Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[bogh]

So just confirmed - no restrictions from February 1st and onwards. We'll be back to normal from next week.

[jimmy olsen]

Over 3,500 dead today in the states.

This article from December seems prescient
https://eand.co/why-the-pandemic-wont-end-a5c790d056fa

Why the Pandemic Won't End
We're Trapped in a Covid Doom Loop — And the Clock's Ticking

Ah, the halcyon days of...ten days ago. It was just a week or two ago — literally — that American media was peppered with hot takes from pundits about the pandemic coming to an end. Here's one, here's another, and here's yet another, this time from CNN Juliette Kayyem.

What were these idiots smoking?

Here we are — crippled by yet another devastating wave of Covid, that's spread at light speed around the globe. So what's the deal? Why do we keep getting it so wrong? So wrong that pundits proclaim the "end of the pandemic" literally days before yet another wave brings the world to its knees?

You're not going to like this essay. You're going to hate me for writing it. It's going to scare the living daylights of you. And I'm going to be insulting, to top all that off. I'm going to refer to the average person — at least in the rich West — as a selfish, ignorant fool. Sorry about that. But do you want the truth about Covid, the stakes, the reality of what we face — or not?
Let's begin.

If you're groaning "when's the pandemic going to endddd," you need a reality check.

The pandemic's not going to end. No, Covid isn't going to magically go away. Hello, welcome to science 101. Covid is mutating faster than we are vaccinating and boosting people. Coronaviruses are masters of mutation, at that — a theme we'll return to. Because Covid is mutating faster than we're vaccinating, we're losing the war against it. And that is not going to change anytime soon. Anytime soon means: ever, unless.

That means that we are now in a doom loop of Covid. Every winter is going to be like the last two. A new variant will bring the world to its knees, right on cue. Anybody that understood basic science — that apparently doesn't include American pundits, even richly paid CNN contributors, who appear to be completely juvenile on this subject — grasped this. That is why, right on schedule, bang, as winter set in, Omicron arrived.

This is what every winter is going to be like. A new variant arrives right on schedule. Go down the Greek alphabet. When will it end? It will not end. This is the future.

We are in a Covid Doom Loop. No, those variants will not "get milder." Don't take it from me. Take it from William Hanage, of Harvard Medical School. "There is a widespread belief that infectious diseases evolve to become less virulent, leaving many hopeful that Omicron will be less severe for everyone, regardless of age or vaccination status. This is false. Viruses do not necessarily get selected to be milder or more severe." Did you get that? The popular theory that pandemics grow milder is a myth.

So what's likely to happen, instead? I'll come to that.

First, let's talk about the only — the only — way out of the Covid Doom Loop. Now this is important. Even if you think you're an oh-so intelligent American liberal who is being responsible, believe me when I tell you that you don't have the faintest inkling of what we're dealing with.

So listen up.
We need to vaccinate and boost the world. Everyone in it. Fast. Faster than Covid mutates and spreads. That is the only way to stop the Covid Doom Loop. Period.

To do it, we also probably need to lock down the entire world for about a month, two week minimum, to stop Covid dead in its tracks. We need to spend a month where literally nobody does anything but gets boosted and vaccinated. Bang. That is how we end Covid.

The problem is that nobody is interested in the reality of what it'll take to end Covid.

Our leaders are incompetent, and the average person is a selfish fool. The only leader of a rich country — the only one — who's got an agenda to vaccinate the world is former PM Gordon Brown. He says: "A bold plan saved the world economy in 2009. With this new plan, we can control Covid...we must resolve that 2022 will be the year when we finally bring the virus fully under control." If you're a greedy American, you want to know how much it will "cost." The answer? "The $23.4bn breaks down to just 10p a week to be paid by every citizen of the wealthier countries and would not only save next Christmas but be the best investment the world could ever make. Surely making the difference between life and death is worth more than the price of the cheapest biscuit?"

Want to enjoy Christmas ever again? Get interested in vaccinating the world, idiot. Or else stop whining — it's your own fault, your indifference and negligence and stupidity ruining your holidays now and forever.

The problem, again, is that nobody's interested. Nobody but me, Gordon Brown, and maybe you. That's it. The average Western leader could care less. The average person? Totally indifferent. Brown's brilliant article, outlining his agenda? It was one of the least read pieces last week in the Guardian. As a new wave of Covid hit. The article about a farting barrister got more reads than the only real plan in the world to end Covid. It's funny, but it's also incredibly sad.

But it's about much, much more than Christmas, my friends. Saving the future of humanity, as I'm going to explain, costs literally pennies. Right now, anyways.

You need to understand what Covid is going to turn into. Don't take it from me. I was shocked — but not surprised — to see someone finally say it out loud. I turned on CNN this morning, and there was Dr William Haseltine. He was a professor at Harvard Med for decades, and helped wipe out HIV and AIDS. He knows what he's talking about.

I'm going to paraphrase. He said: "Your public officials don't get it yet. They don't understand the danger. Covid's sister viruses? SARS has a mortality rate of 10%. MERS has a mortality rate of 40%. What we should be worried about is a strain of Covid that recombines with those."

That would be the Doomsday Strain I've been talking about. Maybe you thought I was exaggerating. Or being an alarmist. So don't take it from me. Take it from a professor at Harvard Med who helped wipe out HIV and AIDS. He's concerned about exactly the same thing. Because Coronaviruses are masters of recombination, genes flowing back and forth, a strain that recombines Covid-19 with SARS and MERS isn't just likely, at some point it's inevitable.

Then we have a virus with an R of Omicron, which is incredibly infectious — but also with a severely high mortality rate. That's a civilisation killer.

That is what this pandemic is really about. I've quoted you two experts here. Put their thoughts together. Dr Hanage says the popular theory that viruses evolve to become "milder" is a myth. Dr Haseltine is the first noted medical figure, so far as I can tell, to warn explicitly that Covid is on the way to becoming something far, far more dangerous, and that it's only a matter of times before it does.

Chilled? You should be.
Let me put all that in plainer English.

There is a Covid Doomsday Clock that is now counting down. Every single case, every new wave, brings us closer to a strain of Covid that is something much more like a plague than we have ever seen for centuries. A virus that has MERS or SARS mortality rate, but Omicron's R.

If you think that's still hyperbole, then think about the science. Omicron is already a recombination of two different kinds of families of viruses. The rhinovirus — the cold virus — and Covid-19. That is a very, very bad sign. It tells us in no uncertain terms that Covid-19 is indeed a master of mutation and recombination. That it can acquire and swap genes incredibly "promiscuously." Omicron is so infectious because it's a recombination of Covid with the common cold. That is a clear warning: what happens with Covid recombines with something much worse?

We are on the way to a civilisation killing virus. You should be incredibly concerned about that, because the more I think about, the more worried I grow. Like I said, I was shocked to hear Dr Haseltine say out loud exactly what I've been thinking, to have my worst fears confirmed by a titan of the medical establishment, who also warned that we're not taking this nearly seriously enough.
There is one way out. We need to vaccinate the world. We need to lock everything down for a month, stop the virus dead in its tracks, and do nothing but boost and vaccinate until everyone on planet earth is vaccinated.

If we don't? The future looks like this. Every winter, there's a new wave. A new variant. Covid recombines with something. This time, it's something relatively innocuous, like the cold — which, overall, is still enough to bring the world to its knees yet again. But sooner or later, Covid will recombine with something truly deadly. A disease like SARS or MERS with a severely high mortality rate. Then we won't have an "ordinary" wave. We will have a civilisation killer.

Everything will stop. Our economies will not be able to function. Societies will break down and collapse. At a 10 to 40% mortality rate, everything from factories to energy grids will simply shut down. Life as we know will come to an end.

I am not kidding about any of this.
Please go ahead and think it over for yourself.

I mean it. Think it over seriously. I have tried my best to educate you about all this over the last few weeks.

The average person right about now is acting like a clueless, selfish moron. "When will the pandemic ennddddd??!! I just want to go back to shopping and party-time!!"

We have to grow up now. We face an imminent threat to the future of humanity, and no, that's not a joke. Remember what Drs Haseltine and Hanage said? This is not some kind of weird fantasy. It is, unfortunately, reality.

The Covid Doomsday Clock is ticking. It's counting down, every day, to the strain which rips our civilisation apart, a plague that lasts a decade or more, and brings life as we know it to an end, just like the plague did. Plagues — remember, they're a feature of Dark Ages. If this feels like one already, well...we need to grow up and prevent it from happening.

That part is about you. You need to get a clue. You need to understand that right about now, we can spend literally pennies, and stop Covid from becoming something out of our worst nightmares. All this? So far? This? Delta, Omicron, the waves we've experienced so far — they're nothing compared to what's on the horizon.

Be responsible. Understand it all. Think about it.
And back the effort for a global vaccination program, now. Demand it. Clamour for it. Getting tested and boosted yourself? Nice, but it's the least you can do. We need to stop Covid before it turns into what our society's wisest minds are suddenly understanding is before us now.

This wave isn't just about Omicron. It's not just about your Christmas. It's about something much, much bigger, that I think there is now a slow but dawning and horrified recognition of.

The Covid Doomsday Clock is ticking. And our chances to stop it are running out, with every new case and wave. Listen to Gordon Brown. Listen to Dr Haseltine and Hanage. Understand our warnings and our missions. Remember how all those idiot pundits who predicted the "end of the pandemic" just two weeks ago got it so, so badly wrong?

We are not kidding around, and you need to grow up, and begin understanding what we are really dealing with here. A civilisation killer.

Umair
December 2021

[Eddie Teach]

Civilization survived those plagues, and even flourished.

[The Brain]

Was I just called an idiot by a shrill internet article?

[Syt]

At this point in this cursed timeline, I can't even say 100% sure if real or parody (I lean towards parody, because surely they wouldn't be *that* crazy, and it would imply JC being smushed against your face?).

[Admiral Yi]

Was I just called an idiot by a shrill internet article?

Hurts, doesn't it?

[Josquius]

Isn't America just getting the omicron wave a few weeks after the UK?

Edit - if even. Written in December as omicron was starting up

[Duque de Bragança]

So we've had 30-50k confirmed cases per day here for the past weeks (0.5-1% of the general populace per day confirmed infected - about 5% a week). With widespread vaccination coverage (three shots for most adults, two for a lot of kids from 5 years and up) and omicron dominant, hospital admissions are dropping despite the massive spread.

It really is rampant and I've just recovered from it myself (had a few days of nasty flu, wife and kids got off much easier). Government will probably remove all restrictions by the end of January.  This feels like the end of the public health crisis in Denmark as most of us end up triple vaccinated and infected, barring a very nasty mutation.

Exactly the same situation here in Iceland. Restrictions will be gone, the only question is how soon. There will be some low level endemic spread but this is no longer a crisis.

It's been at 300,000 for a while and half a million (!) yesterday according to official figures.

https://www.santepubliquefrance.fr/dossiers/coronavirus-covid-19/coronavirus-chiffres-cles-et-evolution-de-la-covid-19-en-france-et-dans-le-monde

[mongers]

And the good news is.....

The world is now producing 1.5 billion vaccination doses a month.

So that's enough to double vaccinate every person on Earth IF those were equitably and 'scientifically' distributed.

[Eddie Teach]

https://youtu.be/Vai6YG3mYs8

[jimmy olsen]

https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1486726605057585152

UPDATE— Denmark's CDC says BA2 subvariant of #Omicron is about ~1.5 times more contagious than BA1 (original Omicron). This makes it much higher than prior estimates and could "extend" the Omicron wave into February, says Denmark https://t.co/ru4nLetewS

https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1486767843333095424

18) not good - Denmark (where BA2 is most common) is seeing really bad hospitalization surges. Many even with boosters. BA2 could be quite evasive against past immunity I'm thinking as well as more contagious.

[bogh]

That's just rubbish. Very alarmist and simplistic.

The number of people who have covid while in the hospital has increased a lot - as it has spread rapidly in society, it has also spread rapidly in hospitals and among people who are admitted to hospitals, but fewer and fewer are admitted because of covid itself. ICU numbers, respirator numbers, direct covid admittance etc. have all declined steadily while infections have gone through the roof. There's a reason we're removing all restrictions come next week. I wouldn't trust that guy if this is his general level of understanding.

[The Brain]

It's a Dr Ding world.

[Tamas]

So, I understand the pandemic phase is over and I agree with it - from what's been said it seems we could only hope to control Omicron's spread if we did a full lockdown and that'd be just silly considering the vaccination level and its lessened severity - but this still sounds pretty bad and it is weird to see how seemingly public attention have moved past caring about the virus. I am not saying we need restrictions, but there is almost a lack of acknowledgement that every 9th-10th people dying last month was probably from covid (then again getting infected in hospital affects those numbers, I guess):

The UK's Covid-19 death toll has passed 180,000, according to new figures from the Office for National Statistics.

A total of 1,264 deaths occurred in England and Wales in the week ending 21 January which mentioned Covid-19 on the death certificate, taking the UK-wide total to 180,622.

The number of deaths in the most recent weeks was above the five-year average in private homes, but below the average in hospitals and care homes.

The figures also show that there have now been just under 45,000 deaths in care homes in England and Wales since the start of the pandemic.

Around one in nine or 11.6% of all deaths registered in England and Wales in the week to January 21 mentioned Covid-19 on the death certificate.

[Sheilbh]

I often think about a piece - I think by Zeynep Tufekci about a year ago - where she wrote about how pandemics end. Her point was basically they end when people stop caring to an extent - the disease still exists, it still infects and for them it can be very sad because it can still kill - but basically there is a point when due to things you can do to prevent or cure it, that people stop worrying about it.

Chris Whitty in December basically said we are at the half-way point from a new disease where we have no technological solutions and have to rely on social ways of stopping it - lockdowns etc - to having full and widely available technological solutions - vaccines (which are good at preventing hospitalisation or death but don't "cauterise" the spread) and new treatments which are still coming into common use.

I think that is part of it and also as you say ultimately I think with covid news, people were interested in what they could do and the reality is that now in the UK over 90% of eligible people have had at least one dose, about two-thirds have had three. The vast majority of people have done the best thing they can do to reduce the risk of covid which is to get vaccinated. Beyond that there's not much more that people can do unless we go back to full lockdown. So I think there's a bit of fatalism too.

I think that captures where we are - and there's a brilliant gif from John Burn-Murdoch which shows that we (in the UK) are close to covid being another flu through the way it's evolved into milder variants and through vaccines and treatments (and now significantly lower risk than seasonal flu for young people instead of just as risky):
https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1488089690045562882?s=20&t=3KdO80UcbIlkygez5q2DqQ

Obviously that's the situation in the UK. It is radically different in, for example, the US because of vaccination rates - so the UK has more testing but in the omicron we've had about 80% more cases than the US (per capita) but half the number of deaths which is just the difference of vaccination rates. More widely there is still a failure to get vaccines to low income countries and as we move to treatments, seasonal booster shots and next generation vaccines (which will hopefully cauterise the spread too) it becomes even more important that access wasn't a one-off policy decision for the first generation of vaccines, but is ongoing - and if the life science and pharma companies won't accept that then we should legally waive IP over them so they can be manufactured around the world for the world. It's interesting that Denmark, South Africa and the UK all seem to be doing similar things and moving from restrictions given that I think we were probably the first three countries with the sequencing capacity to notice that we were having an omicron wave and all three are reaching the same conclusions and policy choices on how to respond to that (basically booster shots, vaccines and wind down restrictions).

The other interesting thing is that the stats are still difficult the range of estimates of how many people were killed by covid in the UK goes from about 120,000 to 180,000 - I think the best bet is somewhere between 150,000 to 170,000. But to look at January up to 21st - covid was responsible for about 10% of deaths, but the  number of deaths in January 2022 is below average compared to 2015-2019 so it's not having an impact on excess deaths.

Again that's another reason why I think we might be back to the beginning and covid finally is starting to look like flu - it's starting to hav a similar IFR in the UK, I expect we will have seasonal flu and covid vaccine shots every winter based on what scientists think are the variants in circulation and I think we'll probably start to have bad covid seasons in the winter, like we have bad flu seasons when they get it wrong and the annual vaccine doesn't work as well against the variants actually in circulation.