population had been infected.

In all this, the vaccine doesn't stop you contracting covid. It'll still get in, you should just fight it quicker.

 

[DavidDetroit]

Perhaps we are still using all that stock we bought up.

I'm 100% on board with concrete science. Your post reminds me that we don't know a LOT. TV shows make it seem like we've got it taped (House MD) but a LOT or most of that is fiction.
We have a friend whose house got broken into too often and the officer told her to put a glass of water on the potentially steal-able items in hopes that the perp would touch it and set it aside. All that hooey about fingerprints ("science") is just compelling TV.
Which brings us to COVID. I know the scientists are, in general, doing there level best but there's a big gap in what we think they know and what they actually know.
I'm not directing this rant at you, Leon; you just sparked a thought I had.
Cheers, mate!

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Anyway, COVID is such a pain in the butt

Is that a new symptom.

 

[Leon103]

I'm 100% on board with concrete science. Your post reminds me that we don't know a LOT. TV shows make it seem like we've got it taped (House MD) but a LOT or most of that is fiction.
We have a friend whose house got broken into too often and the officer told her to put a glass of water on the potentially steal-able items in hopes that the perp would touch it and set it aside. All that hooey about fingerprints ("science") is just compelling TV.
Which brings us to COVID. I know the scientists are, in general, doing there level best but there's a big gap in what we think they know and what they actually know.
I'm not directing this rant at you, Leon; you just sparked a thought I had.
Cheers, mate!

So you can't get fingerprints from a glass?

 

[Underhill]

As I understand it, David means that they couldn't get fingerprints from all the other items or surfaces that the burglar had inevitably touched, whereas a clean glass would be more likely to get a good print.
TV would have you believe that they can get a partial print off any object and identify the criminal

 

[DavidDetroit]

So you can't get fingerprints from a glass?

You can. They are just really hard to get.

 

[Leon103]

You can. They are just really hard to get.

Where is your evidence?

 

[Northern_Brewer]

You have to question some of the results from the tests of the vaccines

Why? You mean they weren't tested against a variant that didn't exist until 2 months ago?

Have they developed the vaccine any further?

Yes - it's relatively quick to create and manufacture a new version of this new generation of vaccines, they've already made and tested versions against most of the major variants to date. But it would probably take three months to make, test and approve an omicron-specific one. By which time omicron will have probably been and gone, whereas we have doses of classic vaccine that can go in arms today.

Perhaps we are still using all that stock we bought up.

No - the world is ripping through vaccine inventory pretty much as fast as it gets made (high-profile screwups aside), particularly since the decision was made to boost across the population.

But it's a really complicated scientific decision to switch the target of a vaccine, aside from the sheer logistical easiness of having a single vaccine to manufacture and distribute, whose safety profile is well understood. The targets of T-cells really don't change much from variant to variant, and pre-omicron even the antibody targets don't change that much. Also the different variants have moved in different "directions" from the original Wuhan variant, so which makes Wuhan a pretty good "central" target for all the pre-omicron variants at least.

It's also complicated by the fact that like flu, SARS2 shows "immune imprinting", where your immune response is always biased towards the first antigens you're exposed to. So for instance, if you were first exposed to alpha, your immune system will work slightly better against delta and slightly worse against beta compared to people who were exposed to the original Wuhan. So even if you get boosted with an omicron vaccine, your immune system may get a general boost against SARS2 in general, but will still think in terms of your first exposure when it comes to the specific antibodies it produces.

As always - it's complicated and we don't really know yet.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

What a total cop out instead of laying rules down to stop the spread they urge the public not to mix with people you don't have to they may as well say if you choose to go to your parents house for Christmas and they all get Covid you only have yourself to blame.


The prime minister and England's chief medical officer have urged the public to be cautious if they socialise before Christmas, amid record UK Covid cases.
At Wednesday's news conference, Boris Johnson said he was not shutting pubs and restaurants but advised people to "think carefully before you go".
Prof Chris Whitty went even further than the PM, urging the public not to "mix with people you don't have to".
He warned more Covid records would be broken as the Omicron variant surges.
The UK recorded 78,610 new Covid cases on Wednesday - the highest daily number reported since the start of the pandemic.

Business groups and Labour said there needed to be more support for industries hit by a fall in confidence during the Omicron wave.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak will speak to hospitality industry representatives later to "understand their concerns", the government said.

• A record day for Covid cases - what does it tell us?

Prof Whitty, speaking alongside the prime minister, said the country was experiencing "two epidemics on top of one another", one driven by the "very rapidly growing" Omicron and the other by the Delta variant.
He said Omicron was "moving at an absolutely phenomenal pace" and that it would only be a short time until the UK saw "very large numbers" of infections.
"I'm afraid we have to be realistic that records will be broken a lot over the next few weeks as the rates continue to go up," he said.

Full article - Covid: People urged to socialise carefully as cases hit new record

 

[DavidDetroit]

Where is your evidence?

Just from what the police officer told our friend.
Are you being a little testy?

 

[Leon103]

Why? You mean they weren't tested against a variant that didn't exist until 2 months ago?

But not all those 70k had the new variant, in fact a very small percentage of them did.

 

[Leon103]

Just from what the police officer told our friend.
Are you being a little testy?

Just want to know if I have wasted 20 years slaving away in a fingerprint lab for nothing.

 

[Flat Foot]

Just want to know if I have wasted 20 years slaving away in a fingerprint lab for nothing.

It's taken you 20 years to try and get a fingerprint off a glass?

(Joke, trying to relieve the tension a bit)

 

[DavidDetroit]

Just want to know if I have wasted 20 years slaving away in a fingerprint lab for nothing.

The office said to use the glass trick because getting them elsewhere is hard.
Edit: getting prints from any object touched, like they do on TV, is fiction according to the officer.

 

[Leon103]

It's taken you 20 years to try and get a fingerprint off a glass?

(Joke, trying to relieve the tension a bit)

I will keep trying until evidence that you can't

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Edit: getting prints from any object touched, like they do on TV, is fiction according to the officer.

The Snug is well known for threads going off topic but Covid to fingerprints has to be the strangest.

 

[DavidDetroit]

Thanks. I not saying fingerprinting is not real or valuable. I'm saying it gets way overplayed on TV by always working. Useable prints are hard to come by. I was aware of fabric and the gas to reveal the prints.
Anyway, I was just going by what the officer had said.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

But not all those 70k had the new variant, in fact a very small percentage of them did.

Well - reporting on variants lag somewhat, but they're now saying that omicron is now 50% of infections in London. But regardless - what's your point? The vaccines have been tested against pre-omicron variants and stand up pretty well - by the standards of flu vaccines the Covid vaccines are remarkably good. But if millions of vaccinated people are getting exposed then even with a 90% effectiveness, you're going to have 100k's of people infected. The difference is that most of them don't end up in hospital - there's anecdotes of hospitals where every Covid patient is non-vaccinated.

The issue isn't one of testing vaccines, but of getting them into arms. The first guy to die of omicron was "an intelligent man" who "believed the conspiracies" and so didn't get jabbed, died within 2 weeks of getting ill :

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Did he have his first and second jab them refuse the third or did he have non of them?

On my phone so haven't looked at the links.