And that is why the only permafrost-related bacteria that scare me are the ones turning recently-thawed biomass into methane.
I am not sure how specialized phage are (an old-timey name for viruses that prey on bacteria), but surviving those + not having evolved any escape mechanisms for beta-lactam based antibiotics would make for hard times for any recently liberated pathogenic bacteria from millenia ago.
and again, we donât even know if it will do that regardless of relative transmission rates and severity of illness
weâve got many many different varieties of the common cold. weâve got ( switching species ) lions, tigers, and panthers oh my: each of which could eat a person.
new mutations do not necessarily displace old variations. that only will happen if they compete for âterritoryâ in some way. for viruses thatâs mainly whether the immune system learns enough about one to fight the other ( or causes death. eek. ) and we wonât know about immune response for a bit still
Somewhat encouraging update re the COVID-loving Missouri attorney general: At least one school district is telling the AG to fuck off, in no uncertain terms.
Choice bits:
While the District acknowledges that people have certain rights, it teaches its students the fundamental notion that rights must be balanced against the obligation to exercise them responsibly, and in a manner that does not violate the rights of others. Your invocation of ârightsâ untethered to an obligation to exercise them responsibly invites lawlessness. This is especially pernicious coming from your office, because of the outsized weight some may attach to your opinions.
you have no legal authority to direct the District to cease and desist what it is doing to mitigate COVID. You cite no such authority in your letter, because there is none.
The last hacker attack on the Ministry of Health will delay the implementation of these measures.
That phrase âsymptomatic diseasesâ matters.
It means AZ wonât do much/anything to stop you from developing covid symptoms if youâre infected with omicron, but it also means those graphs do not describe any vaccineâs effectiveness against severe disease.
So itâs not good, but itâs also not as bad as the lows numbers alone make it seemâas I* understand it, all the major vaccines are still performing well against severe disease.
That report also shows that the protection provided by a booster is as high after two doses of AZ as it is after the mRNA vaccines provided thereâs a suitable interval (~25 weeks) between second dose and booster.
â
* A person outside the medical/public health sphere trying to keep up by drinking from the covid news firehose. Consume my comments on the subject with salt.
All good points⌠it bears emphasizing, always, that there is evidence of risks and effects from any COVID infection and those risks remain potentially quite life altering.
So⌠time to book that booster dose. Those in Ontario 
over age 50 are eligible as of 8am tomorrow, Monday December 13th. It appears that my two neighbourhood pharmacies do âwalk-inâ shots, so that might be worth considering. Ontario is busy immunizing the 5-12 set at the big sites; reports from friends indicate that those can be quite busy and more chaotic than they were with the adult vaccination program.
Todayâs Toronto Star has a very pointed article. I get why they are spinning the South African info positively, people love the âhopeâ thing, but I think itâs a potentially dangerous message.
âŚbut no real action from the politiciansâŚ
Edit: I keep telling myself⌠
then post⌠then postâŚ
Maybe, but honestly Iâm not sure how anyone could confidently make that claim at this point in time given the following:
As of yesterday, out of the thousands of confirmed omicron cases worldwide, the WHO said there were not any known deaths yet.
Out of the over 3000 people in the UK with confirmed omicron cases, only two are hospitalized. Their vaccination status hasnât been announced but, per the BBC âIt is not clear if those people who are in hospital with Omicron are there because of the virus or for other reasons.â
So given the apparent lack of severe disease cases among any omicron patients itâs hard to give the full credit to the vaccine.
Obviously new data could change that assessment at any time. And the effectiveness for preventing severe disease for delta and other variants is far less ambiguous.
Just jumping in, even if someone else would have reacted already (canât keep up here ATM) it would need repetition for emphasis.
Actually, no.
To outcompete Delta, the variant needs to be more infectious and pull an immune escape. Based on very early reports, this seems to be the case with Omicron. The R value (not sure if R0 or Rtbwas meant) is estimated at about 3 in RSA, I heard. It seems to be the case that it can re-infect recovered persons, even after multiple infections, and infect vaccinated persons as well. This is bad news, since it means that it spreads like wildfire and will reach unvaccinated persons and vaccinated persons with severe preexisting conditions faster than we can vaccinate against it. Even if the outcome statistically is not as severe as in other variants, it still means far to many hospitalisations than even high-tech, high-standard, high-manpower medical systems can manage.
By the way, there is concern about the observed number of severe cases in children, especially very young children. It seems there are more very young children in need of hospitalisation in RSA than in previous strains of the virus. We have to check if this means that it is more dangerous to children that previous strains, or it means that a more likely scenario explains the observation: Omicron could be as dangerous for immunonaĂŻve persons as the other strains RSA has seen, because the very young children are basically the only group in the population of RSA which havenât already had contact to SARS-CoV-2.
It will take time to estimate the case fatality rate for Omicron, and also all the other metrics. Time we quite probably donât have.
I have a personal rule I would like to make a law: Letâs not make the same mistakes again and underestimate this damn virus.
ETA:
omicron was identified nov 24, named on nov 26. thanksgiving was the 25th and us hospitials are just now getting their first patients who were infected ( most likely with delta ) during that holiday/weekend⌠because itâs only been about 2 weeks.
itâll take a bit i think to know about severity. it seems like itâs just too soon still. maybe before new years, butâŚ?
( also, wow. science and medical professionals for the win. the ability to sequence and track variants and case loads world wide, and over such little time. itâs incredible. )
So then youâre in agreement that itâs kinda weird and premature to say that the vaccine is responsible for keeping cases from being more severe? That was the main point of my post.
Iâm not making that claim. I was trying to draw attention to the fact that this preliminary UK report talks about symptomatic diseases only (not severe disease, hospitalization, or death), and doesnât show that the vaccines are failing to protect against those outcomes.
But beyond that, the UK is a heavily vaccinated population. If we donât see increasing amounts of severe disease accompanying the rapid spread of a new variant there, then either the new variant produces fewer cases of severe disease overall, or the vaccines do provide a measure of protection against it (or some combination of both, of course).
Past that, weâre on the same page: early days yet, and caution is more than warranted.
I think I may have officially seen it all today.
On the road today I saw a pickup truck with a personalized plate.
KNGFLUD
Seriously?
But I also saw a church sign that listed service times with a big ole Mask Required. So thatâs a good thing.
What is KNGFLUD?
King Floyd cover band?
No, it probably means Kung Fluâd
Second is true. Also, you have to take into account that each infection makes millions and maybe hundreds of million copies of the virus, and basically every human was immunonaïve two years ago⌠So quite a number of infections and copies later, of course the number of mutations is expectedly high.
Corona viruses arenât particularly special about mutations, but e.g. are less prone to immune escape mutations then influenza viruses.
Ah, yes. I made it âKing Floodâ and was very confuzzled.
There a few times I have wished you could flag a driver down and ask what the heck their vanity plate is supposed to mean.
I donât know exactly what it is called, but I think there is an app that allows you to âairdropâ a message to someoneâs phone nearby? But I think itâs more of a criminal thing.
