outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

good article.

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

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

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

Good point.

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

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

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

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

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

Just get boosted, all.

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

I think thats otm xxp

Just get boosted, all.

otm

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

Just get boosted and mix Negronis

pvmic

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

How many had more than one dose?

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

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

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

appropriately calibrated level of wit for the scenario imo

the old tried + tested classics never fail!

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

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

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

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

— Zoé (@ztsamudzi) November 28, 2021

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

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

england increasingly feels like a foreign universe.

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

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

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

england increasingly feels like a foreign universe.

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

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

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

In central London it definitely varies by age - younger people less likely masked.

somebody local to me has been putting THERE IS NO PANDEMIC stickers on bus-stops, lampposts etc . I'd imagine this type of thing won't be new to city dwellers but it's new to me.

Yeah a lot of "vigil for victims of vaccines" stickers in Stoke Newington.

I've heard lots of complaints about ppl not wearing masks in Germany and the Netherlands. Also worth remembering Germany has considerably more momentum in the anti-vaxx movement than the UK does. So you know, grass always greener etc.

As far as pushback against masks being reintroduced - well it was never actually enforced innit, so if you don't want to you just won't wear one. Security guard at Tesco unlikely to make an issue of it, bus driver might refuse to take you on if they're really brave about it maybe.

Bus drivers just run the ‘it’s there to protect us all’ PSA if someone sits down unmasked, a display of proper British passive aggression.

xp lmao if there was one neighbourhood in London I’d have put money on that shit appearing…

Unitarians just asking questions

meiji restoration 2 owns https://t.co/70Lv0vG7NJ

— thot experiment (@AliceAvizandum) November 29, 2021

Don't get that tweet, the Meiji restoration was what ended the isolationist Tokugawa era and kickstarted Japan's opening of borders to the West? #wellactually

Bus drivers just run the ‘it’s there to protect us all’ PSA if someone sits down unmasked, a display of proper British passive aggression.

90% of the time yeah, tho that announcement also includes "exemptions do apply" so plausible deniability. The one time I saw something kick off maskwise tho was a couple of coppers restraining a middle aged dude because a bus driver was refusing to let him in unmasked. "They're going to close the pubs again!" he shouted.

‘it’s there to protect us all’

as bad as 'see it, say it: sorted'

"Don't get that tweet, the Meiji restoration was what ended the isolationist Tokugawa era and kickstarted Japan's opening of borders to the West? #wellactually"

Lol I couldn't remember which way round it was.

I think the gag is Meiji 2 (reopening post covid) is a failure

This thread is good.

On developed country privilege, and the marginalisation of the global South in much of what passes as Covid public science: a view from the South. A thread. 1/20

— Tom Moultrie (@tomtom_m) November 29, 2021

I think there's perhaps been some confusion regarding transmissibility vs immune escape in Omicron. The apparent rapid increase in frequency of Omicron in Gauteng does not mean that Omicron is necessarily more intrinsically transmissible than Delta. 1/15

— Trevor Bedford (@trvrb) November 29, 2021

If it takes you 15 tweets to explain something, I'm not sure twitter is the format for you.

I'm not sure twitter is the format for you.

For sure. Goes without saying. But good format or not, if you want to be read, you have to go where the audience is and entering the twittersphere has the added attraction of not requiring any capital outlay. So it's going to get used to communicate stuff that takes 15 tweets, no matter how ill-suited it is. See also: Technological/practical "backward steps" we all just accept now

the problem with the old ways of communicating stuff -- out loud, in person, or via a letter or written correspondence -- is that not enough 3rd parties were inserting themselves into the process to make money off of your communications. the way of the future is to make sure that as many other people and corporations as possible are taking a small financial cut off of our daily activities, like talking, breathing, and eating. if there is something simple you enjoy right now, like spending time with your dog, prepare for the inevitable future of somehow having being put into the position of having to report to some third party every time you spend time with your dog, for some reason