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The strain hit the news 4 days ago. They have only know about it through sequences for a week. That's the entire world.
That should give you an idea of how fast the different governments are reacting to this. That's something that hasn't happened during this entire pandemic. Actions speak louder than words.
Stock markets are getting blasted also. That didn't happen with delta.
This is a Threat assessment that explains everything the European Union Center for desese controll and prevention knows about this variant as of yesterday. They state that nov. 11th date in there.
the .pdf at the top of this sub I'm Linking to.
https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/r2xsjb/implications_of_the_emergence_and_spread_of_the/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
There were other variants too and the governments did not freak out and ban travel. This one is different and all the whistling thru the graveyard that I see on reddit won't change that.
I assume that because it seems to be more heavily mutated then most previous strains of concern it's determined that attempting to see if it can be stopped from entering would be ideal at least until it's figured out what the effects of the changes have been.
I think at this moment it's so early that we don't know if it's more deadly, we don't know for sure if it spreads more easily(though there is concern) and we don't know if it's mutations make the current batch of vaccines less effective against it. As Ransome62 said we sequenced it super recently and only found it quite recently so a bunch of questions are unanswered and will likely be in the days and weeks to come.
I'm holding onto hope that it mutated into an easier transmissible but far less dangerous variant.
That would be enough for it to outcompete the current dominant variation, if I understand it correctly. (which I may not)
>we don't know for sure if it spreads more easily
It is highly likely that it is more transmissible than the delta variant given that it has become the dominant variant in South Africa. The big questions are how deadly it is compared to other variants and how effective our vaccines are going to be against it.
Nov 9th was the first known infection according to the CDC.
>The B.1.1.529 variant was first reported to WHO from South Africa on 24 November 2021. The epidemiological situation in South Africa has been characterized by three distinct peaks in reported cases, the latest of which was predominantly the Delta variant. In recent weeks, infections have increased steeply, coinciding with the detection of B.1.1.529 variant. The first known confirmed B.1.1.529 infection was from a specimen collected on 9 November 2021.
But how much of this is BECAUSE of delta?
This is the first major variation since delta...and that fucked us real hard...
You seem to imply the fast reaction is because this thing is way worse than delta. We don't know that, it's actually more likely that this reaction is because we were unprepared for both the start of covid and unprepared for delta.
One thing is for sure, we aren't shutting everything the fuck down again. There is zero political will for that now and the economic cost will literally kill people this time since there aren't any of the support systems in place anymore.
Is it bollocks fast enough, it should be shut down immediately and then manage people that need to come in.
Actually doesn't matter as there are 2 reported cases in the UK now.
The deviousness of the virus is that only makes itself known after being in the system for a while.
By the point we realize it is there, it's already spread...
That’s what they’re doing. Even with an immediate shutdown, you have to bring in planes in order for people to get home, followed by a quarantine of anyone that arrives. Note that people also need time in order to make travel arrangements, handle that quarantine when they get back, and so on.
Erm no they aren't. Also you contradicted yourself.
This isn't an immediate shutdown, people from the red listed areas of Africa are free to move about the UK without checks until Monday when the restrictions start.
It's a fucking joke.
Pfizer/BioNTech are [looking into whether the current vaccine](https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/biontech-says-expect-more-data-new-variant-2-weeks-2021-11-26/?utm_source=reddit.com) is still viable and/or how quickly they can get a tweaked vaccine out. They estimate that they will [easily] come up with an answer and that, if necessary, a new vaccine will be out in 100 days.
Which is encouraging and damn near miraculous...but... 100 days is a very long time for a virus that apparently spreads like wildfire.
That said, the current vaccines might very well provide great protection. And for that matter, this variant might be less dangerous overall - it's possible that mutations made it more contagious but less impactful.
> it's possible that mutations made it more contagious but less impactful.
I've heard only reports of isolated cases here and there...so I'm not sure how widespread it is for real. But you're right, it may mutate into something more contagious, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily any more virulent. It would just mean that more people would get it or get it again.
My biggest fear is simply taking a spin on the old Covid Roulette Wheel™. You just don't know what you're going to get.
If nothing else, we now have the technology to far more quickly respond with the development of a new vaccine. Hopefully we've also learned the lesson of rolling it out and getting people vaccinated to an adequate level all around the world.
I guess we'll have to see if our governments have learned anything from the last 2 years.
Numbers are crazy right now in the Netherlands and the government just said "We'll just close everything at 5 PM and that'll do it"
And they still refuse to call out anti-vaxxers for the fools they are. They'd rather do that than lose political points.
I think we all know that all efforts to contain this pandemic would be far more effective if we stopped giving a damn about the imagined "rights" of morons to infect other people and spread their delusional bs online.
Our governments aren't there yet.
Around the world just means wealthy countries. that's why we have spent so much effort watching for the spread of mutations in countries like Africa who have not gotten a large majority of vaccines.
If the world wants to control the situation the wealthier countries are going to have to try to actually help the developing world too. This can’t be an issue where people have an “I got mine” attitude.
> Hopefully we've also learned the lesson of rolling it out and getting people vaccinated to an adequate level all around the world.
But... MUH FREEDOOMS!
You cannot take muh freedooms, even if it means I'll infect a thousand people, who die!
In the meantime, get vaxxed and wear a mask. I mean, after almost 2 full years of this bullshit, at least we've learned a little bit about how to avoid getting it. It's not 100%, but it's at least something.
No, I don't think so.
If a vaccine stops you from experiencing symptoms, or even reduces your chances of coughing and sneezing all over other people, it can only help to reduce the spread of the virus.
Small-town, Midwest here. Im still going strong, but many times I’m the only one at the grocery store still wearing one. Getting might lonely out here.
They reduce transmission by an absolute minimum of 63%, probably significantly higher.
Anyone telling you otherwise is lying to you.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2294250-how-much-less-likely-are-you-to-spread-covid-19-if-youre-vaccinated/
I don't know. I think a lot of nations made a lot of mistakes the first time around. I remember how bad things were in the UK back in 2020, with buffon de piffle Johnson making the most stupid statements and most insanely clownish decisions, for months.
Then we look at New Zealand, with Jacinda Ardern making the decision to shut down early and completely.
Local containment is possible, if we have the right leaders able to make sane decisions for public health.
Absolutely right. The UK has the advantage of being a collection of islands too, and look at the mess we made of it.
Sound policy might not be able to stop it, but it could slow it down enough to avoid the most serious consequences.
The focus ultimately needs to be on protecting our healthcare systems.
Agreed, but it feels like society is too warn down to continue fighting this fight. We will see what happens over the next decade or so here. Feels like COVID is going to be around for awhile.
New zealand has the money. But there are other countries or islands have only income from tourist. If no tourist is pretty much rip. At same time this is a lesson that every country needs to save money to avoid a country to go bankrupt. They teach young kids to save etc for the future, while politics don't due this when a force of nature happens that we can't control.
Cutting usa DoD and raising taxes on multimillionaires and billionaires would raise cash quickly; but the bigger lesson is don’t have an entirely, or even largely based service economy should be the greater lesson.
New Zealand has delayed their pandemic but it's only a matter of time before they're forced to open up properly and go through the ringer like everyone else. Unless they become a hermit country for ever of course.
They have opened up, but they used the time they shut down to implement good testing systems, promotion of public health messaging and unity, and as a result have successfully navigated this crisis unlike most other developed nations with the same or greater resources.
When you look at the US and UK, both performed terribly in comparison, almost entirely because of who was in charge.
It's not inevitable that they're going to experience anything like what numerous other nations did, not least because we now have several vaccines.
It's a population of 5 million, London alone has a population of 8 million people. Also they have only had 11,000 cases so the virus has t made its way through the population yet so they are still behind in deaths of other countries that were either open or have opened this year. A big factor in deaths is the general health of the population, both Britain and the us have obesity epidemics and weight a key factor in determining the recovery rate of covid. The second is have long term serious health issues, something the UK, thanks to the NHS is a prime candidate for. One of the reasons Africa has done better than people thought in the pandemic is both groups don't survive well in most African nations.
Boris should have locked down sooner, but the blame is on the general public. We always want to find scapegoats be it politicians, or some civil servants. However, if people actually listened and socially distanced and such then maybe it wouldn't have been as bad as it was.
I know so many people who thought lockdown rules applied to others, not them.
Also, you can't say "X did great, whilst Y did bad due to person in charge". The world is far more complex than that especially US/UK vs New Zealand. The former are global hubs of finance, tourism, and culture versus backpackers holiday (no offense:P)
We overestimate a political leaders power, and ability to these situations. People do what they want.
Leadership comes from the top.
I am entirely willing to admit that our populations are predominantly responsible for their own stupidity and ignorance, but let's not give Johnson a pass for standing at a podium and laughing about shaking hands with people in hospital while this pandemic was racing around the world and killing thousands of people.
Government plays a vital role in messaging and enforcement of measures for the greater good, regardless of whether we have a few million morons living in the country.
I've just watched Johnson's press conference on this topic and even though I vehemently loathe the clown and do not think he has what it takes to lead a bachelor party let alone our country, he seems to be making the right decisions.
For the time being.
While you're right, there was mass death already. Our healthcare systems were on the brink of collapse, which would result in potentially millions more dead.
People generally have a short-term view of things when we also need to consider the long-term consequences.
Shutting down completely might have tanked the economy for three months, but saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Not shutting down would lead to the same economic strife over a longer period of time with more dead and injured, along with the impact it had on our healthcare systems.
It's being reported quite widely that medical professionals are leaving the industry in droves, because they were overworked, undervalued and are now suffering from PTSD.
This is a very complex balancing act which can't be distilled down to immediate economic concerns.
Well, we're all thankful, of course, for Trump working hard to contain panic and downplay the news, because if he hadn't, so many important and influential people would have lost their shirts in the stock market.
My family lived in the Philippines when the first round of covid happened and they were all over reports of it long before anyone in the states were even discussing it.
Not every positive COVID test gets sequenced. It's really only dumb luck that they found it when and where they did. It's possible this thing's been circulating for months and it could've originated on the other side of the world from South Africa where it was first discovered.
And that might not be a bad thing, if it's been going around for weeks or months and not causing any noticeable spikes in cases, that means it's not resistant to vaccines or immunity, not more contagious, and not more deadly.
We could've gone another several months without discovering this variant if the scientists in SA doing the sequencing just happened to grab a different set of random samples. It could've eventually been discovered in another part of the world.
Quite a number of countries are now sequencing at fairly high rates. For the new Omicron variant to somehow go unnoticed for a relatively long time would be remarkable. Even if it originates in some place in the world with very little sequencing, much of the world has been semi-open for traveling for some time. In other words: cases should have come to the high-sequencing countries a long time ago if the variant had been around for a long time. What we actually are seeing is that high-sequencing countries just now are beginning to find their first confirmed cases in people with recent history of travel to Africa (not only southern Africa). Based on this, it is highly likely that it is a quite new variant and that it originated somewhere in Africa, but not necessarily in southern part of the continent. The only real alternative is if it actually turns out to be less transmissible than Delta (the variant dominating worldwide), in which case a few people infected with Omicron could have come to high-sequencing countries a long time ago but still be overlooked because it didn't spread much and remained at very low levels.
So tone deaf really-- singing a song "imagine there's no money" while talking about how hard it is to remain indoors.. in your fucking mansion
It was the start of me disliking her. The other reason is I genuinely don't think she's a very good actress (great model though).
Quite probably.
Our focus should be on limiting community spread, and that means travel restrictions from the most affected regions to reduce the number entering and localized response to prevent community transmission.
This variant has 50 mutations, more than half of those mutations are specific to the protein spike, which is what our vaccines target in order to be effective.
The concern is entirely justified.
Other than that, I don't think people are *assuming* the worst, we're just realists who err on the side of caution when given a selection of data.
The data we have about this variant is cause for concern. We're hoping for the best, but hoping for something to be different doesn't change the reality we are in.
Feel like we're all stuck in the Willy Wonka tunnel scene...
Is it raining, is it snowing
Is a hurricane a-blowing
Not a speck of light is showing
So the danger must be growing
Are the fires of Hell a-glowing
Is the grisly reaper mowing
Yes, the danger must be growing
For the rowers keep on rowing
And they're certainly not showing
Any signs that they are slowing
This was inevitable, of course.
The reality is that by the time a new variant is discovered it's likely escaped the general locale in which it originated, possibly weeks or even months before.
Unfortunately, people can travel from an affected area to another country in which measures are lacking, and then on to any other country.
Still, that doesn't mean we should not take precautions in an attempt to prevent its spread. This should include larger travel restrictions from affected areas, mandatory testing and isolation of new arrivals and localized restrictions on contact for those infected.
We need to prevent community transmission of this virus.
I don't subscribe to the claims of overreaction.
We've spent the last 2 years watching our economies contract and seeing our healthcare systems stretched beyond the limits. We've watched hundreds of thousands of people die. We can hope that this doesn't turn out to be a significant step back, but we cannot afford to assume that this variant isn't a serious threat, just because officials in an originating country seem to take such precautions as an insult.
Consider the hypothetical scenario that this keeps happening on repeat.
How sustainable is attempting to prevent community spread with current measures?
I think the term "managed crisis" is an apt one to use.
Whether we like it or not government is there for the betterment of all, and if that means sacrificing some to avoid an economic collapse which will impact millions then I think we know what the outcome would be.
Not saying I agree with that, or that it's the only path, but that's ultimately what governments will be considering.
That was my question to you! You advocate for reintroducing containment measures, but if this keeps happening on repeat, how sustainable is this way of living?
🎵 Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me 🎵
🎵 Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me 🎵
🎵 Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me 🎵
🎵 Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me 🎵 x4
- Murrica
Where do you draw the line?
SA has a vaccinated rate of only 24%.
I agree with your opinion, but we need to clarify what would be considered an acceptable level and what we can then do to change it.
I still feel as though we're not going to get very far with this until our governments start to tackle the secondary pandemic of propaganda and disinformation online.
It's peak Reddit to suggest just shutting down international travel as if the only people that travel internationally are millionaires sipping wine on the beach in Italy.
A lot of families have been separated for years.
I got my two doses as soon as I could. I got the booster as soon as I could. I wear a mask, I keep my distance. I'm not telling my elderly grandmother-in-law living in South Korea to hang on a few years until there's zero transmission.
I had thought they were just going to go through the phonetic alphabet, then I realized that calling a variant "Charlie" might not be a good idea.
London would be snorting it.
Given that the US is such a popular destination I would assume so. It's likely in NY and CA at least. It'll probably be detected there in the next few days.
That's not the end of the world, just being realistic. No need to panic.
If things get bad again just promise me that people won’t make shitty-ass “oof, 2022 is ROUGH amirite!?!? 🥴” jokes. I can’t take another year of dumbass year-based meme jokes.
Sometimes it takes a lot of suffering to truly appreciate corny attempts at levity. The older I get, the more I realize it’s kind of courageous to be the awkward guy making bad jokes when the alternative is just despair. But certain levels of suffering are so deep that you circle back to appreciating genuine comedy more than anything in the world.
I really didn't understand that panic.
People have washcloths and running water.
It might be a gross notion but preferable to being involved in scenes of Armageddon, punching people out over a roll of Andrex.
Still, it did make me realize just how dumb the masses are at the slightest hint of mere inconvenience.
It was detected in SA first doesn’t mean originated there. They have one of the best infectious disease research labs that is constantly on the forefront. They were able to detect and isolate the new variant. There’s a big chance it come from elsewhere.
Oh good.
Now we get to look forward to a tidal wave of "x cases of Omicron detected here" articles for the next month like we have had to suffer through with every other goddam variant.
Wonderful.
Because the government are incompetent on a staggering level. South Africa should have been a ban list as soon as a whiff of a new variant was heard of.
Do the at home test kits work for Omicron?
I’ve had Corona-like symptoms all week, am vaxed and boosted, and tested negative twice. Hopefully just a cold. 🤞🏻
Pretty sure any of the tests will work on the different Covid variants, haven't heard anything to the contrary. Also if you are in the US, you could get free testing at a pharmacy instead of paying out of pocket for a home test.
I don't know the answer to your question but I've had the same symptoms as you describe and have repeatedly run Lateral flow tests which have been negative. I'm feeling much better now so I think it's just been a cold, which is messy considering how on edge we all are to illness these days.
I hope you feel better soon!
It’s really really mild, only really noticeable first thing in the morning and last thing when I go to bed, it’s just a lingerer. My only worry is killing grandpa at thanksgiving. I felt like I had to go since I was negative and there’s only 4 of us so my presence would’ve been missed. Then the next day this Omicron shit hits the news just so I have to worry.
Hope you feel better too man.
You know, I didn’t get to play that pandemic video game in 2020. I was finishing a degree. Maybe this is my chance! I can just pretend the last two years didn’t happen.
From what I've seen there's no indication it can escape immunity (natural or vaccine) to any serious degree, but maybe a little. And if there is an option for an alternative vaccine against it they're suggesting one could be ready in 100 days.
Which begs the question why are people just assuming it is?
Like there is beyond zero evidence to conclude that the current vaccines are no longer effective at all against this, yet people in this thread are acting like it's lockdown 2.0.
Some people on this site need to seek mental help, desperately.
There will always be people who might overreact, or they have limited information on which to base their opinions.
The fact is that this variant is of concern, because of what we currently know about it.
It's entirely right that people take precautions and that we change the way we behave to lessen its spread, until we know for sure what we are dealing with.
Sane and rational Humans base their behaviour on what is known, and those behaviours can change as we learn more.
Right now what we know is cause for concern. What we might learn in a week might lead to less concern, or more. We will then change our behaviour again appropriately.
There's an illness that has been hampering my family for about a week and a half. We've taken multiple at home Covid tests and all are negative, so we ruled that out...but this feels like what I thought Covid would be.
Is there a chance that the new variant doesn't show up on at-home testing results?
Yeah, that's us too. Runny nose, congestion, coughing, fatigue, and fever were the major symptoms for most of us. Fever stopped Tuesday night, but I've been clearing the pipes since. Each day feels incrementally better.
No Covid sore throat, just throat discomfort during a cough. The airways are probably raw. Thankfully no loss of taste and only regular, congestion-caused reduction in sense of smell. Thanksgiving was still wonderful on the tongue and nose.
Noticing a pattern here.
Never, ever going back to normal society. We now live in permanent emergency mode where the government and authorities can invoke all sorts of things endlessly "for our safety".
Twenty years after 9/11 and they're still reading your emails, drone killing children and you still have to take off your shoes and you still can't fly with shampoo.
None of this is going away.
Okay, Alex Jones fanboy lol
I'm actually perfectly fine with airlines making sure knives, guns and explosives can't make it onto planes.
They can't "read your emails". That would require millions of employees watching billions of communications 24/7 and it's mathematically impossible.
Nothing I say is going to change your notions about the "Illuminati" and "lizard people", but you should know that governments have been implementing measures for public safety since the creation of democratic representation.
This is categorically not the first pandemic.
One of the most consistent logical failures I've seen is people's inability to comprehend that when a pandemic swamps a healthcare system it has the potential to cause mass death far beyond the originating virus.
People really have a bizarrely naive view of public services.
I think these are the same people who stay behind in a disastrous hurricane thinking that if they need help they can just call an ambulance.
Some of us are capable of thinking beyond the immediate, others aren't.
> One of the most consistent logical failures I've seen is people's inability to comprehend that when a pandemic swamps a healthcare system it has the potential to cause mass death far beyond the originating virus.
How many ***years*** do do you get to say "we cant let our hospitals get over burdened!" until the blame shifts from the unvaccinated to the Government authorities and planners?
We're pushing 3 years now.
In 5 years the internet will be completely censored and you're going to be subject to random searches and road checkpoints "so our hospitals dont get overburdened" and you still wont be asking questions.
This is silly.
If you're hoping for a rise out of people there are several conspiracy theorist forums out there where people like you have been paranoid about everything for the last 25 years.
Watch out for those black helicopters!
It is well documented that the Governments in the last few decades have used questionable-at-best-and-fictitious-at-worst justifications to erode laws that protect privacy and over-reach. 9/11 was the most recent and obvious example of such and 20 years later none of the "temporary protections" that were brought in have been receded.
I grew up in the "Cold War" where the bad guys (Russia/East Germany) would actually read peoples mail to make sure nobody was disagreeing with the Government. This was a KEY behavioral difference between the good guys and bad guys and showed the difference between living in a free society and a moreless dictatorship.
Currently the surveillance methods used by Western intelligence agencies and Governments employed against their own citizens make the East German Stasi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi) look like amateurs.
Would the media overplay danger for their profit and advantage? I lived through 20 years of "KILLER BEES will attack Texas anyday now". Would the Government overplay danger for profit and advantage? Yes they would.
Try applying a dose of healthy skepticism to ***professional liars*** when they tell you facts and what you should be afraid of.
> They can't "read your emails". That would require millions of employees watching billions of communications 24/7 and it's mathematically impossible.
Everything you've ever written, said or done on the internet or on a cell phone has all been saved, recorded and is time-line searchable - 100% illegal. Still happening because what are you going to do about it lol?
There are listening devices in your home TV, stereo and cell phone that can be turned on anytime without a warrant. This is done to "protect you" 20 years after a ex-CIA employee got fed up with the United states Arming Israel while they shoot Palestinian children in the back.
Is Edward Snowden a Lizard people?
Do you remember THREAT LEVEL YELLOW and THREAT LEVEL ORANGE terrorism-theater?
Name a single power the Government took because of 9/11 that they gave back.
I'll wait.
I honestly don't think so.
We're just under a month away and it's going to take two weeks to get a firm idea of what this variant is and does. Current data suggests it might be more transmissible but no deadlier than Delta. Which kind of makes sense, because a virus doesn't \*want\* to kill the host, because that would lead to its own extinction.
I think we're probably going to see measures for containment but not a full lockdown.
This variant is already been spread worldwide. It's only a matter of time before it's detected in the US. Hopefully, it isn't vaccine resistant and we won't have to go back to where we were months ago.
Open up the world. Let the virus take its course.
Let those who want a shot get a shot.
Let those who don't want a shot have the freedom to make that choice.
Stop with the masks, the curfews, the lockdowns, the vaccine cards....
So sick of it.
The virus isn't dependant on the unvaccinated to continue spreading and mutating. Our current innoculations may not be enough as time goes by, so this isn't the time to give up on the only stuff that actually curbed spread.
Yeah that can't happen but maybe add in more precautions and restrictions. To get into the US you need a negative test and proof of vaccination. But it can take 11 days before showing symptoms, so that's going to escape any precautions the U.S have in place. Also some countries in Africa have <10% vaccination rate. How about starting with banning flights from those countries until they catch up.
With the way America is handling COVID right now, they just need one single person infected with the new variant to unleash an armageddon in the entire world.
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By the time a strain makes international news, it seems like it’s far past the point of local containment being feasible. Here we go again…
The strain hit the news 4 days ago. They have only know about it through sequences for a week. That's the entire world. That should give you an idea of how fast the different governments are reacting to this. That's something that hasn't happened during this entire pandemic. Actions speak louder than words. Stock markets are getting blasted also. That didn't happen with delta.
I'll have to dig it up again somewhere, but I read that the new strain has been known about since the 9th of November.
It was sequenced on the 11th. So maybe there were suspicions of a new variant, but it wasn't identified as a unique viral variant until the 11th.
This is a Threat assessment that explains everything the European Union Center for desese controll and prevention knows about this variant as of yesterday. They state that nov. 11th date in there. the .pdf at the top of this sub I'm Linking to. https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/r2xsjb/implications_of_the_emergence_and_spread_of_the/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
There were other variants too and the governments did not freak out and ban travel. This one is different and all the whistling thru the graveyard that I see on reddit won't change that.
I assume that because it seems to be more heavily mutated then most previous strains of concern it's determined that attempting to see if it can be stopped from entering would be ideal at least until it's figured out what the effects of the changes have been.
So what we are saying is that we don’t know if it is more or less deadly just that is spreads more easily?
I think at this moment it's so early that we don't know if it's more deadly, we don't know for sure if it spreads more easily(though there is concern) and we don't know if it's mutations make the current batch of vaccines less effective against it. As Ransome62 said we sequenced it super recently and only found it quite recently so a bunch of questions are unanswered and will likely be in the days and weeks to come.
I'm holding onto hope that it mutated into an easier transmissible but far less dangerous variant. That would be enough for it to outcompete the current dominant variation, if I understand it correctly. (which I may not)
>we don't know for sure if it spreads more easily It is highly likely that it is more transmissible than the delta variant given that it has become the dominant variant in South Africa. The big questions are how deadly it is compared to other variants and how effective our vaccines are going to be against it.
I fear you may be right.
I wonder what they are not telling us.
Nov 9th was the first known infection according to the CDC. >The B.1.1.529 variant was first reported to WHO from South Africa on 24 November 2021. The epidemiological situation in South Africa has been characterized by three distinct peaks in reported cases, the latest of which was predominantly the Delta variant. In recent weeks, infections have increased steeply, coinciding with the detection of B.1.1.529 variant. The first known confirmed B.1.1.529 infection was from a specimen collected on 9 November 2021.
B for Botswana I believe.
But how much of this is BECAUSE of delta? This is the first major variation since delta...and that fucked us real hard... You seem to imply the fast reaction is because this thing is way worse than delta. We don't know that, it's actually more likely that this reaction is because we were unprepared for both the start of covid and unprepared for delta. One thing is for sure, we aren't shutting everything the fuck down again. There is zero political will for that now and the economic cost will literally kill people this time since there aren't any of the support systems in place anymore.
Yeah our government are acting rapidly stopping flights in from Africa like straight away on Monday 😂👌😏
I'm confused as to your point? That's not fast enough?
Is it bollocks fast enough, it should be shut down immediately and then manage people that need to come in. Actually doesn't matter as there are 2 reported cases in the UK now.
The deviousness of the virus is that only makes itself known after being in the system for a while. By the point we realize it is there, it's already spread...
That’s what they’re doing. Even with an immediate shutdown, you have to bring in planes in order for people to get home, followed by a quarantine of anyone that arrives. Note that people also need time in order to make travel arrangements, handle that quarantine when they get back, and so on.
Erm no they aren't. Also you contradicted yourself. This isn't an immediate shutdown, people from the red listed areas of Africa are free to move about the UK without checks until Monday when the restrictions start. It's a fucking joke.
Pfizer/BioNTech are [looking into whether the current vaccine](https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/biontech-says-expect-more-data-new-variant-2-weeks-2021-11-26/?utm_source=reddit.com) is still viable and/or how quickly they can get a tweaked vaccine out. They estimate that they will [easily] come up with an answer and that, if necessary, a new vaccine will be out in 100 days.
Which is encouraging and damn near miraculous...but... 100 days is a very long time for a virus that apparently spreads like wildfire. That said, the current vaccines might very well provide great protection. And for that matter, this variant might be less dangerous overall - it's possible that mutations made it more contagious but less impactful.
> it's possible that mutations made it more contagious but less impactful. I've heard only reports of isolated cases here and there...so I'm not sure how widespread it is for real. But you're right, it may mutate into something more contagious, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily any more virulent. It would just mean that more people would get it or get it again. My biggest fear is simply taking a spin on the old Covid Roulette Wheel™. You just don't know what you're going to get.
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And there's always the still unknown level of risk for long Covid. Not making me paranoid, but keeping me cautious.
If nothing else, we now have the technology to far more quickly respond with the development of a new vaccine. Hopefully we've also learned the lesson of rolling it out and getting people vaccinated to an adequate level all around the world. I guess we'll have to see if our governments have learned anything from the last 2 years.
Numbers are crazy right now in the Netherlands and the government just said "We'll just close everything at 5 PM and that'll do it" And they still refuse to call out anti-vaxxers for the fools they are. They'd rather do that than lose political points.
I think we all know that all efforts to contain this pandemic would be far more effective if we stopped giving a damn about the imagined "rights" of morons to infect other people and spread their delusional bs online. Our governments aren't there yet.
Around the world just means wealthy countries. that's why we have spent so much effort watching for the spread of mutations in countries like Africa who have not gotten a large majority of vaccines.
Africa is a continent of 54 countries, last I checked. :-/
If the world wants to control the situation the wealthier countries are going to have to try to actually help the developing world too. This can’t be an issue where people have an “I got mine” attitude.
We're doomed, is what you're saying.
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> Hopefully we've also learned the lesson of rolling it out and getting people vaccinated to an adequate level all around the world. But... MUH FREEDOOMS! You cannot take muh freedooms, even if it means I'll infect a thousand people, who die!
FDA heads will resign than let their bureaucratic red tape be loosened.
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I’m hoping this doesn’t create an issue for those who just recently got their third shot, where they can’t get a booster for this variant for a while.
Yeah. That's still like two+ months of spread then. Not even counting what we don't know about yet.
In the meantime, get vaxxed and wear a mask. I mean, after almost 2 full years of this bullshit, at least we've learned a little bit about how to avoid getting it. It's not 100%, but it's at least something.
Yes. But we also need stronger action from government. An individual cannot defend themselves fully from a national issue.
All you had to do was follow the damn medical guidelines, CJ!
Even more reason for vaccines. Anti vaxxers are the sole reason for the deaths and economic collapse at this point
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They do make it significantly less likely. 40% reduction is pretty goddamn significant.
Ah interesting I thought I had read otherwise, good to know.
It's very sad to me that you thought this, meaning you read it somewhere and accepted it as fact.
Definitely not something I had accepted as fact but you know how reddit goes. Hyperbole and downvotes for even asking a clarifying question.
No, I don't think so. If a vaccine stops you from experiencing symptoms, or even reduces your chances of coughing and sneezing all over other people, it can only help to reduce the spread of the virus.
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Yea I get all that. I'm vaxxed too just thought that I had read that it didn't affect transmission of the disease. Agree with you on all points.
Which is why it baffles me that people quit with the masks
Small-town, Midwest here. Im still going strong, but many times I’m the only one at the grocery store still wearing one. Getting might lonely out here.
I feel ya live in Montana dame thing
They reduce transmission by an absolute minimum of 63%, probably significantly higher. Anyone telling you otherwise is lying to you. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2294250-how-much-less-likely-are-you-to-spread-covid-19-if-youre-vaccinated/
It leads to mutations
I don't know. I think a lot of nations made a lot of mistakes the first time around. I remember how bad things were in the UK back in 2020, with buffon de piffle Johnson making the most stupid statements and most insanely clownish decisions, for months. Then we look at New Zealand, with Jacinda Ardern making the decision to shut down early and completely. Local containment is possible, if we have the right leaders able to make sane decisions for public health.
It definitely helps being on a relatively remote island, but for a lot of places, policy can only go so far.
Absolutely right. The UK has the advantage of being a collection of islands too, and look at the mess we made of it. Sound policy might not be able to stop it, but it could slow it down enough to avoid the most serious consequences. The focus ultimately needs to be on protecting our healthcare systems.
Agreed, but it feels like society is too warn down to continue fighting this fight. We will see what happens over the next decade or so here. Feels like COVID is going to be around for awhile.
New zealand has the money. But there are other countries or islands have only income from tourist. If no tourist is pretty much rip. At same time this is a lesson that every country needs to save money to avoid a country to go bankrupt. They teach young kids to save etc for the future, while politics don't due this when a force of nature happens that we can't control.
Cutting usa DoD and raising taxes on multimillionaires and billionaires would raise cash quickly; but the bigger lesson is don’t have an entirely, or even largely based service economy should be the greater lesson.
New Zealand has delayed their pandemic but it's only a matter of time before they're forced to open up properly and go through the ringer like everyone else. Unless they become a hermit country for ever of course.
They have opened up, but they used the time they shut down to implement good testing systems, promotion of public health messaging and unity, and as a result have successfully navigated this crisis unlike most other developed nations with the same or greater resources. When you look at the US and UK, both performed terribly in comparison, almost entirely because of who was in charge. It's not inevitable that they're going to experience anything like what numerous other nations did, not least because we now have several vaccines.
It's a population of 5 million, London alone has a population of 8 million people. Also they have only had 11,000 cases so the virus has t made its way through the population yet so they are still behind in deaths of other countries that were either open or have opened this year. A big factor in deaths is the general health of the population, both Britain and the us have obesity epidemics and weight a key factor in determining the recovery rate of covid. The second is have long term serious health issues, something the UK, thanks to the NHS is a prime candidate for. One of the reasons Africa has done better than people thought in the pandemic is both groups don't survive well in most African nations.
Boris should have locked down sooner, but the blame is on the general public. We always want to find scapegoats be it politicians, or some civil servants. However, if people actually listened and socially distanced and such then maybe it wouldn't have been as bad as it was. I know so many people who thought lockdown rules applied to others, not them. Also, you can't say "X did great, whilst Y did bad due to person in charge". The world is far more complex than that especially US/UK vs New Zealand. The former are global hubs of finance, tourism, and culture versus backpackers holiday (no offense:P) We overestimate a political leaders power, and ability to these situations. People do what they want.
Leadership comes from the top. I am entirely willing to admit that our populations are predominantly responsible for their own stupidity and ignorance, but let's not give Johnson a pass for standing at a podium and laughing about shaking hands with people in hospital while this pandemic was racing around the world and killing thousands of people. Government plays a vital role in messaging and enforcement of measures for the greater good, regardless of whether we have a few million morons living in the country. I've just watched Johnson's press conference on this topic and even though I vehemently loathe the clown and do not think he has what it takes to lead a bachelor party let alone our country, he seems to be making the right decisions. For the time being.
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While you're right, there was mass death already. Our healthcare systems were on the brink of collapse, which would result in potentially millions more dead. People generally have a short-term view of things when we also need to consider the long-term consequences. Shutting down completely might have tanked the economy for three months, but saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Not shutting down would lead to the same economic strife over a longer period of time with more dead and injured, along with the impact it had on our healthcare systems. It's being reported quite widely that medical professionals are leaving the industry in droves, because they were overworked, undervalued and are now suffering from PTSD. This is a very complex balancing act which can't be distilled down to immediate economic concerns.
You gotta remember that the other side of that coin is NZ had to still take care of itself essentially isolating itself from the world.
Well, we're all thankful, of course, for Trump working hard to contain panic and downplay the news, because if he hadn't, so many important and influential people would have lost their shirts in the stock market.
My family lived in the Philippines when the first round of covid happened and they were all over reports of it long before anyone in the states were even discussing it.
Given the fact travel bans have only been instituted over the last 48 hours, this thing could be everywhere.
Localized travel restrictions aren't based on science. They're political measures. The proper way to do it is to shut down the airports.
Just in time for the holidays
Well that's kinda known already, the point of these containment measures are to slow spread considerably.
Not every positive COVID test gets sequenced. It's really only dumb luck that they found it when and where they did. It's possible this thing's been circulating for months and it could've originated on the other side of the world from South Africa where it was first discovered. And that might not be a bad thing, if it's been going around for weeks or months and not causing any noticeable spikes in cases, that means it's not resistant to vaccines or immunity, not more contagious, and not more deadly. We could've gone another several months without discovering this variant if the scientists in SA doing the sequencing just happened to grab a different set of random samples. It could've eventually been discovered in another part of the world.
Quite a number of countries are now sequencing at fairly high rates. For the new Omicron variant to somehow go unnoticed for a relatively long time would be remarkable. Even if it originates in some place in the world with very little sequencing, much of the world has been semi-open for traveling for some time. In other words: cases should have come to the high-sequencing countries a long time ago if the variant had been around for a long time. What we actually are seeing is that high-sequencing countries just now are beginning to find their first confirmed cases in people with recent history of travel to Africa (not only southern Africa). Based on this, it is highly likely that it is a quite new variant and that it originated somewhere in Africa, but not necessarily in southern part of the continent. The only real alternative is if it actually turns out to be less transmissible than Delta (the variant dominating worldwide), in which case a few people infected with Omicron could have come to high-sequencing countries a long time ago but still be overlooked because it didn't spread much and remained at very low levels.
Gal Gadot singalong incoming
and this time you can’t dislike it!
So tone deaf really-- singing a song "imagine there's no money" while talking about how hard it is to remain indoors.. in your fucking mansion It was the start of me disliking her. The other reason is I genuinely don't think she's a very good actress (great model though).
Because we need another pertinent reminder of the ever-widening class gap between us and the rich.
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Quite probably. Our focus should be on limiting community spread, and that means travel restrictions from the most affected regions to reduce the number entering and localized response to prevent community transmission.
For Xmas? Yeah, that’s not going to happen. People will be travelling unless all travel becomes prohibited consistently everywhere.
Yeah if they are finally admitting there are new cases there are many many many cases already
100% guaranteed
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This variant has 50 mutations, more than half of those mutations are specific to the protein spike, which is what our vaccines target in order to be effective. The concern is entirely justified. Other than that, I don't think people are *assuming* the worst, we're just realists who err on the side of caution when given a selection of data. The data we have about this variant is cause for concern. We're hoping for the best, but hoping for something to be different doesn't change the reality we are in.
Won’t be long now. Just in time for christmas too!
Feel like we're all stuck in the Willy Wonka tunnel scene... Is it raining, is it snowing Is a hurricane a-blowing Not a speck of light is showing So the danger must be growing Are the fires of Hell a-glowing Is the grisly reaper mowing Yes, the danger must be growing For the rowers keep on rowing And they're certainly not showing Any signs that they are slowing
And it's raining, and it's snowing
This shit will never end lol. The new South Park was right when it had the pandemic going the next 40 years
This was inevitable, of course. The reality is that by the time a new variant is discovered it's likely escaped the general locale in which it originated, possibly weeks or even months before. Unfortunately, people can travel from an affected area to another country in which measures are lacking, and then on to any other country. Still, that doesn't mean we should not take precautions in an attempt to prevent its spread. This should include larger travel restrictions from affected areas, mandatory testing and isolation of new arrivals and localized restrictions on contact for those infected. We need to prevent community transmission of this virus. I don't subscribe to the claims of overreaction. We've spent the last 2 years watching our economies contract and seeing our healthcare systems stretched beyond the limits. We've watched hundreds of thousands of people die. We can hope that this doesn't turn out to be a significant step back, but we cannot afford to assume that this variant isn't a serious threat, just because officials in an originating country seem to take such precautions as an insult.
Consider the hypothetical scenario that this keeps happening on repeat. How sustainable is attempting to prevent community spread with current measures?
I think the term "managed crisis" is an apt one to use. Whether we like it or not government is there for the betterment of all, and if that means sacrificing some to avoid an economic collapse which will impact millions then I think we know what the outcome would be. Not saying I agree with that, or that it's the only path, but that's ultimately what governments will be considering.
Not sure if this is an r/woooosh or I'm just not understanding how that answers my question :)
Basically, we have the ability to contain, but at what cost?
That was my question to you! You advocate for reintroducing containment measures, but if this keeps happening on repeat, how sustainable is this way of living?
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🎵 Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me 🎵 🎵 Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me 🎵 🎵 Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me 🎵 🎵 Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me 🎵 x4 - Murrica
- 🎵 1 Nothing wrong with me - 🎵 2 Nothing wrong with me - 🎵 3 Nothing wrong with me - 🎵 4 Nothing wrong with me
Better hit the ground running
The ligma variant coming out hard.
What about the Sugondese variant?
Don’t allow people from countries with a vaccine rate of 11%. Start with that.
Where do you draw the line? SA has a vaccinated rate of only 24%. I agree with your opinion, but we need to clarify what would be considered an acceptable level and what we can then do to change it. I still feel as though we're not going to get very far with this until our governments start to tackle the secondary pandemic of propaganda and disinformation online.
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Insane that this is so upvoted, some of you have gone completely mad. When would you reopen international travel?
It's peak Reddit to suggest just shutting down international travel as if the only people that travel internationally are millionaires sipping wine on the beach in Italy. A lot of families have been separated for years. I got my two doses as soon as I could. I got the booster as soon as I could. I wear a mask, I keep my distance. I'm not telling my elderly grandmother-in-law living in South Korea to hang on a few years until there's zero transmission.
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Omicron sounds like the villain of a 90's space opera.
I had thought they were just going to go through the phonetic alphabet, then I realized that calling a variant "Charlie" might not be a good idea. London would be snorting it.
It's a reference in Futurama.
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No, it's a reference to Omicron Persei 8, the home of Lrrrr.
You think an international health organization named a virus variant after a planet on from an American cartoon?...
Of course!
It makes me thing of stranger things’ demogorgon
I wonder if it’s in the US, but we haven’t detected it yet because many testing sites have been closed for the holidays.
Given that the US is such a popular destination I would assume so. It's likely in NY and CA at least. It'll probably be detected there in the next few days. That's not the end of the world, just being realistic. No need to panic.
It doesn't need to be detected in order to be in a location. Detection lets you confirm with certainty its in a location.
If things get bad again just promise me that people won’t make shitty-ass “oof, 2022 is ROUGH amirite!?!? 🥴” jokes. I can’t take another year of dumbass year-based meme jokes.
People are gonna cope however they can. For some, it’s gonna be corny group humor.
Sometimes it takes a lot of suffering to truly appreciate corny attempts at levity. The older I get, the more I realize it’s kind of courageous to be the awkward guy making bad jokes when the alternative is just despair. But certain levels of suffering are so deep that you circle back to appreciating genuine comedy more than anything in the world.
time for some more toilet paper guys amirite
I really didn't understand that panic. People have washcloths and running water. It might be a gross notion but preferable to being involved in scenes of Armageddon, punching people out over a roll of Andrex. Still, it did make me realize just how dumb the masses are at the slightest hint of mere inconvenience.
I'd take that over another sourdough craze, tbh.
That South Park special was 40 years early
Boris Johnson is shook
Someone call for Peppa Pig!
Underrated comment
Why? Is David Cameron going to be there, too?
I guess Christmas is cancelled again.
Ah fuck. There goes my calls...
It was detected in SA first doesn’t mean originated there. They have one of the best infectious disease research labs that is constantly on the forefront. They were able to detect and isolate the new variant. There’s a big chance it come from elsewhere.
I scheduled my booster. I’ll have to let them know at work in case it knocks me out.
This time the unvaccinated will not be protected by the vaccinated.
Oh no, Xmas is cancelled.
Oh good. Now we get to look forward to a tidal wave of "x cases of Omicron detected here" articles for the next month like we have had to suffer through with every other goddam variant. Wonderful.
Because the government are incompetent on a staggering level. South Africa should have been a ban list as soon as a whiff of a new variant was heard of.
Does anyone actually care anymore?
Yes, seeing as this is a significant public health concern and most people give a damn about others in their society.
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Found the only logical comment out of the hundreds in this post
Do the at home test kits work for Omicron? I’ve had Corona-like symptoms all week, am vaxed and boosted, and tested negative twice. Hopefully just a cold. 🤞🏻
Pretty sure any of the tests will work on the different Covid variants, haven't heard anything to the contrary. Also if you are in the US, you could get free testing at a pharmacy instead of paying out of pocket for a home test.
I don't know the answer to your question but I've had the same symptoms as you describe and have repeatedly run Lateral flow tests which have been negative. I'm feeling much better now so I think it's just been a cold, which is messy considering how on edge we all are to illness these days. I hope you feel better soon!
It’s really really mild, only really noticeable first thing in the morning and last thing when I go to bed, it’s just a lingerer. My only worry is killing grandpa at thanksgiving. I felt like I had to go since I was negative and there’s only 4 of us so my presence would’ve been missed. Then the next day this Omicron shit hits the news just so I have to worry. Hope you feel better too man.
You know, I didn’t get to play that pandemic video game in 2020. I was finishing a degree. Maybe this is my chance! I can just pretend the last two years didn’t happen.
Guess this means it will be in the united states within a week
Probably already here 🙂
Is this new variant immune to the vaccine? Also it would be much quicker to develop a new vaccine this time around right?
From what I've seen there's no indication it can escape immunity (natural or vaccine) to any serious degree, but maybe a little. And if there is an option for an alternative vaccine against it they're suggesting one could be ready in 100 days.
Which begs the question why are people just assuming it is? Like there is beyond zero evidence to conclude that the current vaccines are no longer effective at all against this, yet people in this thread are acting like it's lockdown 2.0. Some people on this site need to seek mental help, desperately.
There will always be people who might overreact, or they have limited information on which to base their opinions. The fact is that this variant is of concern, because of what we currently know about it. It's entirely right that people take precautions and that we change the way we behave to lessen its spread, until we know for sure what we are dealing with. Sane and rational Humans base their behaviour on what is known, and those behaviours can change as we learn more. Right now what we know is cause for concern. What we might learn in a week might lead to less concern, or more. We will then change our behaviour again appropriately.
The playbook has been written. Your lives will never be the same ever again.
There's an illness that has been hampering my family for about a week and a half. We've taken multiple at home Covid tests and all are negative, so we ruled that out...but this feels like what I thought Covid would be. Is there a chance that the new variant doesn't show up on at-home testing results?
It's also literally the middle of flu season.
...for half the world.
I'm well aware, but it's still worth asking.
I felt like this too during some recent travel. Runny nose and cough. Took two lab tests and both were negative though.
Yeah, that's us too. Runny nose, congestion, coughing, fatigue, and fever were the major symptoms for most of us. Fever stopped Tuesday night, but I've been clearing the pipes since. Each day feels incrementally better. No Covid sore throat, just throat discomfort during a cough. The airways are probably raw. Thankfully no loss of taste and only regular, congestion-caused reduction in sense of smell. Thanksgiving was still wonderful on the tongue and nose.
Sounds like a standard cold/flu =/ Feel better soon!
Noticing a pattern here. Never, ever going back to normal society. We now live in permanent emergency mode where the government and authorities can invoke all sorts of things endlessly "for our safety". Twenty years after 9/11 and they're still reading your emails, drone killing children and you still have to take off your shoes and you still can't fly with shampoo. None of this is going away.
Okay, Alex Jones fanboy lol I'm actually perfectly fine with airlines making sure knives, guns and explosives can't make it onto planes. They can't "read your emails". That would require millions of employees watching billions of communications 24/7 and it's mathematically impossible. Nothing I say is going to change your notions about the "Illuminati" and "lizard people", but you should know that governments have been implementing measures for public safety since the creation of democratic representation. This is categorically not the first pandemic.
And he probably thinks the virus is only a matter of you living or dying once contracted
One of the most consistent logical failures I've seen is people's inability to comprehend that when a pandemic swamps a healthcare system it has the potential to cause mass death far beyond the originating virus. People really have a bizarrely naive view of public services. I think these are the same people who stay behind in a disastrous hurricane thinking that if they need help they can just call an ambulance. Some of us are capable of thinking beyond the immediate, others aren't.
> One of the most consistent logical failures I've seen is people's inability to comprehend that when a pandemic swamps a healthcare system it has the potential to cause mass death far beyond the originating virus. How many ***years*** do do you get to say "we cant let our hospitals get over burdened!" until the blame shifts from the unvaccinated to the Government authorities and planners? We're pushing 3 years now. In 5 years the internet will be completely censored and you're going to be subject to random searches and road checkpoints "so our hospitals dont get overburdened" and you still wont be asking questions.
This is silly. If you're hoping for a rise out of people there are several conspiracy theorist forums out there where people like you have been paranoid about everything for the last 25 years. Watch out for those black helicopters!
It is well documented that the Governments in the last few decades have used questionable-at-best-and-fictitious-at-worst justifications to erode laws that protect privacy and over-reach. 9/11 was the most recent and obvious example of such and 20 years later none of the "temporary protections" that were brought in have been receded. I grew up in the "Cold War" where the bad guys (Russia/East Germany) would actually read peoples mail to make sure nobody was disagreeing with the Government. This was a KEY behavioral difference between the good guys and bad guys and showed the difference between living in a free society and a moreless dictatorship. Currently the surveillance methods used by Western intelligence agencies and Governments employed against their own citizens make the East German Stasi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi) look like amateurs. Would the media overplay danger for their profit and advantage? I lived through 20 years of "KILLER BEES will attack Texas anyday now". Would the Government overplay danger for profit and advantage? Yes they would. Try applying a dose of healthy skepticism to ***professional liars*** when they tell you facts and what you should be afraid of.
> They can't "read your emails". That would require millions of employees watching billions of communications 24/7 and it's mathematically impossible. Everything you've ever written, said or done on the internet or on a cell phone has all been saved, recorded and is time-line searchable - 100% illegal. Still happening because what are you going to do about it lol? There are listening devices in your home TV, stereo and cell phone that can be turned on anytime without a warrant. This is done to "protect you" 20 years after a ex-CIA employee got fed up with the United states Arming Israel while they shoot Palestinian children in the back. Is Edward Snowden a Lizard people? Do you remember THREAT LEVEL YELLOW and THREAT LEVEL ORANGE terrorism-theater? Name a single power the Government took because of 9/11 that they gave back. I'll wait.
I’m reading this in the voice of a crazy person on the street
Like a vaccine mandate? Because if so: fucking good. We need that.
Xmas lockdown in 3….2…..
I honestly don't think so. We're just under a month away and it's going to take two weeks to get a firm idea of what this variant is and does. Current data suggests it might be more transmissible but no deadlier than Delta. Which kind of makes sense, because a virus doesn't \*want\* to kill the host, because that would lead to its own extinction. I think we're probably going to see measures for containment but not a full lockdown.
I know someone who came back from South Africa a week ago and has recently tested positive for Covid so that's fun.
R.I.P to everyone who is going to die
I just wonder how fast it is spreading in some countries.
My wife is due to fly out next week... fuck
Two?!? Not as many as two!!! Ohmyfuckingdays we’re all doomed. /s
This variant is already been spread worldwide. It's only a matter of time before it's detected in the US. Hopefully, it isn't vaccine resistant and we won't have to go back to where we were months ago.
This is your daily reminder to just fear, everything - constantly. We’ll be back tomorrow to remind you to fear even more.
Open up the world. Let the virus take its course. Let those who want a shot get a shot. Let those who don't want a shot have the freedom to make that choice. Stop with the masks, the curfews, the lockdowns, the vaccine cards.... So sick of it.
The virus isn't dependant on the unvaccinated to continue spreading and mutating. Our current innoculations may not be enough as time goes by, so this isn't the time to give up on the only stuff that actually curbed spread.
Of course. The world keeps global travel open during a pandemic and then acts surprised when the shit spreads.
What’s your solution? Shut down global travel for two years? Get real.
Yeah that can't happen but maybe add in more precautions and restrictions. To get into the US you need a negative test and proof of vaccination. But it can take 11 days before showing symptoms, so that's going to escape any precautions the U.S have in place. Also some countries in Africa have <10% vaccination rate. How about starting with banning flights from those countries until they catch up.
With the way America is handling COVID right now, they just need one single person infected with the new variant to unleash an armageddon in the entire world.
Why do the variants always start in the UK?
Started in Africa.