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

Penna said:
I just had a message from the management company of the block where we have a flat. Everyone there's about to get a test kit, but it didn't suggest you should self-isolate until the result comes back. Might have been sensible, under the unusual circumstances.

Of course, those blocks for older people are at risk because there are a good number of people who receive visits from carers and nurses every day. There are people coming in and out all the time.
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And carers make a lot of visits. Zero hours contracts, just paid for an hour's work with each client, not travelling time, not paid if they're sick, and afraid that if they don't take up a job when they're offered one then the next one will be offered to someone else. They go from one visit to another even if they're unwell, because they're so poorly paid they've no savings and absolutely need the money. Depressing ain't it?
 
Raoul said:
Yes, i think this is the first step in easy mass availability. There are vending machines in NY now as well...

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Great idea, go and put your hands on the buttons of a vending machine that scores of covid riddled people have been touching
 
SARS-CoV 2 is just evolving around the immune response placed in front of it. We already saw B.1.351 from SA and P1 from Brazil with the same or very similar fitness evolutions in them. Classic antigenic drift / shift similar to what we see with Influenza. Though the mechanism is obviously very different.

The most concerning point: How can this then be a surprise to anyone?
 
UnofficialDevil said:
Very good news. This could stop the spread and make it die out. Then again a thousand machines for the whole country isnt much. If it takes more than a year then the vaccines might beat them to it.
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Who is cleaning these machines every day after covid zombies have been touching them?
 
Mb194dc said:
SARS-CoV 2 is just evolving around the immune response placed in front of it. We already saw B.1.351 from SA and P1 from Brazil with the same or very similar fitness evolutions in them.

How can this then be a surprise to anyone?
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It’s literally the same mutation. And the reason it’s a surprise is that coronaviruses are supposed to be relatively stable. Mutating much less slowly than other similar viruses. To get so many mutations with so many important, clinically relevant implications all in quick succession is seriously bad luck.
 
Lockdown extended until at least end of Feb in Scotland .
 
Pogue Mahone said:
It’s literally the same mutation. And the reason it’s a surprise is that coronaviruses are supposed to be relatively stable. Mutating much less slowly than other similar viruses. To get so many mutations with so many important, clinically relevant implications all in quick succession is seriously bad luck.
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Hundreds of millions of infected people is a nice way to speed up the mutation rate. It’s still slow relative to the number of transmissions, I think.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
It’s literally the same mutation. And the reason it’s a surprise is that coronaviruses are supposed to be relatively stable. Mutating much less slowly than other similar viruses. To get so many mutations with so many important, clinically relevant implications all in quick succession is seriously bad luck.
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Could that not be due to the sheer scale of the pandemic though? The only other coronavirus I can think of which spreads worldwide is some of the cold viruses and a good percentage of the population will have levels of immunity against them. This is a novel virus and worldwide so is bound to get more mutations just due to how many people it infects?
 
Had a bit of a breakout in one of the schools I've been at, was there quite a bit last week.
Started with both the cleaner/caretaker testing positive. 3 lunch staff tested positive over the weekend and 2 further staff tested positive on Monday morning.
I'm isolating due to contact with one of the positives.
Local authority got us all to have proper tests, just started using the lateral flow ones this Monday I was negative on that, waiting on the PCR which I went to this morning.
Since that 2 more have tested positive.

I just don't get the logic of only closing a few of the classes when 5 of the 9 staff go all over the building. What happens when someone was in contact yesterday with the ones that tested positive this morning? I doubt they'd test positive within 12 hours of exposure?

Not forgetting that zero kids will of had a test due to this.. I don't think this is on the school despite being in the trust. LA advice should surely of advised closing?
Baring in mind this is a 1form school, with a rota with half ta's/teachers at home last week... who will now be in this week.. -.-
 
MikeUpNorth said:
Hundreds of millions of infected people is a nice way to speed up the mutation rate. It’s still slow relative to the number of transmissions, I think.
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The relatively slow mutation rate is supposed to persist despite millions of people being infected (e.g. common cold coronavirus) The smart money is actually on this variant being hot-housed in a single patient. The theory is that it was an immune compromised patient who had a persistent infection for weeks and weeks. The interaction with their faulty immune system (and possibly monoclonal antibodies) helped the virus become more and more efficient without ever getting wiped out. That’s what caused a huge number of beneficial mutations to accumulate in a short period of time.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
It’s literally the same mutation. And the reason it’s a surprise is that coronaviruses are supposed to be relatively stable. Mutating much less slowly than other similar viruses. To get so many mutations with so many important, clinically relevant implications all in quick succession is seriously bad luck.
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It's not bad luck, it's by natures design. SARS-CoV 2 does have slower regular mutation rate than Influenza. It's recombination that is it's evolutionary advantage. We can see from the hard evidence in front of us, it is adapting.

I don't think the number of infections is that important, we've seen this mutation in SA, Brazil and now here in the UK because the people in all these places have a similar immune response. That is not a coincidence, it's the nature of SARS-CoV 2.

What this is telling us, is that as with Influenza there is little we can do. SARS-CoV 2 isn't going anywhere and will come back every year just as Influenza does. Even if some countries have kept it out for now, vast areas of human population won't be able to do that and it'll continually spread back to the rest.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
The relatively slow mutation rate is supposed to persist despite millions of people being infected (e.g. common cold coronavirus) The smart money is actually on this variant being hot-housed in a single patient. The theory is that it was an immune compromised patient who had a persistent infection for weeks and weeks. The interaction with their faulty immune system (and possibly monoclonal antibodies) helped the virus become more and more efficient without ever getting wiped out. That’s what caused a huge number of beneficial mutations to accumulate in a short period of time.
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I don’t think a virus has any sense of ‘time’, it’s just a random chance of mutation in each copying of the virus. The more copying (infections), the more mutations. Whether a mutation becomes dominant is largely due to its effect on fitness.

I saw that theory about the single patient seeding many simultaneous mutations, but it seems not to be that important given the key mutations have evolved independently in SA, Brazil and the UK (and probably loads of other places we don’t know yet).
 
Jimble said:
You must be very close to me
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I used to live on the new estate between Morrison’s and the police headquarters but moved to Vinters Park a few years back.

Peopke from all over Kent are travelling to my office every day. It bloody annoys me because we have all been told we can work from home if we want.
 
MikeUpNorth said:
I don’t think a virus has any sense of ‘time’, it’s just a random chance of mutation in each copying of the virus. The more copying (infections), the more mutations. Whether a mutation becomes dominant is largely due to its effect on fitness.

I saw that theory about the single patient seeding many simultaneous mutations, but it seems not to be that important given the key mutations have evolved independently in SA, Brazil and the UK (and probably loads of other places we don’t know yet).
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I think the issue is that when the virus is happily hoping from host to host there isn’t the same evolutionary pressure that you get with prolonged replication in an immune compromised patient. They’ve been tracking mutations from day one and the rate is usually one or two per month. For some reason there was an unusually large number of mutations in a short space of time, with the rate normalising before and afterwards. Hence the single patient hypothesis.

The selective pressure of partial immunity is why I’m shitting it about the decision to not use Pfizer vaccine in accordance with its license.
 
Classical Mechanic said:
How much is this the government scaring people into staying home? Aren't a lot of these mutations of 'concern' just the ones that the boffins are keeping an eye on?
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I think you are probably right and there is a bit of scaremongering going on , it doesn`t seem to be working though as I have started seeing more people about these last few weeks and quite a few in holiday homes . I think folk from all over the UK see Anglesey as a little safe haven at the minute.
 
Jimble said:
The mother in law got pinged. They've been pretty much in since March. Only going to the shop once a week.
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I found out someone at work tested positive so that’s why it went off. The stupid thing is because there’s only 2 of us with the app out of about 25 of us there’s just us 2 isolating whereas the rest of the office is going in despite been in the same small same area as me, if they had the app it would’ve gone of for them too, they should’ve made it mandatory for everyone to have the app or else what’s the point. So they’re in work potentially catching and spreading it around.

That’s why this country has been fecked over by it.
 
djembatheking said:
I think you are probably right and there is a bit of scaremongering going on , it doesn`t seem to be working though as I have started seeing more people about these last few weeks and quite a few in holiday homes . I think folk from all over the UK see Anglesey as a little safe haven at the minute.
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I've changed my mind on the rhetoric around Covid-19. Earlier in the pandemic I thought a lot of the rhetoric used, especially around young people getting ill, was unneccesary scaremongering when you looked at the data. Since then I've realised just how blase and stupid a lot of people are when it comes to trying to contain the virus. I'm still amazed by how many people are not wearing masks even now.
 
dannyrhinos89 said:
I found out someone at work tested positive so that’s why it went off. The stupid thing is because there’s only 2 of us with the app out of about 25 of us there’s just us 2 isolating whereas the rest of the office is going in despite been in the same small same area as me, if they had the app it would’ve gone of for them too, they should’ve made it mandatory for everyone to have the app or else what’s the point. So they’re in work potentially catching and spreading it around.

That’s why this country has been fecked over by it.
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Tried telling your boss?
 
dannyrhinos89 said:
I found out someone at work tested positive so that’s why it went off. The stupid thing is because there’s only 2 of us with the app out of about 25 of us there’s just us 2 isolating whereas the rest of the office is going in despite been in the same small same area as me, if they had the app it would’ve gone of for them too, they should’ve made it mandatory for everyone to have the app or else what’s the point. So they’re in work potentially catching and spreading it around.

That’s why this country has been fecked over by it.
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Pointless, unless you're enforcing a smartphone on everyone. The wider question is why hasn't your workplace told the 25 who have had contact to go have a test?
 
golden_blunder said:
Tried telling your boss?
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he knows and doesn’t care tbf the Royal Mail as a whole haven’t been bothered about our health this whole pandemic, it Took long enough for them to even get us basic PPE, the whole office should’ve been shutdown of course but people need to get their parcels and mail as it’s obviously essential more so than workers health.

F-Red said:
Pointless, unless you're enforcing a smartphone on everyone. The wider question is why hasn't your workplace told the 25 who have had contact to go have a test?
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Most people do have smartphones now anyway even my grandparents have smartphones,

I don’t know if they have as I’ve not been in work and I’ve not spoke to anyone. As above though it wouldn’t surprise me if they didn’t bother As they’ve not cared throughout.
 
Heardy said:
I am going to sound like an absolute prick for questioning this but why is Tom Moore’s family to be at his bedside in hospital while he battles pneumonia and covid whilst most peoples families are completely banished from hospital whilst their loved ones receive treatment?

I know he’s become a national treasure for his fundraising efforts but why does his family get special treatment...?
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I agree with you but in fairness we don't know the circumstances. We've been allowing visiting for a while now under certain circumstances (end of life, patient with a relative as a carer, severe confusion or agitation etc).

Don't think he fits the latter two so it may sadly be the first.

If not, I imagine the decision has been made from a manager and would certainly be quite unfair.

Edit: Ah, just saw that sadly he's passed away. That would explain it then I guess.
 
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Can you get the SA variant and the normal/UK variant at the same time?
 
Pogue Mahone said:
It’s literally the same mutation. And the reason it’s a surprise is that coronaviruses are supposed to be relatively stable. Mutating much less slowly than other similar viruses. To get so many mutations with so many important, clinically relevant implications all in quick succession is seriously bad luck.
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Or is it because it is so widespread? Higher chance of mutation if there are more infections...
 
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