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

Buster15 said:
And they are quite right to feel that way aren't they.
When there is a problem and a solution is provided, free of charge and individuals reject that solution, they should be the ones who are responsible for their actions.
But in this case, they are causing others to be affected.
This is especially bad when the NHS is concerned.

Wonder if they will reject the pill as well.

https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19...and-it-could-happen-before-christmas-12487030
Click to expand...

That's a pretty bold statement and could be applied to a lot of ailments which routinely cost the NHS billions.

For what it's worth, I am very much pro-vaccination (despite the problems my second vaccine appeared to cause me) but I respect people's freedom of choice.

The idea of mandated vaccines, which is the next step, really troubles me, if I'm honest. The fact that we're in an age where a modern, European country would do that boggles my mind. The BBC are even appearing to push it this morning with an article showing three "pro's and cons", none of which is the very obvious implications of a Government being able to take away basic freedoms if you don't submit to being injected with something you don't want.

My opinion of the people running the UK is that they are (largely) either inherently corrupt, inept, or both and the idea that they will always have my best interests at heart isn't something I accept. Eroding people's basic human rights is dangerous, and that seems to be being lost in the debate.

There's a clear and significant shift in terms of the state overreach the average person now seems willing to accept. I really struggle with that.
 
Last edited:
Pogue Mahone said:
Why do you make stuff up?
Click to expand...

It’s clearly disingenuous to say most people on here love lockdowns - most people support them. I don’t think it’s disingenuous to say a good chunk of people are yearning for an Italy-style approach to the unvaccinated. It’s not just something that we have to do, but something that they want to do, because it’s righteous (it vindicates their decision) and because it punishes bad behaviour.

There are hundreds of posts that show both of those underlying motivations, it’s pretty much fashionable at this point to talk about the unvaccinated people as less worthy individuals, and it’s legitimate to take glee in their suffering.

Regulus Arcturus Black said:
Aye, the one who doesn’t think lockdowns in Europe especially, and now has a tonne of data to back that up, have tended make much difference with the long term death rate per capita, and thinks they have too often been used incorrectly (not as part of an elimination strategy like Aus/NZ) and long before they are a last resort is the weirdo.
Click to expand...

You’re the weirdo because you’re on a one man crusade, taking your own opinion too seriously, and trying to ram it down other people’s throats with an air of smugness. Believe it or not, you are not the oracle of truth, you did not see what others couldn’t see, you just staked out a position and defended it with so much aggression and condescension that kept people out of the conversation. And after taking that approach you’ve just doubled down every time.

It makes it impossible for anyone to take your points seriously, and it creates a caricature of the debate you tried to create. Now you’re not even trying to debate, you’re just trying to prove your point. But no one cares about your point any more, you’ve lost that legitimacy. It’s just a weird personal vendetta, just some person screaming into a screen.
 
Brwned said:
It’s clearly disingenuous to say most people on here love lockdowns - most people support them. I don’t think it’s disingenuous to say a good chunk of people are yearning for an Italy-style approach to the unvaccinated. It’s not just something that we have to do, but something that they want to do, because it’s righteous (it vindicates their decision) and because it punishes bad behaviour.

There are hundreds of posts that show both of those underlying motivations, it’s pretty much fashionable at this point to talk about the unvaccinated people as less worthy individuals, and it’s legitimate to take glee in their suffering.
Click to expand...

It’s pretty obvious why vaccinated people have a dim view of those who have no good reason to not get vaccinated yet still choose not to.

Unvaccinated people are taking up a wildly disproportionate amount of shared healthcare resources. One of the most fundamental concepts that makes a society function is fairness around using resources. And when a minority of people drain the majority of resources because of (what can be reasonably perceived as) selfish reasons then they don’t have a leg to stand on if the majority are in favour of measures intended to reverse that inherently unfair situation and/or lack sympathy when unvaccinated people get sick.

And that’s without even getting into the other consequences of the unvaccinated doing more than most to drive continued high community transmission. The recent increased restrictions in UK/Ireland, that absolutely nobody wants, being the most obvious example.

None of the above has anything to do with being righteous.
 
Last edited:
Pogue Mahone said:
It’s pretty obvious why vaccinated people have a dim view of those who have no good reason to not get vaccinated yet still choose not to.

Unvaccinated people are taking up a wildly disproportionate amount of shared healthcare resources. One of the most fundamental concepts that makes a society function is fairness around using resources. And when a minority of people drain the majority of resources because of (what can be reasonably perceived as) selfish reasons then they don’t have a leg to stand on if the majority are in favour of measures intended to reverse that inherently unfair situation and/or lack sympathy when unvaccinated people get sick.

And that’s without even getting into the other consequences of the unvaccinated doing more than most to drive continued high community transmission. The recent increased restrictions in UK/Ireland, that absolutely nobody wants, being the most obvious example.

None of the above has anything to do with being righteous.
Click to expand...

Sure, you believe it’s justified, I don’t, we don’t really need to parse that out. But the point is @Vidic_In_Moscow wasn’t making anything up when he said people are yearning for that kind of policy to be enacted. That yearning is founded on arguments much like yours. There’s nothing disingenuous about saying that people don’t just think it’s a last resort (like lockdowns) but instead think it’s an entirely legitimate and ethical decision on various levels, and for many it can’t come soon enough.
 
Brwned said:
Sure, you believe it’s justified, I don’t, we don’t really need to parse that out. But the point is @Vidic_In_Moscow wasn’t making anything up when he said people are yearning for that kind of policy to be enacted. That yearning is founded on arguments much like yours. There’s nothing disingenuous about saying that people don’t just think it’s a last resort (like lockdowns) but instead think it’s an entirely legitimate and ethical decision on various levels, and for many it can’t come soon enough.
Click to expand...

He was just being a twat and picking a fight without adding anything useful to the discussion.

What everyone wants most of all is better vaccine take-up, which would remove the need for measures like these. As for yearning, what they really yearn for is an end to this shit show, which is being prolonged by the vaccine avoidant.
 
We have high vaccine take-up and consistently the need for lockdowns have been espoused even before omicron was I thing. It's fine to think lockdowns are appropriate in some situations. Nobody sensible would disagree. But it can't be avoided that there are some who have constantly wished for lockdowns and who have constantly dropped negative interpretations of (preliminary when it comes to omicron) data to encourage that and/or to support the view that anything that has ever relaxed restrictions is always unwise or premature. Even when cases were low and vaccine take-up of the first two doses were rapidly increasing in the summer the argument was still we should lockdown longer than we did, hold off more with lifting restrictions. Some people are ideologically wedded to the idea of perpetual restrictions. Maybe out of fear and caution. But just as there are those who get rightly mocked for believing any form of restrictions or measures to mitigate the impact of the virus exist, those who think any lifting of measures in response to higher vaccinations or falling hospitalisations also exists.

Team Independent Sage vs Team GB News.

Self-selecting evidence to justify what is actually an ideological position. People who do that from both sides are as bad as each other. But recently the tantamount to hand-rubbing we've seen with people jumping on preliminary data with omicron doesn't get a free-pass because it's the anti-nutter nutters doing it
 
Regulus Arcturus Black said:
And some love them, the actual poster I quoted said “I’d love another lockdown”.
Click to expand...

Yes I posted that and you seem to quote me as frequently as possible...people are different and have different POVs. I for one enjoy the lockdowns as one of the things the time away from work allows me to do, is a huge amount of voluntary work in the charity sector which I love.

You, it seems, are anti-lockdown, which is fair enough.

Personally, I'd prefer the absolute fecktards in the UK Government to do more to limit the spread of this new variant until we have more data, and implement rules that makes sense - rather than a lockdown. However, that's where we may be heading, time will tell.
 
I've been calling the new varient Omnicron for the last week. I'm such an idiot.
 
Tibs said:
Yes I posted that and you seem to quote me as frequently as possible...people are different and have different POVs. I for one enjoy the lockdowns as one of the things the time away from work allows me to do, is a huge amount of voluntary work in the charity sector which I love.

You, it seems, are anti-lockdown, which is fair enough.

Personally, I'd prefer the absolute fecktards in the UK Government to do more to limit the spread of this new variant until we have more data, and implement rules that makes sense - rather than a lockdown. However, that's where we may be heading, time will tell.
Click to expand...

Wanting something so destructive because it suits you in your bubble is incredibly selfish. You have to completely ignore all the harm it brings others, or care so little about others.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
What everyone wants most of all is better vaccine take-up, which would remove the need for measures like these. As for yearning, what they really yearn for is an end to this shit show, which is being prolonged by the vaccine avoidant.
Click to expand...
That’s really debatable and from what we have seen now we have to learn to live with it.
It won’t just go away and we really don’t know how long the vaccines protect which makes the green certificates really useless in grand scheme of things.

The pill is something I look forward to, which could be a real turnaround.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
What everyone wants most of all is better vaccine take-up, which would remove the need for measures like these. As for yearning, what they really yearn for is an end to this shit show, which is being prolonged by the vaccine avoidant.
Click to expand...

Totally agreed. Just get vaccinated you idiotic selfish pricks.

And to the idiots in charge help vaccinate the entire world out of self interest if nothing else.

The idea that advocating for lockdowns when necessary equates to wanting/enjoying them is ludicrous. We all want this shit show to end but preferably with a few dead people as possible and that means preventing hospitals from being overwhelmed.

I'm still clinging to the vague hope that Omicron will be more infectious but less harmful, especially to the vaccinated, wipe out Delta and help the return to normality. Lots of things need to line up for that to be true but you can hope.
 
Last edited:
Wibble said:
Totally agreed. Just get vaccinated you idiotic selfish pricks.

And to the idiots in charge help vaccinate the entire world out of self interest if nothing else.
Click to expand...
There was a vaccine drive in one of the Georgia (USA) counties today, loads of people turned up because they were giving out $100 gift cards with every vaccination. Why didn't they get vaccinated before? Presumably because many of them just couldn't be bothered, as it's free and very easy to get in the USA. But they'll do it for $100.
 
Penna said:
There was a vaccine drive in one of the Georgia (USA) counties today, loads of people turned up because they were giving out $100 gift cards with every vaccination. Why didn't they get vaccinated before? Presumably because many of them just couldn't be bothered, as it's free and very easy to get in the USA. But they'll do it for $100.
Click to expand...

Mind numbingly dumb. Doubly so when people with very genuine reasons to be wary of getting vaccinated, like yourself, have taken the time and effort to seem medical advice and then decide to take the risk for yourself and the greater good.
 
After another 24 hours obsessively thinking about this fecking thing something is bothering me.

Even before omicron (and feck know how transmissible it will turn out to be) SARS-CoV-2 has quickly evolved to become much more infectious than flu. How come flu (and other resp viruses) haven’t mutated to become more and more infectious over the decades (millennia?) we’ve shared the planet with them? They all mutate too. Why has this virus become turbo-charged in less than two years while none of the rest of them have done the same over centuries? Does this virus have some unique innate qualities that allows it “upgrade” way more than other endemic viruses?

Transmissibility aside. What’s to stop other viruses mutating to become much more deadly? A future where this thing is endemic and could mutate to become much more lethal at any moment is pretty fecking grim. How come we aren’t staring down that same gun barrel with other common respiratory viruses?

@jojojo
@Anustart89
@africanspur
@mav_9me

@ any other scientists/medics that my shitty memory can’t recall right now…
 
Last edited:
Pogue Mahone said:
After another 24 hours obsessively thinking about this fecking thing something is bothering me.

Even before omicron (and feck know how transmissible it will turn out to be) SARS-CoV-2 has quickly evolved to become much more infectious than flu. How come flu (and other resp viruses) haven’t mutated to become more and more infectious over the decades (millennia?) we’ve shared the planet with them? They all mutate too. Why has this virus become turbo-charged in less than two years while none of the rest of them have done the same over centuries? Does this virus have some unique innate qualities that allows it “upgrade” way more than other endemic viruses?

Transmissibility aside. What’s to stop other viruses mutating to become much more deadly? A future where this thing is endemic and could mutate to become much more lethal at any moment is pretty fecking grim. How come we aren’t staring down that same gun barrel with other common respiratory viruses?

@jojojo
@Anustart89
@africanspur

@ any other scientists/medics that my shitty memory can’t recall right now…
Click to expand...

I'd be guessing that it is because viruses like flu tends to change through antigen drift, with antigen shift (recombination) being quite rare and selection pressure acts on what it has to work with. Probably why we have flu with a quite low R and measles with a very high one - largely down to how a particular virus is configured (e.g. viral particle size and things like differing incubation period) and random chance regarding how it evolves and interacts with the host (as R isn't the only factor involved) particularly when they are novel. Once they exist in a population that has been widely exposed to it then they will tend to change by antigen drift which means infectiousness doesn't tend to change very much/quickly - so flu stays around an Ro of 1.2 and Measles an Ro of 12+. Antigen shift can still occur and cause pandemics but so far flu pandemics haven't been novel enough (in the modern era) to create anywhere near the shit show we currently have. With covid being created by antigen shift and essentially entirely novel we are still in that initial phase where antigen drift changes are much bigger due to the sheer number of infections (and thus opportunities to mutate) and possibly due to immune compromised people being mutation incubators (jury is still out). I hope that eventually, when almost everyone is vaccinated or has been infected we will settle down to a more stable situation where antigen shifts are less dramatic. How this progresses will detriment if we need annual or less frequent boosters to adapt for viral changes and/or boost the speed of response to infection.

So there is no reason that an existing virus couldn't become more, even far more infectious except as long as a virus isn't fatal before it is transmitted as increased (or decreased) fatality/severity isn't that much of a selection pressure to cause change by antigen drift I'd say. So once is a stable state in the population dramatic changes are less common. And as we have seen antigen shift can happen.

@Tony Babangida might well know if I'm barking up the wrong tree.
 
Last edited:
Pogue Mahone said:
After another 24 hours obsessively thinking about this fecking thing something is bothering me.

Even before omicron (and feck know how transmissible it will turn out to be) SARS-CoV-2 has quickly evolved to become much more infectious than flu. How come flu (and other resp viruses) haven’t mutated to become more and more infectious over the decades (millennia?) we’ve shared the planet with them? They all mutate too. Why has this virus become turbo-charged in less than two years while none of the rest of them have done the same over centuries? Does this virus have some unique innate qualities that allows it “upgrade” way more than other endemic viruses?

Transmissibility aside. What’s to stop other viruses mutating to become much more deadly? A future where this thing is endemic and could mutate to become much more lethal at any moment is pretty fecking grim. How come we aren’t staring down that same gun barrel with other common respiratory viruses?

@jojojo
@Anustart89
@africanspur

@ any other scientists/medics that my shitty memory can’t recall right now…
Click to expand...
Not a virus scientist or a medic but I have some ideas that I wouldn't rate high enough to call theories. :smirk:

Pandemic viruses have more (naive to the virus) people to infect than ever before and better transport links to move them around.

I suspect being a coronavirus is a great start when it comes to being able to mutate to new levels of infectious. We live with lots of them and mostly ignore them - we don't even notice when they become more infectious. This one is trouble because it's not staying in the nose and throat like a nice sensible cold.

I do wonder if SARS2 is also an odd beneficiary of improved healthcare. The frail elderly and the immune compromised (whether they have that status as a result of disease, another virus or because of medication) are living longer and living more normal lives than ever before, previously healthy people with severe covid sometimes recover very slowly - sometimes only after multiple rounds of treatment. In other words most people now survive infection, even protracted and severe infection - but some are maybe remaining infected for longer, with the virus at a low level but still alive and mutating, until it hits another viral load high and infects more people.
 
Wibble said:
I'd be guessing that it is because viruses like flu tends to change through antigen drift, with antigen shift (recombination) being quite rare and selection pressure acts on what it has to work with. Probably why we have flu with a quite low R and measles with a very high one - largely down to how a particular virus is configured (e.g. viral particle size and things like differing incubation period) and random chance regarding how it evolves and interacts with the host (as R isn't the only factor involved) particularly when they are novel. Once they exist in a population that has been widely exposed to it then they will tend to change by antigen drift which means infectiousness doesn't tend to change very much/quickly - so flu stays around an Ro of 1.2 and Measles an Ro of 12+. Antigen shift can still occur and cause pandemics but so far flu pandemics haven't been novel enough (in the modern era) to create anywhere near the shit show we currently have. With covid being created by antigen shift and essentially entirely novel we are still in that initial phase where antigen drift changes are much bigger due to the sheer number of infections (and thus opportunities to mutate) and possibly due to immune compromised people being mutation incubators (jury is still out). I hope that eventually, when almost everyone is vaccinated or has been infected we will settle down to a more stable situation where antigen shifts are less dramatic. How this progresses will detriment if we need annual or less frequent boosters to adapt for viral changes and/or boost the speed of response to infection.

So there is no reason that an existing virus couldn't become more, even far more infectious except as long as a virus isn't fatal before it is transmitted as increased (or decreased) fatality/severity isn't that much of a selection pressure to cause change by antigen drift I'd say. So once is a stable state in the population dramatic changes are less common. And as we have seen antigen shift can happen.

@Tony Babangida might well know if I'm barking up the wrong tree.
Click to expand...
Yeah sounds about right. I asked a flu expert that I know and this is what they said:
So, flu crossed the host-species barrier >100 years ago.

Following a cross species transmission event, we expect a high rate of evolution for some time as the virus becomes more "optimised".. ie, selection for variants that have better binding affinity, or increased transmission.... once "optimised", selection is slower as there are fewer opportunities for significant fitness advantages

so... for COVID... we would, in a few years, expect selection opportunities to be more limited (ie vaccine escape mutants)... the same as we have for flu now.

An intersting example for flu is H7N9.... in early 2013 we saw rapid evolution of this virus as it became more optimised to infecting humans... and then limited change for the following 7 years. Thankfully this one has "disappeared" due to mass vaccination of poultry.

I think that this is the paper that describes the original selection process : https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES2014.19.25.20836?crawler=true

Oh, also! I forgot. The evolutionary distance of "delta" to "omicron" is about what we see in H3 influenza every ~2 years... hence a vaccine update. Its just that most people don't care that this year it was 3c2a flu vs A1b. You can see all the "variants" of H3N2 influenza here : https://nextstrain.org/flu/seasonal/h3n2/ha/2y This explains why sometimes we have a really BAD flu year (ie 2017) - new variant, one that was not in the vaccine
Click to expand...
 
In the classic example of infection to cowpox offering some protection to smallpox, how far away are those two?

Are we talking Delta to Omicron or common cold vs Covid?
 
If every unvaccinated adult died tomorrow...what would the short, medium and long term consequences be?

I started reasoning that most far-right and pious zealots would die, along with about 91 of every 100 people with a low income. Africa would be almost completely unpopulated. Then I realized there would be millions of decomposing corpses all over the place, and an unavoidable collapse of law and order would follow suit. Sheer panic would take over and most of the vaccinated people would also die as civilization quickly imploded. This has not been a nice train of thought.
 
rcoobc said:
In the classic example of infection to cowpox offering some protection to smallpox, how far away are those two?

Are we talking Delta to Omicron or common cold vs Covid?
Click to expand...
They are different species in the same genus, so yeah like common cold vs covid.
 
Shakesey said:
If every unvaccinated adult died tomorrow...what would the short, medium and long term consequences be?

I started reasoning that most far-right and pious zealots would die, along with about 91 of every 100 people with a low income. Africa would be almost completely unpopulated. Then I realized there would be millions of decomposing corpses all over the place, and an unavoidable collapse of law and order would follow suit. Sheer panic would take over and most of the vaccinated people would also die as civilization quickly imploded. This has not been a nice train of thought.
Click to expand...
The walking dead
 
Pogue Mahone said:
After another 24 hours obsessively thinking about this fecking thing something is bothering me.

Even before omicron (and feck know how transmissible it will turn out to be) SARS-CoV-2 has quickly evolved to become much more infectious than flu. How come flu (and other resp viruses) haven’t mutated to become more and more infectious over the decades (millennia?) we’ve shared the planet with them? They all mutate too. Why has this virus become turbo-charged in less than two years while none of the rest of them have done the same over centuries? Does this virus have some unique innate qualities that allows it “upgrade” way more than other endemic viruses?

Transmissibility aside. What’s to stop other viruses mutating to become much more deadly? A future where this thing is endemic and could mutate to become much more lethal at any moment is pretty fecking grim. How come we aren’t staring down that same gun barrel with other common respiratory viruses?

@jojojo
@Anustart89
@africanspur
@mav_9me

@ any other scientists/medics that my shitty memory can’t recall right now…
Click to expand...

How do you know it didn't? Influenza is at least 2,000 years old, who knows what mutations it's undertaken in that time. What mutations did it go through in 1918 when it spread across the globe in weeks and killed far more than Covid? The biggest difference with Covid is we have the ability to track it step by step.

People have just slowly built up immunity to other respiratory viruses over time. I'd be willing to bet money that when the common cold first appeared thousands of years ago it too was a killer.
 
The Welsh government are already talking about potentially extending the Covid passes to all hospitality (not just those that play loud music after midnight as at present). Wales has consistently been more cautious than England so I expect this to happen.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
After another 24 hours obsessively thinking about this fecking thing something is bothering me.

Even before omicron (and feck know how transmissible it will turn out to be) SARS-CoV-2 has quickly evolved to become much more infectious than flu. How come flu (and other resp viruses) haven’t mutated to become more and more infectious over the decades (millennia?) we’ve shared the planet with them? They all mutate too. Why has this virus become turbo-charged in less than two years while none of the rest of them have done the same over centuries? Does this virus have some unique innate qualities that allows it “upgrade” way more than other endemic viruses?

Transmissibility aside. What’s to stop other viruses mutating to become much more deadly? A future where this thing is endemic and could mutate to become much more lethal at any moment is pretty fecking grim. How come we aren’t staring down that same gun barrel with other common respiratory viruses?

@jojojo
@Anustart89
@africanspur
@mav_9me

@ any other scientists/medics that my shitty memory can’t recall right now…
Click to expand...

None scientist weirdo wonders if we’ve ever tried making it so difficult for the flu, RS and other viruses to transmit before?
We are fighting nature here after all, and this virus wants to survive and replicate.
What was it Jeff Goldblum said again?
 
Regulus Arcturus Black said:
None scientist weirdo wonders if we’ve ever tried making it so difficult for the flu, RS and other viruses to transmit before?
We are fighting nature here after all, and this virus wants to survive and replicate.
What was it Jeff Goldblum said again?
Click to expand...

Yes is the answer to that question. We’ve been vaccinating against flu for a very long time.
 
11101 said:
How do you know it didn't? Influenza is at least 2,000 years old, who knows what mutations it's undertaken in that time. What mutations did it go through in 1918 when it spread across the globe in weeks and killed far more than Covid? The biggest difference with Covid is we have the ability to track it step by step.

People have just slowly built up immunity to other respiratory viruses over time. I'd be willing to bet money that when the common cold first appeared thousands of years ago it too was a killer.
Click to expand...

We track flu mutations too. I’m just curious about what it takes to end up relatively stable. The answer from @Tony Babangida was great. It will get “optimised” over a period of several years and from then on the changes will be fairly minor. It’s just a little unsettling wondering what the fully optimised version will look like a few years down the road, considering how much nastier it’s got in just 24 months existence.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
We track flu mutations too. I’m just curious about what it takes to end up relatively stable. The answer from @Tony Babangida was great. It will get “optimised” over a period of several years and from then on the changes will be fairly minor. It’s just a little unsettling wondering what the fully optimised version will look like a few years down the road, considering how much nastier it’s got in just 24 months existence.
Click to expand...

We didn't track flu mutations in 1918 and we definitely didn't track them 2000 years ago. We have no idea what flu back then looked like or how it evolved. We still have a few bits of lung tissue from 1918 to look back at but that's about it.

Point is this is a virus that has been with us for 2 years. The impact and the mutations will be greater now than they ever will be. From here it could either get more transmissible, or more deadly, but if any variant appears that does both it wont last too long.
 
11101 said:
We didn't track flu mutations in 1918 and we definitely didn't track them 2000 years ago. We have no idea what flu back then looked like or how it evolved. We still have a few bits of lung tissue from 1918 to look back at but that's about it.

Point is this is a virus that has been with us for 2 years. The impact and the mutations will be greater now than they ever will be. From here it could either get more transmissible, or more deadly, but if any variant appears that does both it wont last too long.
Click to expand...

The last sentence is wrong. It could get a hell of a lot more deadly without any negative impact on fitness (i.e. ability to reproduce/transmit) We even have an example of this already in delta, that was both more transmissible and (slightly) more virulent.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.