outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

want to see a bunch of depressing charts??

https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/poll-finding/kff-covid-19-vaccine-monitor-october-2021/

moderna is working on a vaccine that targets omicron:

https://investors.modernatx.com/news-releases/news-release-details/moderna-announces-strategy-address-omicron-b11529-sars-cov-2

Second, Moderna is already studying two multi-valent booster candidates in the clinic that were designed to anticipate mutations such as those that have emerged in the Omicron variant. The first candidate (mRNA-1273.211) includes several mutations present in the Omicron variant that were also present in the Beta variant of concern1. The Company has completed dosing in a potentially pivotal safety and immunogenicity study of mRNA-1273.211 at the 50 µg (N=300) and 100 µg (N=584) dose levels. A second multi-valent candidate (mRNA-1273.213) includes many of the mutations present in the Omicron variant that were also present in the Beta and Delta variants2. The Company has completed dosing at the 100 µg (N=584) dose level and also plans to explore the 50 µg dose level in approximately 584 participants. Moderna will rapidly expand testing of sera from completed and ongoing multi-valent booster studies to determine if these multi-valent candidates are able to provide superior neutralizing protection against Omicron.

novavax has, as well

moderna just doin a little heat check on omicron

yep, still got it

a bunch of depressing charts

true, but they merely confirm once more what was already fairly well known. the newer numbers about vaccinating 5-11 year olds merely reflect their parents' entrenched views, as could have been predicted, since the kids aren't making those decisions.

in the united states we have this guy who has been trying to prevent people from dying, this entire time. as a result, the entire right wing has demonized him, and a sizable portion believe he is actually connected to the antichrist, in a literal way. here is what the man who is trying to save lives is saying, these days, after 2 years of it:

“I’m trying to save lives and the people who weaponize lies are killing people. … So the only question I have is that when you show Tucker Carlson and Peter Navarro criticizing me, I consider that a badge of honor."

“They always throw up those people that make those ridiculous statements, you know, they’re telling people to do things that they’re going to die from and they’re telling me I should go to jail. As they say in my old neighborhood in Brooklyn, ‘Give me a break will you?’”

Last week, Fauci was interviewed as part of a COVID event discussion put on by the Bipartisan Policy Center where he directly addressed the partisan divide over vaccinations, fueled by Republican politicians. He was being interviewed by Dr. Bill Frist, the former Republican Senate majority leader. Fauci told the former GOP leader that he would likely have “heartburn” if he was still in the Senate today, addressing reports that show vaccination rates are substantially higher in U.S. counties where President Biden won versus areas where voters overwhelmingly supported President Trump in 2020.

“You should never have, looking at a map, and seeing that people who are vaccinated fall heavily into one group and people who are unvaccinated fall heavily into another group,” Fauci said. “That is so antithetical with what public health should be, which should be a concerted effort on the part of the entire population.”

And earlier this month, Fauci told CBS that he’s not planning to leave his position until he feels he’s done his job, again going after pundits who have painted him as some sort of COVID-19 boogeyman.

“I’m going to keep doing that until this COVID-19 outbreak is in the rearview mirror, regardless of what anybody says about me, or wants to lie and create crazy fabrications because of political motivations,” he said, pouring cold water on any speculation he might soon retire.

america to the guy who is trying to prevent them from dying: burn in hell you surrogate antichrist!!!

Things must be serious, Johnson seems to have stayed sober for the Omicron briefing :-/

the people who believe in the literal existence of the antichrist think the sanctity of those beliefs far outweigh their own death. in other situations that sort of fixity of belief can be a source of great strength, but in this case it's been imprinted onto a situation where it does nothing but evil. its kind of like when ducklings hatch and instead of imprinting on their mother, they imprint on a human -- who will later chop off their heads and eat them.

i shouldn't focus so much on the evangelical part of it, sorry. also, one of the most disheartening things to do is to read about how so many other people, around the world, are fighting against vaccinations and masks and lockdowns. that's why i know it's not an evangelical thing. i guess it's just one of the worst parts of human nature, maybe something that we all carry inside of ourselves and try to temper, to a degree.

what a horrible message to anyone thinking about going into public service, though: your country fucking hates you

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/south-african-doctor-raised-alarm-omicron-variant-says-symptoms/

The first South African doctor to alert the authorities about patients with the omicron variant has told The Telegraph that the symptoms of the new variant are unusual but mild.

Dr Angelique Coetzee said she was first alerted to the possibility of a new variant when patients in her busy private practice in the capital Pretoria started to come in earlier this month with Covid-19 symptoms that did not make immediate sense.

They included young people of different backgrounds and ethnicities with intense fatigue and a six-year-old child with a very high pulse rate, she said. None suffered from a loss of taste or smell.

“Their symptoms were so different and so mild from those I had treated before,” said Dr Coetzee, a GP for 33 years who chairs the South African Medical Association alongside running her practice.

On November 18, when four family members all tested positive for Covid-19 with complete exhaustion, she informed the country’s vaccine advisory committee.

She said, in total, about two dozen of her patients have tested positive for Covid-19 with symptoms of the new variant. They were mostly healthy men who turned up “feeling so tired”. About half of them were unvaccinated.

“We had one very interesting case, a kid, about six years old, with a temperature and a very high pulse rate, and I wondered if I should admit her. But when I followed up two days later, she was so much better,” Dr Coetzee says.

Dr Coetzee, who was briefing other African medical associations on Saturday, made clear her patients were all healthy and she was worried the new variant could still hit older people – with co-morbidities such as diabetes or heart disease – much harder.

“What we have to worry about now is that when older, unvaccinated people are infected with the new variant, and if they are not vaccinated, we are going to see many people with a severe [form of the] disease,” she said.

South African demographics are very different from those in the UK. Only about six per cent of the population are over the age of 65. This means that older individuals who are more vulnerable to the virus may take some time to present.

Two cases of omicron in UK
The B.1.1.529 variant, now called omicron, was first identified in Botswana on November 11. It has now been detected in the UK as well as South Africa, Israel, the Netherlands, Hong Kong and Belgium.

It is the most mutated form of Covid-19 discovered thus far, with 32 mutations to the spike protein. Scientists are concerned that the mutations may allow it to evade existing vaccines and spread quickly.

Two cases of omicron have now been found in the UK, with two people in Essex and Nottinghamshire testing positive for the new variant.

UK officials are busy scouring testing databases for any further sign of the omicron variant, not least because there were many South Africans in the Twickenham area of south-west London for the England and South Africa match last Saturday.

South African scientists say omicron is behind an explosion of cases in the country’s Gauteng province, which is home to the country’s commercial capital Johannesburg and Pretoria. Cases have rocketed up from about 550 a day last week to almost 4,000 a day currently.

The UK, US, the EU and Israel have all suspended travel to and from South Africa and the five surrounding countries: Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, and Zimbabwe. The UK Government added Angola, Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia to the travel red list on Sunday.

The Western travel ban has provoked anger among South Africans, with many claiming that they are being punished for having outstanding research institutions and being transparent about their findings.

this seems pretty bad tbf

not that things were ever going very well to begin with

low key dreading how awful a variant will have to be before universal enforced vaccination gets the global support it should have had from the beginning of this apocalyptic clusterfuck

not that i’m a fascist or anything. o dip, maybe i am a fascist now :(

My in laws had a trip planned to visit fam in Australia. Now they need to quarantine there for 72 hours, and there's a chance Quantas might cancel the flight outright.

I think it'll have to get like Ebola before everyone clamors for a vaccine.

xxpost Y'know, I'm at the point where I'm pretty much in favor of 'fascism' when it comes to public health. Or at least actively excluding stonewalling dipshits from every aspect of public life enjoyed by those with some sense of responsibility. When people come to feel that freedom is uncoupled from any attendant duty to others or to society as a whole, you gotta do what you gotta do.

I think it'll have to get like Ebola before everyone clamors for a vaccine.

who could have imagined that keeping all the vaccine for ourselves and countries like s africa being only 28% vaccinated would have had consequences like this oh i forgot like actually literally everyone said this would fucking happen

South Africa has asked Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N) and Pfizer (PFE.N) to delay delivery of COVID-19 vaccines because it now has too much stock, health ministry officials said, as vaccine hesitancy slows an inoculation campaign.

"We have 158 days' stock in the country at current use," a spokesman for the Health Ministry said. "We have deferred some deliveries."

https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/exclusive-south-africa-delays-covid-vaccine-deliveries-inoculations-slow-2021-11-24/

can someone please just like cropdust the planet with that inhalable vaccine already, i will chip in $5

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-59442141?s=09&fbclid=IwAR03a31IHuXgrvrtZp5p-5NWmlseFbYpAsTWBvadOGqBJ5NVvJv2I815bbE

The Omicron coronavirus variant is "not a disaster" and some people may be "hugely overstating the situation", a scientist advising the government says.

Omicron has been labelled "of concern" by the World Health Organization, and is causing alarm among some scientists.

But microbiologist Prof Calum Semple says vaccines are "still likely to protect you from severe disease".

Prof Semple does, however, support the new UK travel restrictions, saying they will allow more people to get jabbed.

Asked whether people should be fearful of the new variant, Prof Semple - who sits on the UK government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies - told BBC Breakfast: "This is not a disaster, and the headlines from some of my colleagues saying 'this is horrendous' I think are hugely overstating the situation.

"Immunity from the vaccination is still likely to protect you from severe disease. You might get a snuffle or a headache or a filthy cold but your chance of coming into hospital or intensive care or sadly dying are greatly diminished by the vaccine and still will be going into the future."

So far, more than 50 million people in the UK have had at least one dose of a Covid vaccine. More than 42 million have had two doses while almost 17 million have had a third or booster jab.

A "variant of concern" is the World Health Organization's top category of worrying Covid variants.

The decision adds weight to the mounting scientific worry about the potential of this new variant, but it doesn't change any of the facts.

The variant has an astounding collection of mutations which are thought to increase its ability to spread and bypass some, but not all, of the protection from vaccines.

However, we still don't have the clear real-world data.

We don't know for sure that it spreads faster, makes vaccines or drugs less effective or whether it leads to more severe disease.

The new Omicron variant was first reported to the WHO from South Africa on 24 November and has also been identified in Botswana, Belgium, Hong Kong and Israel.

Countries around the world are currently racing to introduce travel bans and restrictions on southern African countries in an effort to contain Omicron's spread.

The UK has placed South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Lesotho and Eswatini on its travel red list, meaning, from Sunday at 04:00 GMT, all arrivals will have to quarantine in a hotel for 10 days.

Prof Semple said that while it may not be possible to stop the variant coming to the UK, it is still important to delay its arrival.

"If you can slow the virus coming into your country it gives you more time for your booster campaign to get ahead of it," he said.

"It also gives the scientists longer to understand more about the virus in case there is anything we really should be worrying about."

Asked what other measures he thought were advisable in the face of a new variant and the 50,091 new UK cases reported on Friday, Prof Semple said he was in favour of mask wearing in shops and on public transport, and hand washing.

Like Prof Semple, Prof Sir Andrew Pollard, the director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, expressed cautious optimism that existing vaccines could be effective at preventing serious disease from the Omicron variant.

He told the Today programme that while it would still be weeks until scientists properly understood the effects of Omicron's mutations, most of them were similar to those seen in other variants.

"Despite those mutations existing in other variants, the vaccines have continued to prevent serious disease as we've moved through Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta," he said.

"At least from a speculative point of view, we have some optimism that the vaccine should still work against a new variant for serious disease but really we need to wait several weeks to have that confirmed.

"It's extremely unlikely that a reboot of a pandemic in a vaccinated population like we saw last year is going to happen."

Asked whether it was possible to update the vaccines if deemed necessary, Prof Pollard added: "The processes of how one goes about developing a new vaccine are increasingly well oiled. So, if it's needed, that is something that could be moved very rapidly."

The UK currently has no known cases of the Omicron variant.

The travel ban for southern African countries is designed to maintain that for as long as possible, and Health Secretary Sajid Javid said the government "won't hesitate to act" if further measures are needed.

"One of the lessons of this pandemic has been that we must move quickly, and at the earliest possible moment," he told MPs on Friday. "We're heading into winter and our booster programme is still ongoing, so we must act with caution."

But asked whether the government could switch from its current, minimal Covid restrictions to its Plan B for winter, Mr Javid said the current rules "remain the policies that I think we need at this time".

The Labour Party, meanwhile, is calling on the government to reduce the amount of time people need to wait between their second vaccine dose and their booster.

At present, people can book a booster after five months but must wait until six months to have it. Labour says the gap should be reduced to five months before people get a third dose.

Shadow health minister Alex Norris said: "This new variant is a wake-up call. The pandemic is not over, we need to urgently bolster our defences to keep the virus at bay."

https://www.science.org/content/article/patience-crucial-why-we-won-t-know-weeks-how-dangerous-omicron

good article.

in other news , I'm a little worried about the news that anecdotally, Omicron seems to be less severe actually being confused for scientific consensus at this stage. it's just conjecture at this point, and while I'm hoping it's true (and people like Eric Topol are actually stating it's possible that it's less clinically severe), it too is not a foregone conclusion that we're 'dodging a bullet'.

She said, in total, about two dozen of her patients have tested positive for Covid-19 with symptoms of the new variant. They were mostly healthy men who turned up “feeling so tired”. About half of them were unvaccinated.

Just to state the obvious, a private practice in South Africa is an extremely self-selecting group also so I wouldn’t be inclined to draw any great conclusions about severity of symptoms (or anything else really)

Good point.

My mantra since March 2020: We'll know a lot more about all of this in six months.

Which, granted, is never any comfort in the moment.

Its a lot more of a comfort in the moment than either doomposting or reading doomposts tbf

even though I resemble those remarks I agree. there's a negative-addictive aspect to it that I had to break free of, and this new variant had me going back to bad habits.

in any case, it won't be a mystery for long, best to react just to what we know for now (as civilians), and let the scientists do the sweating and direction-givers

Just get boosted, all.

dad is finally getting boosted tomorrow, then i can take a breath.

I think thats otm xxp

Just get boosted, all.

otm

mine is scheduled for 40 minutes from now at a cvs (both flu and modernoboost)

Just get boosted and mix Negronis

pvmic

"It’s a bit worrying if half the people presenting themselves with Omicron are vaccinated, as only 35% of the adult population in South Africa is"

How many had more than one dose?

Anyway, in a week or two we should have more data to draw some better conclusions. If it isn't bad, then I expect we will carry on as is, just rolling the dice on the variants.

this gammon muttered "fucking idiots" under his breath whilst walking past me and the kid at the shop entrance the other day, presumably because we had masks on. I didn't have any witty response and kept it to "fuck off, dickhead". I get the feeling there is going to be much resistance to the return of mandatory mask wearing in shops in the UK.

I didn't have any witty response and kept it to "fuck off, dickhead".

appropriately calibrated level of wit for the scenario imo

the old tried + tested classics never fail!

xp can only hope for some improvement at work compared to friday where at one point 10 of our 12 self service tills were occupied by maskless customers.

yeah I was in Asda last week it was like 5-10% of customers wearing masks, don't want to get too self-righteous - but fuck these selfish morons.

even more annoying that most of them probably had masks in their pockets being as they need them onboard their flights

The US government made this statement the day after it announced its travel ban on South Africa and the majority of the region, which is really just irony at its cruelest and most peak https://t.co/ZkVuThkuo6

— Zoé (@ztsamudzi) November 28, 2021

yeah I was in Asda last week it was like 5-10% of customers wearing masks

so messed up. it is still high in scotland but tailing off a bit. i was in berlin last week and would estimate mask wearing was around 99%+. i'm currently in madeira and it must be around 99.9999%. i'm actually not sure i have spotted anyone not wearing a mask indoors. there doesn't appear to be anyone who has an exemption either.

england increasingly feels like a foreign universe.

We're on vacation this week in Oaxaca, and just about everyone wears masks everywhere — even outdoors! People on scooters and motorcycles are wearing them. It's going to be weird to go back to Tennessee in a few days where at best a third of the people in any given store might have them on.

To hear how most of South Florida takes masks more seriously than England is a bummer.

I went to LA/OC this week and it was pretty striking how few people wore masks compared to Oakland. At a big indoor concert in Long Beach, no vax check, only a few masks...

england increasingly feels like a foreign universe.

I was in Denmark earlier in the month and I can't have seen more than a dozen masked people in a whole fortnight - except in airports, the only legally enforceable place, although even there it was only about 50%. Plus there was at least one car (saw it twice and heard it four or five times) driving round Copenhagen broadcasting anti-vax messaging.

England was ok until the ppl in charge told everyone they didn’t have to wear masks for any reason anymore - they are trying to reintroduce them for shops & buses (? I think, sorta stopped following this shit) from tomorrow, we’ll see how that goes

I still see 30-40% mask wearing in supermarkets and shopping centres round by us even with nothing to enforce it.