IOM Covid removing restrictions

[pongo]

OK. All joking apart this is the gist:

"The most popular view among virologists is that it spent months mutating in an immunosuppressed person with a chronic infection. Other ideas include evolution accelerated by the use of anti-Covid drugs, and crossover into an animal species that later jumped back into humans."

[WTF]

7 minutes ago, Zarley said:

Thanks.... errr... what's in the text below the numbers?

sanskrit

[James Blonde]

8 minutes ago, pongo said:

OK. All joking apart this is the gist:

"The most popular view among virologists is that it spent months mutating in an immunosuppressed person with a chronic infection. Other ideas include evolution accelerated by the use of anti-Covid drugs, and crossover into an animal species that later jumped back into humans."

Dr Doom will be along to tell us soon enough.

[The Old Git]

3 hours ago, Ramseyboi said:

Don’t know.  Why is that relevant to if I had two off island trips (two tests each) and two hospital admissions (1 test each)?

It was meant as a joke FFS

[Roger Mexico]

19 minutes ago, Zarley said:

Need a subscription to read. Can you give us the jist?

Pro-tip: If you google the full headline of a paywalled FT article[1] - in this case "Scientists puzzle over Omicron’s origins as variant spreads" it may give you access to it.

Basically it's considering the possible ways in which Omicron could have evolved - particularly as it isn't that closely related to current variants such as Beta and Delta.  The main theory is that it evolved in "an immunosuppressed person with a chronic infection":

A South African research team, which included Lessells, discovered an untreated HIV patient late last year who was infected with Covid-19 for more than six months and gave rise to a string of mutations that affected the spike protein, the part of the virus where most of Omicron’s adaptations are located. A UK study observed a similar process in a Covid patient with blood cancer.

The immune response of an untreated HIV patient would be “too weak to clear the virus but strong enough to drive the process of evolution”, explained Lessells. He said this process would allow coronavirus to mutate without being “picked up” as many of these patients are asymptomatic and therefore do not get tested.

But there are other possibilities such as it being a side-effect of a drug trial or via a wild animal.

 

[1]  It's always worth clicking on links as quite a lot of their Covid coverage has been free to view.  But the paywall will give the headline so you can highlight, right-click and google that.

[James Blonde]

2 minutes ago, Roger Mexico said:

Pro-tip: If you google the full headline of a paywalled FT article[1] - in this case "Scientists puzzle over Omicron’s origins as variant spreads" it may give you access to it.

Basically it's considering the possible ways in which Omicron could have evolved - particularly as it isn't that closely related to current variants such as Beta and Delta.  The main theory is that it evolved in "an immunosuppressed person with a chronic infection":

A South African research team, which included Lessells, discovered an untreated HIV patient late last year who was infected with Covid-19 for more than six months and gave rise to a string of mutations that affected the spike protein, the part of the virus where most of Omicron’s adaptations are located. A UK study observed a similar process in a Covid patient with blood cancer.

The immune response of an untreated HIV patient would be “too weak to clear the virus but strong enough to drive the process of evolution”, explained Lessells. He said this process would allow coronavirus to mutate without being “picked up” as many of these patients are asymptomatic and therefore do not get tested.

But there are other possibilities such as it being a side-effect of a drug trial or via a wild animal.

 

[1]  It's always worth clicking on links as quite a lot of their Covid coverage has been free to view.  But the paywall will give the headline so you can highlight, right-click and google that.

Doom Coven will be calling for all immocompromised people to be rounded up...

[Cambon]

On 12/9/2021 at 4:32 PM, Andy Onchan said:

My guess is that this variant has been doing the rounds in UK for quite some time which is why the number of cases have remained high.

And of course the scientists love all the attention. Every bloody scientist with literally anything to say about CV (and now Omicron) is being harvested by the media.

The uk figures keep saying omicron is doubling every couple of days. Did anyone every consider that they have only just sequencing it, yet it has been doing the rounds for months. It is not doubling at all. It is already there and being discovered. Media hype and government lies! Scaremongering again. 

[Roger Mexico]

53 minutes ago, Cambon said:

The uk figures keep saying omicron is doubling every couple of days. Did anyone every consider that they have only just sequencing it, yet it has been doing the rounds for months. It is not doubling at all. It is already there and being discovered. Media hype and government lies! Scaremongering again. 

Yes it's been considered and rejected, because as I pointed out a few days ago, the UK does a lot of sequencing of positive PCR results and if there had been more than a couple of cases it would have been picked up in the UK not South Africa, which does comparatively few.  So rather than being around for months, it can't have been there for more than a few days before it was detected.

It's worth pointing out that it was detected in three countries more of less simultaneously - in South Africa among a group of students; in Botswana in a diplomat who had returned from a SA visit; and in Hong Kong in a SA traveller over on a business trip.  Furthermore genetic analysis doesn't show much 'spread' in the sequences so far which suggests Omicron has only 'broken out' very recently.

But if you want to believe that millions of doctors and scientists are engaged in an enormous conspiracy just to annoy you personally is a more plausible reason, whatever.

[quilp]

Good fortune with Omicron..?

 

 

[Cambon]

16 minutes ago, Roger Mexico said:

 

But if you want to believe that millions of doctors and scientists are engaged in an enormous conspiracy just to annoy you personally is a more plausible reason, whatever.

No, but I do believe governments have great difficulty relinquishing power once they have assumed it and will go to great lengths to retain it.

Doctors and scientists similarly like the limelight and exposure as it helps boost their profiles and ultimately their careers. 

The Covid scaremongering has gone too far. It has to stop. 

By Easter, omicron will have been proven to be little more than a common cold. Mark my words. 

 

[Will Halsall]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59621029

[Newbie]

4 hours ago, Ramseyboi said:

First two detected cases.  It has obviously been flying around for a while

What is your evidence for that? These two cases have been detected because they exhibit s gene target failure in the PCR test, and genomic sequencing will be needed to confirm for sure that they are the Omicron variant (although it is apparently highly likely that they are). The point is though that if previous positive samples had shown the s gene target failure characteristic of Omicron, the lab would know about it.

It is of course possible that there are some completely asymptomatic and undiagnosed/untested cases of Omicron in the community, but you would have thought if there had been a significant number present for a while, it would have already come to light as it doesn't require genomic sequencing to be very highly suspicious that a positive PCR test is Omicron.

It was also reported in the Guardian a few days ago that there is a  variant of Omicron that doesn't exhibit the typical s gene target failure because of the specific mutations that it has. However, that is a more recent discovery than the typical Omicron variant so it seems unlikely that it will have been in the community significantly before the more common variant

[quilp]

It's a given, Will. Some studies are suggesting this variant, if it continues like it has, may be just what is needed, in a roundabout way. 

[Will Halsall]

8 minutes ago, quilp said:

It's a given, Will. Some studies are suggesting this variant, if it continues like it has, may be just what is needed, in a roundabout way. 

I agree Quilpy. Jan is going to be an interesting month for businesses. I might book in for my Booster; I haven't had a sniff of anything yet, maybe I have the immunity of a cockroach, unless the Rona struggles to infect alcoholics - have any studies been done? 

[Ramseyboi]

3 hours ago, The Old Git said:

It was meant as a joke FFS

Oh right.

 

good one 🤷‍♂️