News COVID-19 pandemic

[Notebook]

Got a new Tier 4 now.

Covid: Nations impose UK travel bans over new variant - BBC News

 

[N_Molson]

Looks pretty bad... Be strong UK, anyways I'm pretty sure we (France) won't be far behind, on the news they are preparing people for another lockdown in early January (would be the third)... Everything is done to "save" X-mas & New Year's Eve but I fear the cost in lives will be high again... We're in uncharted territory, economy is already dying and first half 2021 (at best) will be catastrophic...

 

[Notebook]

Yes, keep isolated and carry on!
We used to call these plagues and everybody died. Bit better now, still doesn't seem to to have sunk into some folk how infectious it is.

Didn't Sir Isaac N. do a lot of good work while self-isolating during the Great Plague?

 

[Urwumpe]

The German federal police is warning travellers to UK, that a travel ban for people coming from UK to Germany is imminent.

 

[steph]

Since then we're all living in the family farm, in Vendee (my sisters have horses). Things are VERY quiet here. And we have working DSL We can't get out a lot, and with aged parents at home we don't want to take any chance. Like many, I hope the vaccine will work, but scientists here are warning that economic recovery won't be possible before second half 2021.

Off-topic, but I live in Vendee too, close to St. Gilles. How's it going with the horses? Those events down-right spook me. In September they straight out deployed the military, with 2 or 3 choppers over the Olonne forest between Brem and La Chaume. Absolutely nothing on the news. Then they have drone sightings, but as a drone pilot, I know that what they're describing is impossible for most consumer drones. But I'm not excluding some form of mass hysteria with a bunch of human authors as well. Most of the footage I've seen were misidentified planes

As for the covid, there is a strong suspicion in the medical community that the new one may be circulating since September or October, ever since we noticed aa slight change in symptoms. Good news since it hasn't been that bad even so, bad news since we've started to see people test positive for more than a month, or test negative then a few weeks later positive again, but without many symptoms. ARS says it's ok since they're no longer contagious, but I'm not entirely sure, .
I expect they'll either stop travel between most countries and go hard lockdown again, or they'll shrug it off if it's not deadlier/ vaccine resistant, then we'll lock down again in January for who knows how long

To give you an idea, there's a guy in Vendee that travelled a lot that was found to have covid-specific damage in his lungs. He was hospitalised with respiratory insufficiency in late October '19. They only realised on the compte rendu when the 'real' cases started coming Then the first confirmed cases were in late January/ early February, a group from who went to Thailand in January. ARS really dropped the ball then as they didn't even have tests, they were confirmed upon hospitalisation after being shuttled between Nantes and La Roche . So yeah, Vendee can be safe because it's rural and you can properly isolate. But don't go into crowded grandes surfaces etc because the virus is out there and has been for a long time

 

[steph]

The German federal police is warning travellers to UK, that a travel ban for people coming from UK to Germany is imminent.

I'm not entirely sure how they'll handle this at an EU level, since I'm fairly certain the new strain has already escaped. It's like shutting down Wuhan. This may also be a Brexit negociation move, to a certain extent. And we still don't know much about the new strain. Things could go from business as usual (in a pandemic) to much, much worse if it proves to incapacitate the vaccine and/or has higher fatality rate. But even so, there are rays of light. Even supposing it cancels the vaccine, an existing vaccine could be tweaked much easier, building it from scratch was the challenge

 

[Urwumpe]

I'm not entirely sure how they'll handle this at an EU level, since I'm fairly certain the new strain has already escaped. It's like shutting down Wuhan. This may also be a Brexit negociation move, to a certain extent. And we still don't know much about the new strain. Things could go from business as usual (in a pandemic) to much, much worse if it proves to incapacitate the vaccine and/or has higher fatality rate. But even so, there are rays of light. Even supposing it cancels the vaccine, an existing vaccine could be tweaked much easier, building it from scratch was the challenge

I think its both. Some actions are not unexpected, they had been in the brexit playbook for years, like closing Dover and the channel tunnel for border control checks. But fully closing the traffic is new, and yeah, possibly late. But then, we have no knowledge yet about how prevalent the new strain is in the rest of Europe and together with the already imposed shutdowns, it MIGHT work out to weed the few cases of the new strain out, even if the old strain survives. But the new strain has the better chances there, considering that it spreads easier.

 

[Evil_Onyx]

From what I overheard from a conference call that my landlady (she is involved with Long Covid research ) was on, the mutation that was identified in the South East of England only increases the virus's ability to infect others, and has had no notable change in other effects. As of yesterday (20/12/2020) it is believed that the approved Vaccines are effective against it. Also of note is that this "new" mutation of the virus has been found in other nations world wide.

 

[Urwumpe]

And the "state of the nation" here so far: Had been on a birthday party 9 days ago, two visitors of the same event are now tested positive. But we are all completely healthy so far.

 

[N_Molson]

To give you an idea, there's a guy in Vendee that travelled a lot that was found to have covid-specific damage in his lungs. He was hospitalised with respiratory insufficiency in late October '19

Yeah that's the issue I've been really ill 1 week when I was in Morocco, late January 2020... I saw a french doctor there that told me I had "a bad case of seasonal influenza", he told me to stay in bed 4 days and gave me antibiotics. Almost all the teachers in our school were badly ill for a week too, there was an obvious "wave", we were even joking about it "maybe its the evil chinese virus boo" etc... One month later the school was closed, and has not repopened sincethen. Now I'm fine but hard to know really (and I'm not sure I want to know as everyone in my family is fine).

For the mutation, my doctor here in France told me the same thing, she's pretty certain it is around since September...

I don't think closing borders will stop it at all... Because there are repatriation flights, plus you can cross the Channel on a small boat (takes a bit of planning in winter, but can be done). Now it probably buys some precious time and help people to feel better (the psychological devastation caused by the whole situation is real, people commit suicide because they've lost their buisness, their social life...).

 

[N_Molson]

As for the horses, it rains way too much for them, they are happy in the stable and don't want to go outside for too long. My sister lost a pony last week, after a long illness. That was sad but expected, it was an aged pony (15 yo) and she did her best to ease his last days...

 

[mahdavi3d]

nature.com : The coronavirus is mutating — does it matter?

Source: Structural data from K. Shen & J. Luban

 

[n72.75]

Just what we need now...

 

[Quick_Nick]

Congressman-elect Luke Letlow dies after battling Covid-19

Letlow, 41, had announced his diagnosis on his Facebook page on December 18, writing that he was "at home resting, following all CDC guidelines, quarantine protocols, and the recommendations of my doctors."

 

[Urwumpe]

Congressman-elect Luke Letlow dies after battling Covid-19

Letlow, 41, had announced his diagnosis on his Facebook page on December 18, writing that he was "at home resting, following all CDC guidelines, quarantine protocols, and the recommendations of my doctors."

Yeah, he was ironically one of the loudest proponents for reducing the effort against COVID-19 in favor of keeping businesses open and running.

Sure one on the sane side of life, no conspiracy fool. But still, it caught him first.

 

[Urwumpe]

OK, yesterday Germany overtook the USA in the number of COVID-19 deaths per million people. The reported numbers dropped in both countries over the christmas holidays (how surprising), but jumped up massively in Germany on Monday, when the backlog of the past days was counted again.

We are still below the USA in accumulated numbers, but politicians and idiots have worked hard to change this...

 

[N_Molson]

Not much better here, while all alarm signals are crimson red government doesn't want to take the responsability for a hard lockdown. They already made that very same mistake. Two times. It might be the limit of a democracy, there are some decisions you can't take. ?

So people are merrily going to celebrate New Year's Eve and contaminate each other ???

 

[Thunder Chicken]

We're now in this strange phase of COVID that reminds me of the critical battle moments in Star Trek - the Klingons are blasting the holy heck out of us, Scotty is "giving her all she's got" and slowly getting the shields up, and the rest of the crew is standing around nervously twiddling their thumbs hoping Scotty is on his A-game today.

 

[Notebook]

Covid-19: New variant 'raises R number by up to 0.7' - BBC News

 

[Artlav]

The new virus has been designated "Variant of Concern 202012/01" or VOC by Public Health England.

COVID-VOC, hm?
Great way to start the year.