The Coronavirus Thread

[macdoc]

ugh
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-co ... oming.html

snip

But I’m pretty certain that everybody in the next six to 12 weeks will be infected with Omicron, unless they’re living the life of a hermit. That’s just the reality.”

[aufbahrung]

Say Omicron got low mortality. So has HIV its the AIDS that comes months or years later that kills you.

[Tero]

Kate McKinnon returned to "Saturday Night Live" this week and opened the show portraying Dr. Anthony Fauci.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/12/media/sa ... index.html

[JimC]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-12/ ... /100690964

In the Kirby Institute's lab in Sydney's eastern suburbs, there's a freezer full of variants. From the original Wuhan strain, to Beta, Delta, and others in between, it's a record of how the COVID-19 virus has adapted and changed multiple times since it was first detected almost two years ago.

This freezer of samples is now being put to good use as Australian scientists work around the clock to figure out exactly how the newest variant, Omicron, differs from those that came before.

Perhaps the biggest question is how the new variant will fare against existing vaccines and natural antibodies, developed through previous exposure to the virus.

It's a question virologist Dr Stuart Turville and his team at the Kirby Institute are hoping to answer. Since they got their hands on an Omicron sample at the end of last month, the team hasn't left the lab.

And while there is still plenty of work left to do, he says one thing has become clear this week: "This thing is the most evasive one we've seen so far."

The first stage of Turville and his team's investigations involved pitting the variant against 14 donor samples which had received two doses of either Pfizer or AstraZeneca and a product called hyperimmune globulin, made up of thousands of blood donors, which is used as an "early warning device of how a variant may evade antibodies".

"[Hyperimmune globulin] has this really beautiful breadth, so it has the ability to bind to lots of different SARS-CoV-2 variants," Turville says. "If you've got a variant that escapes that or reduces the efficacy or potency of that product, then you're moving into kind of new territory."

By Wednesday this week, the team had a "snapshot" of what we are dealing with. The two-dose vaccine antibodies used in the test couldn't block Omicron.

The hyperimmune globulin was able to inhibit Omicron, but at a concentration 11 to 13 fold greater than what is needed to get the same result against the earlier Wuhan strain.

"Essentially what we learnt from that experiment was that 'oh, this thing is evasive'," he says. "It's not surprising that a lot of people who are vaccinated are getting it."

This week COVID-19 cases in Africa were up by 93 per cent, according to the World Health Organization, with the greatest increase in the southern part of the continent. Research is underway to determine if Omicron, which has now been detected in almost 60 countries, is fuelling the wave.

Meanwhile, many of the new cases in South Africa are reinfections in people who have previously had COVID-19.

[Brian Peacock]

The South African (fairy) data is pretty worrisome in terms of hospitalisations.

[Scot Dutchy]

From that variant you dont end up in hospital. People are self testing here making the data even more fariesh.

[Tero]

Omicron kills 1
https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/britai ... 630qRXGBfM

[Tero]

(cunt is not here so have to make cuntian conclusions myself)
Wuhan virus did escape from lab! Because a mouse bit a worker in Taiwan!
https://www.businessinsider.com/taiwan- ... irO3hkvtm8

[Brian Peacock]

Scotland to offer a booster to all adults by the end of the week.

[macdoc]

Insane acceleration
https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/why-omic ... -1.6283611

https://www.thestar.com/news/ontario/20 ... tario.html

[Tero]

BREAKING: US Air Force discharges 27 over the coronavirus vaccine mandate. They are believed to be the first U.S. service members removed over the shot mandate.

[Scot Dutchy]

Who fucking cares?

[Tero]

[Tero]

People write and write. Perhaps they should write poetry or use interpretive dance for this thing? Atlantic:

Having lived through the past two years on Earth, one should be allowed to wonder if our present circumstances might persist endlessly. Perhaps as superstition, to ward off its arrival through voodoo. Perhaps as hostility toward the too-early-to-tell recklessness of bureaucratic scientism. Perhaps as sensation, to let despair’s heat burn off any useless hope or fear that still remains. Perhaps as practice, to gird ourselves for the worst-case scenario. What if it never ends?

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/arch ... m=news_tab

[laklak]

Omicron kills 1
https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/britai ... 630qRXGBfM

Damn, that puts the death rate at, what? 0.000001%?

OMG SHUT DOWN THE WORLD WE'RE ALL GONNA DIIIIIIIIE!!!