General / Off-Topic The safest place

Status
Thread Closed: Not open for further replies.
A new strain of Covid-19 from South Africa is now worrying as much as the British variant that isolated the United Kingdom a few days earlier. London has announced that it has identified two cases of this "highly worrying" variant because it is "more contagious" in the United Kingdom.

🦠 🦠 🦠 🦠 🦠 🦠 😷
 
The variant detected in the United Kingdom is well 50% to 74% more contagious, according to a study.

On the basis of the preliminary data available, the study concludes that the variant of Sars-Cov-2 suspected to be at the origin of the sharp increase in the number of cases in the South East of England in recent weeks could be 50% to 74% more transmissible (56% on average over the three regions concerned) than the strains so far in circulation, summarizes one of the authors, Nick Davies, biologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM).

🦠 🦠 🦠 🦠 🦠 🦠 🦠 😷
 
Travel will be restricted from the United Kingdom to France "until January 6 minimum", announced Thursday, December 24 the Ministry of the Interior, after the appearance of a new variant of the coronavirus in the UK.

Only French nationals, British nationals residing in France, people who want to transit through France to return to their residence in an EU member state and those who travel for professional reasons, will be able to cross the border between the United Kingdom and France.

They will have to be provided with a travel certificate and a negative PCR test made less than 72 hours before boarding, explained the Ministry of the Interior. They will also be required to sign a Statement of Honour certifying that they are not in contact with a person infected with Covid-19.

🦠 🦠 🦠 🦠 🦠 🦠 😷
 

Grand total of 5 sequences done so far, out of 7000 cases. Better than nothing, but nowhere close to being useful for finding the new mutants.

We prefer this kind of new mutants.
 
Travel will be restricted from the United Kingdom to France "until January 6 minimum", announced Thursday, December 24 the Ministry of the Interior, after the appearance of a new variant of the coronavirus in the UK.

Only French nationals, British nationals residing in France, people who want to transit through France to return to their residence in an EU member state and those who travel for professional reasons, will be able to cross the border between the United Kingdom and France.

They will have to be provided with a travel certificate and a negative PCR test made less than 72 hours before boarding, explained the Ministry of the Interior. They will also be required to sign a Statement of Honour certifying that they are not in contact with a person infected with Covid-19.

🦠 🦠 🦠 🦠 🦠 🦠 😷
I’m not seeing much news about RSA having their borders closed or was that already in force
 
Merry Christmas.

Here's something positive:

Humanity has built out the factories to rapidly produce RNA vaccines for this crisis. Looking past 2021, as the need for those vaccines wanes, what else might they be turned to making?

1)
How about assassinating our number one killer disease, heart attacks? With a vaccine you must be thinking? Yep. With a vaccine. There's a gene in our bodies designated PCSK9. It makes a protein that affects cholesterol levels. Block that protein with an antibody, and poof, heart disease goes bye bye.

Vaccination
A vaccine that targets PCSK9 has been developed to treat high LDL-particle concentrations. The vaccine uses a VLP (virus-like particle) as an immunogenic carrier of an antigenic PCSK9 peptide. VLP's are viruses that have had their DNA removed so that they retain their external structure for antigen display but are unable to replicate; they can induce an immune response without causing infection. Mice and macaques vaccinated with bacteriophage VLPs displaying PCSK9-derived peptides developed high-titer IgG antibodies that bound to circulating PCSK9. Vaccination was associated with significant reductions in total cholesterol, free cholesterol, phospholipids, and triglycerides.[90]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCSK9#cite_note-Crosse_2015-90

We're talking about chopping off 3/4 of all Cardiology work with a simple public health vaccine. No more bypass operations, stents, Lipitor, etc. Eat all that ice cream and steak you want.

2)
How about crippling all cancers? Or most of them, anyway?
There's a critically important watchman gene called P53. In many cancers, it gets deactivated, which causes tumors to be unrestricted and grow.

We can use RNA vaccines to deliver the code back to our DNA by packaging it with a reverse transcriptase enzyme. This would insert additional copies of P53 genes. Into our DNA. Before you freak out about being turned into a mutant, consider Elephants. They don't get cancer. They have 20 working copies of P53.

And that's just the potential start. Covid 19 does NOT have to be a bad thing in the long run, if we leverage our responses properly we potentially could use existing production lines to dramatically improve human health.
 
Last edited:

"There is also no evidence that (it) causes more severe disease or increased mortality than the UK variant or any variant that has been sequenced around the world."
- South African Minister of Health, Dr. Mkhize.

Same guy who was claiming that it's spreading in the young people. :)

It is hilarious the way national pride influences how we talk about a virus.
 
I'm not convinced it's not spreading among young people tbh. Our cases in care homes have almost halfed over the last while yet cases remained constant, even while under a circuit breaker from 1st-14 Dec.
We were at over 100% and ppl being treated outside some hospitals but has since dropped to 95%(deaths) but hasn't been reported/updated for days.
However, cases have steadily grown to 842(24th) which is almost double(400-500 previous) before the weekend(xmas shopping suspect).
The only real hope we have is that the cases don't transfer to hospital beds or we're in big trouble.
I think this variant has been in N.I. for a while, they just weren't aware of it and when they tested for it and found 1 case, it was so small scale I just shook my head, while all the time being told it's safe to shop, 20 million has been spent...
I sincerely hope my concerns are without merit but only time will tell.
Oh, and hello curfew & increased police presence for minimum 4 weeks(6 planned).
Things are tense.
 
Here's a Virology professor on the new variant. Spoiler:
He's not too concerned about it, and we should calm down.

Source: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wC8ObD2W4Rk

A couple little things he mentioned that could be of interest:
"Variant" = a version of the virus with a change in its code, but no effect on the illness.
"Strain" = a version that causes a different distinct type of illness that we can see in patients.
"Mutation" = the change in the genome code, not the changes in the proteins or phenotype. I never knew that, and used the language wrongly. Technically then, Cyclops, Beast and Iceman are not "mutants", the changes in their comic book X gene would be the mutants.

Reporting can confuse these terms in layman usage. I might note that the word "strain" has been scrupulously avoided in all the news reports, which is especially commendable.

You might be happy to hear that a number of amino acid deletions in the new UK variant might make it LESS dangerous, but that is not a headline that would increase sales of papers. Even if it really is more infectious, we just need to do the same basic precautions.
 
Last edited:
Status
Thread Closed: Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom