SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)

Was this posted?
This Deltacron is looking grim.


Yer man's a fecking tool and I wouldn't worry about Deltacron. Or basically anything else he gets hysterical about.

That footage is crazy though. Feels as though China is right back where Europe was in March 2020.
 
Yer man's a fecking tool and I wouldn't worry about Deltacron. Or basically anything else he gets hysterical about.

That footage is crazy though. Feels as though China is right back where Europe was in March 2020.
So he is a scare mongerer?
I must admit, I've been mostly following his advice and info on this since it all started.
 


The viral load stuff is really interesting. I got off very lightly and was a bit worried that this was because I was extremely lucky and only got a very small dose of virus.

That viral load idea became a widely accepted with no evidence to justify it, was a bit strange.
 


Speaking of China. Fecking hell.

At least they took that back after the massive scandal it made in Hong Kong not this long ago.

If China wants to solve the problem faster to avoid long queues and deaths in hospitals, it should be simple enough: get vaccinated with the right vaccines. I don't know what is the reasoning behind persisting with their zero-COVID policy, but the majority of economists and medical experts worldwide say that has to stop because the virus is there to stay just like seasonal influenza does.
 
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At least they took that back after the massive scandal it made in Hong Kong not this long ago.

If China wants to solve the problem faster to avoid long queues and deaths in hospitals, it should be simple enough: get vaccinated with the right vaccines. I don't know what is the reasoning behind persisting with their zero-COVID policy, but the majority economists and medical experts worldwide say that has to stop because the virus is there to stay just like seasonal influenza does.

Xi is going for re-election in the Party Congress in November. There are rumours that they now know that it's not a long term strategy, but they don't want to rock the boat before the re-election so will keep zero-covid going until then. That's probably the reason for staying with local vaccines too.
 
At least they took that back after the massive scandal it made in Hong Kong not this long ago.

If China wants to solve the problem faster to avoid long queues and deaths in hospitals, it should be simple enough: get vaccinated with the right vaccines. I don't know what is the reasoning behind persisting with their zero-COVID policy, but the majority of economists and medical experts worldwide say that has to stop because the virus is there to stay just like seasonal influenza does.

I think they know, but they do not want to admit their vaccine is inferior to mRNA vaccines by foreign countries. They are now developing their own mRNA vaccines and maybe they will revaccinate their population when it is ready.

Currently, they clearly do not have the medical capacity to cope if they open up.
 
Far from what we used to think of as normal but we have "only" an average of 20 covid deaths per day. Barring voluntary mask wearing in most circumstances almost everything is almost back to normal here in Australia. Not scanning in to every place you visit is still a bit weird.
 
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Far from what we used to think of as normal but we have "only" an average of 20 covid deaths per day. Barring voluntary mask wearing in most circumstances almost everything is almost back to normal here in Australia. Not scanning in to every place you visit is still a bit weird.

We relaxed the mask wearing mandate here in Singapore a couple of days ago so it is no longer mandatory to wear a mask outdoors. But based on observation almost 99% of the people still wear it.

The biggest indicator of a "return to norm" here is the full reopening of the causeway between Singapore and Malaysia. Boy that was emotional.
 
Excuse my ignorance, but with the infection rate being absolutely ridiculous in the UK right now, is there a chance that we could see a more deadly variant materialise? Or is it likely that every future variant will be less severe and will in effect weaken down to virtually nothing?
 
Interesting coming to Milan and Como from the UK for my first holiday in two years - mask compliance is still very high. I know there’s still a mandate in some settings like trains etc but there was in England too and you’d only see 30-40% actually bothering. I’m seeing literally 100% in tubes, about 90 on trains and around the same in shops. Attendants are actually asking people to put them on or pull them up as well. Impressive stuff. They’re also using the terms “FFP2” on notices too and most people are wearing masks of this type.
 
I had two negative rapid antigen tests over the last few days as some of my sisters had tested positive.
Today I tested again to check as one more sister came down with it: I tested positive.

Still no real symptoms apart from being a little lethargic.
 
An intriguing theory may help explain why the flu and Covid-19 never gripped the nation simultaneously — the so-called twindemic that many public health experts had feared.

The idea is that it wasn’t just masks, social distancing or other pandemic restrictions that caused flu and other respiratory viruses to fade while the coronavirus reigned, and to resurge as it receded.

Rather, exposure to one respiratory virus may put the body’s immune defenses on high alert, barring other intruders from gaining entry into the airways. This biological phenomenon, called viral interference, may cap the amount of respiratory virus circulating in a region at any given time.

“My gut feeling, and my feeling based on our recent research, is that viral interference is real,” said Dr. Ellen Foxman, an immunologist at the Yale School of Medicine. “I don’t think we’re going to see the flu and the coronavirus peak at the same time.”



Only 0.2 percent of samples tested positive for influenza from September to May, compared with about 30 percent in recent seasons, and hospitalizations for flu were the lowest on record since the agency began collecting this data in 2005.

Many experts attributed the flu-free season to masks, social distancing and restricted movement, especially of young children and older adults, both of whom are at the highest risk for severe flu. Flu numbers did tick upward a year later, in the 2021-2022 season, when many states had dispensed with restrictions, but the figures were still lower than the prepandemic average.

So far this year, the nation has recorded about five million cases, two million medical visits, and fewer than 65,000 hospitalizations and 5,800 deaths related to the flu.

….

Recent studies have shown that co-infections of flu and the coronavirus are rare, and those with an active influenza infection were nearly 60 percent less likely to test positive for the coronavirus, he noted.

“Now we see a rise in flu activity in Europe and North America, and it will be interesting to see if it leads to a decrease in SARS-COV-2 circulation in the next few weeks,” he said.
Advances in technology over the past decade have made it feasible to show the biological basis of this interference. Dr. Foxman’s team used a model of human airway tissue to show that rhinovirus infection stimulates interferons that can then fend off the coronavirus.

“The protection is transient for a certain period of time while you have that interferon response triggered by rhinovirus,” said Pablo Murcia, a virologist at the MRC Center for Virus Research at the University of Glasgow, whose team found similar results.

But Dr. Murcia also discovered a kink in the viral interference theory: A bout with the coronavirus did not seem to prevent infection with other viruses. That may have something to do with how adept the coronavirus is at evading the immune system’s initial defenses, he said.

“Compared to influenza, it tends to activate these antiviral interferons less,” Dr. de Silva said of the coronavirus. That finding suggests that in a given population, it may matter which virus appears first.

Dr. de Silva and his colleagues have gathered additional data from Gambia — which had no pandemic-related restrictions that might have affected the viral patterns they were observing — indicating that rhinovirus, influenza and the coronavirus all peaked at different times between April 2020 and June 2021.

That data has “made me a bit more convinced that interference could play a role,” he said.

Thought this was particularly interesting…
Last year, one team of researchers set out to study the role of an existing immune response in fending off the flu virus. Because it would be unethical to deliberately infect children with the flu, they gave children in Gambia a vaccine with a weakened strain of the virus.

Infection with viruses sets off a complex cascade of immune responses, but the very first defense comes from a set of nonspecific defenders called interferons. Children who already had high levels of interferon ended up with much less flu virus in their bodies than those with lower levels of interferon, the team found.

The findings suggested that previous viral infections primed the children’s immune systems to fight the flu virus. “Most of the viruses that we saw in these kids before giving the vaccine were rhinoviruses,” said Dr. Thushan de Silva, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Sheffield in England, who led the study.

This dynamic may partly explain why children, who tend to have more respiratory infections than adults, seem less likely to become infected with the coronavirus. The flu may also prevent coronavirus infections in adults, said Dr. Guy Boivin, a virologist and infectious disease specialist at Laval University in Canada.
 
Not saying it doesn't help but Australia and NZ virtually eliminated flu when there was no covid.

Interesting. I don’t think the point was that covid prevents flu, just that the likelihood of covid and flu running riot simultaneously seems unlikely because of those factors.

But it could just be an anomaly of a flu year(s)! Presumably this applied when there were few preventative measures too - just masks? Otherwise if it happened with social distancing then I guess it wouldn’t tell us much!
 
China is attempting to stick to its zero covid policy, and some parts of Shanghai had just heard that its lockdown had been extended again.

However, it looks like the food supply chain is collapsing under the strain. Some background on why fresh food and takeaway food is central to the issue, and why there's desperation in some groups in the city.


Which might explain some footage showing what are being reported as scenes of supermarkets being looted in Shanghai. No idea on the source or authenticity/context of the video - it's all over Twitter - but certainly there's a lot of footage of empty fridges, individual protests etc around.


Restrictions in some parts of the city are now going to be lifted - but only if there are no positive tests in this round in that area. Whether that's a cover for the authorities backing down or an irrelevance for most people, I don't know.
 
Are China really thick or something? What are they trying to prove? Have they not seen what's literally happening in every other country in the world?

Or do they know something we don't? :nervous:
 
I remember @hmchan saying that the poor vaccine uptake amongst the elderly in Hong Kong was in large part down to anti-American fuelled Pfizer vaccine scepticism. I wonder what’s behind the poor uptake in China?
Sorry for the late reply. As far as I know, China hasn't put much effort in pushing the vaccination rate. They have been too confident in their so-called "dynamic zero" strategy to stop every outbreak. They also keep reassuring people that all outbreaks are controllable which, in my opinion, gives people a false sense of security. With the case number has kept staying low over the past year, people have no incentive to receive vaccination and when they need it, it's already too late.
 
More scraps of info coming from Shanghai. First, an unlikely looking stat about symptomatic v asymptomatic cases:


And next an even less likely looking stat about cases v serious illness.


China has stopped uploading viral sequences to the international registry, so we don't even know if we're talking about one of the Omicron family - though presumably we are.

Meanwhile, families are apparently complaining about the sudden death of elderly relatives, at a time when officially no one is dying of covid.
 
China has stopped uploading viral sequences to the international registry

That sounds irresponsible at best. What’s the official reason for not doing so?
 
More scraps of info coming from Shanghai. First, an unlikely looking stat about symptomatic v asymptomatic cases:


And next an even less likely looking stat about cases v serious illness.


China has stopped uploading viral sequences to the international registry, so we don't even know if we're talking about one of the Omicron family - though presumably we are.

Meanwhile, families are apparently complaining about the sudden death of elderly relatives, at a time when officially no one is dying of covid.


I don’t get it. What’s the upside to massaging the stats to make the illness seem less severe? Surely that just makes their zero covid mass lockdown approach look even more stupid?
 
That sounds irresponsible at best. What’s the official reason for not doing so?
I doubt there's an official explanation, and I doubt China feels any need to give one. Countries choose what to share and when to do it. Some countries do a lot of sequencing, some do very little.

Some upload sequences as they get them, immediately and without prior analysis. Others do edited highlights showing changes identified by their research teams as significant. Obviously the most helpful ones do all those things - send lots, send them fast, and point out significant bits they've spotted (like SA did with Omicron).
 
I don’t get it. What’s the upside to massaging the stats to make the illness seem less severe? Surely that just makes their zero covid mass lockdown approach look even more stupid?
You'd think so, but I guess this comes down to a combination of what central government want broadcast and what local health officials dare say.

Big infection numbers to emphasise why whole cities need to be locked down hard and fast (not go rogue like HK, or lose grip on it like Shanghai). Small numbers of severe cases to "explain" how the infection could spread so far without warning.

Plus, the government could be preparing the country for a move from zero covid to "zero admitted covid deaths". Of course, that does nothing to encourage the elderly and the vulnerable to get vaccinated/boosted so it's not much of a strategy unless you control all information flow. Hmmm.
 
You'd think so, but I guess this comes down to a combination of what central government want broadcast and what local health officials dare say.

Big infection numbers to emphasise why whole cities need to be locked down hard and fast (not go rogue like HK, or lose grip on it like Shanghai). Small numbers of severe cases to "explain" how the infection could spread so far without warning.

Plus, the government could be preparing the country for a move from zero covid to "zero admitted covid deaths". Of course, that does nothing to encourage the elderly and the vulnerable to get vaccinated/boosted so it's not much of a strategy unless you control all information flow. Hmmm.

Ah. Ok. Gotcha.