The Coronavirus Thread

[Sean Hayden]

They're calling the BA.2 strain 'Stealth Omicron '.

[JimC]

Bron and I will probably get another booster later in the year.

Plus a flu shot.

Plus a shingles shot.

Plus a pneumonia shot.

It's going to be a real prick of a year...

[Hermit]

restock the damn fridge and freezer again...

Oh fuck ....https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/healt ... fe655f1826

Paywalled. Do you subscribe to Murdoch's publication or have you found a way around the wall?

[Tero]

Looked at this book in the book store. There is not enough science (RNA sequences etc) worth paying even the 21 dollar Amazon price.

Alina Chan, a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, has become one of the leading exponents of the hypothesis that the virus causing the COVID-19 pandemic leaked from a Chinese laboratory. Matt Ridley, a much-published science writer and member of the British House of Lords, emerged as a leading climate change denier with a provocative Wall Street Journal op-ed in 2014.

In reality, however, “Viral” is a laboratory-perfect example of how not to write about a scientific issue. The authors rely less on the scientists doing the painstaking work to unearth the virus’ origin than on self-described sleuths who broadcast their dubious claims, sometimes anonymously, on social media. In the end, Chan and Ridley spotlight all the shortcomings of the hypothesis they set out to defend.

Yet if the authors were truly concerned with the origin of COVID-19, they would give proper due to the prevailing scientific judgment about it: that COVID was “zoonotic,” spilling over from infected animals to humans via natural contact the way most viruses known to science have reached humankind. As virologists reported this summer, the emergence of SARS2 bears unmistakable signatures of those prior zoonotic events. Chan and Ridley, however, pay insufficient attention to the scientific consensus, or to the significant research findings around which it has coalesced.

The hypothesis that the virus leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, in the same city where the pandemic first emerged, was initially championed in 2020 by ideologues in the State Department under then-President Trump. For them, blaming a pandemic on the Chinese government and its laboratories served the dual purposes of scoring points against a geopolitical adversary and distracting attention from the Trump administration’s incompetent response.

In its original form, the theory held that the Chinese deliberately created the virus as a biological weapon. Over time, it devolved into a claim that the virus originated in experiments to enhance the infectivity of microbes being studied in the lab (so-called gain-of-function experiments) — and ultimately to the proposition that researchers at the institute unwittingly became infected while doing fieldwork and carried the virus into the institute, from which it escaped through inattention. Blaming the Chinese government for the pandemic has remained the one unchanging element of the hypothesis.

It’s true that the Chinese government has obstructed investigations focused on the virology lab, but basing a conspiracy theory on government secrecy is a dead end. The Chinese are secretive about all things, and in any case, there isn’t a government on Earth, including the U.S., that welcomes snooping into its operations with the probable goal of laying blame.

The authors make much of the location of the virology institute in the city where the outbreak was identified. Lab-leak theorists call this “circumstantial evidence,” but it’s not much of a circumstance. Wuhan is a metropolis of more than 9 million, comparable to New York City or Los Angeles, and a major transit and trade crossroads for southeastern China. In Wuhan and its environs, interactions between consumers and animals being sold at so-called wet markets are common.

It’s true that dangerous microbes have escaped from research labs in the past, though none have triggered a pandemic. But that doesn’t warrant the conclusion that the same thing happened in Wuhan, especially with scientific findings weighing heavily in favor of a zoonotic spillover.

“Viral” is built on vague innuendo, dressed up with assertions that may strike laypeople as plausible but have long since been debunked by experienced virologists. An entire chapter, for example, is devoted to the “furin cleavage site,” a feature of the virus’ structure through which the enzyme furin makes the spikes on its surface — which it uses to penetrate and infect healthy cells — more effective.

The furin site was originally described by lab-leak advocates as so unusual that it could have been placed there only by humans. Virologists have since determined that the feature is not all that rare in viruses similar to SARS2, and in any case, it could have emerged through natural evolutionary processes well known to experts. Chan and Ridley place a heads-I-win-tails-you-lose gloss on these findings, writing that if the site “proves to have been inserted artificially, it confirms that the virus was in a laboratory and was altered. ... If, on the other hand, the furin cleavage site proves to be natural, it still says nothing about where the virus came from.” Why write about it at all, then?

Contrary to the curiosity-piquing subtitle, the authors don’t tell us much that is illuminating about how virologists actually search for the origins of new viruses. They don’t appear to have spent much time, if any, watching experts at work in the lab. At least that might have been interesting as an explication of scientific methods. Instead, what Chan and Ridley have done is place a conspiracy theory between hardcovers to masquerade as sober scientific inquiry.

Spoiler alert: Near the end of their book, Chan and Ridley acknowledge that they have conducted a wild goose chase. “The reader may want to know what the authors of this book think happened,” they write. “Of course, we do not know for sure. ... We have tried to lay out the evidence and follow it wherever it leads, but it has not led us to a definite conclusion.” After 400-odd pages of argument, learning
that the authors don’t even emerge with the courage of their own convictions may leave readers feeling cheated.

That points to the chief unanswered question raised by “Viral”: Who thought this book was necessary at this point in time? In virological and epidemiological terms, the search for the origin of COVID-19 is in its infancy. Experts in those fields know that the critical links, the original animal source and the intermediate species that may have been the direct transmitter to humans, may never be identified; similar inquiries have taken years, and some have never reached a conclusion.

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-a ... weaknesses

[macdoc]

Um Tero why give the nonsense any airtime at all??

..............

No pay wall for me and article too complex to copy

Try this
https://7news.com.au/news/coronavirus/o ... -c-5751606

It has become dominant in at least 10 other countries: Bangladesh, Brunei, China, Denmark, Guam, India, Montenegro, Nepal, Pakistan and the Philippines, according to World Health Organisation’s weekly epidemiological report.

But, there’s mixed evidence on the severity of BA.2 in the real world.

Hospitalisations continue to decline in countries where BA.2 has gained a foothold, like South Africa and the UK.

But in Denmark, where BA.2 has become the leading cause of infections, hospitalisations and deaths are rising, according to WHO.

[macdoc]

The new Covid sub-variant – nicknamed the “Son of Omicron” – is spreading fast and could cause more serious illness than its predecessor.
That’s according to troubling new research out of Japan, which was published as a preprint study on the bioRxiv server on Wednesday.

While the findings have not yet been peer reviewed, they suggest the risk of the sub-variant BA.2 for global health is “potentially higher” than that of the original Omicron strain.

The so-called “stealth” variant first emerged in early 2022 and has already spread to 74 nations, becoming the dominant strain in a handful of predominantly Asian countries.

It was first detected in Australia several weeks ago, with a Department of Health spokeswoman telling news.com.au in a recent statement that “most states and territories in Australia have detected a very low number of the Omicron sub-variant BA.2 in respiratory samples submitted for testing”.

“The early detection of BA.2 in Australia is a testament to the success of Australia’s genomic sequencing strategy,” the statement continued.

“As with all variants, this will continue to be closely monitored.”

According to the new laboratory experiments from Japan, “Son of Omicron” spreads faster than Omicron, potentially causes more serious illness than earlier strains and also appeared capable of dodging immunity offered by Covid vaccines, although boosters were found to top up protection.

BA.2 also appeared to be resistant to some medical Covid treatments, and in a concerning sign, it was found to be capable of copying itself in cells faster than Omicron, and is better at causing cells to clump together, which makes the production of more copies of the virus easier.

The study, which is yet to be peer-reviewed, suggested BA.2 spread faster and caused more serious illness than Omicron.
Scientists involved in the new study also noted that hamsters infected with both Omicron and Son of Omicron became more ill with the latter, and recorded worse lung function, with tissue samples revealing greater damage to the lungs of animals with BA.2.

Dr Daniel Rhoads, section head of microbiology at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, told CNN that while he did not participate in the latest BA.2 study, it appeared to be more concerning than Omicron.

“It might be, from a human’s perspective, a worse virus than BA.1 and might be able to transmit better and cause worse disease,” Dr Rhoads said.

His stance was backed up by a recent study out of Denmark, where BA.2 has replaced Omicron as the dominant strain, which found in late January that BA.2 was “associated with an increased susceptibility of infection for unvaccinated individuals, fully vaccinated individuals and booster-vaccinated individuals, compared to BA.1”.

“We conclude that Omicron BA.2 is inherently substantially more transmissible than BA.1, and that it also possesses immune-evasive properties that further reduce the protective effect of vaccination against infection,” the study’s researchers said.

While that study was also not yet peer-reviewed, it added to the growing evidence that the Son of Omicron was more transmissible than its father, with lead study author Frederik Plesner telling Reuters BA.2 was around 33 per cent more infectious than BA.1.

Hamsters infected with BA.2 become sicker than those with Omicron. Picture: Karen Ducey/Getty

Melbourne University clinical epidemiologist Nancy Baxter was one of the first to sound the alarm over BA.2’s transmissibility in Australia, telling Today in late January that BA.2 might be more contagious than Omicron.

“So if it gets here, it may extend our waves, so our wave may take longer to get out of. But we don’t know enough yet,” she said at the time.

So far, the World Health Organisation has not named the Son of Omicron as a variant of concern or a variant of interest.

However, it noted that since January 24, 2022, “the BA.2 descendant lineage, which differs from BA.1 in some of the mutations, including in the spike protein, is increasing in many countries”.

“Investigations into the characteristics of BA.2, including immune escape properties and virulence, should be prioritised independently (and comparatively) to BA.1.”

https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/healt ... fe655f1826

[rainbow]

I have just tested positive.

[macdoc]

ugh - GWS

[pErvinalia]

Hope it goes well, rainbow. My daughter just got a pcr test this morning. She's got all the symptoms of Omicron. But they are the same symptoms as a regular cold too.

[JimC]

Hoping for a mild case for you, rainbow.

[Woodbutcher]

I have just tested positive.

Shit! Stay positive! It's not over until it's over.

[pErvinalia]

Have you seen the local witch doctor?

[Sean Hayden]

Hoping for a mild case for you, rainbow.

[Svartalf]

Bron and I will probably get another booster later in the year.

Plus a flu shot.

Plus a shingles shot.

Plus a pneumonia shot.

It's going to be a real prick of a year...

Unless they stop demanding them, I'll likely get another booster in April, and of course the flu shot next winter.

[Joe]

Hope it goes well, rainbow. My daughter just got a pcr test this morning. She's got all the symptoms of Omicron. But they are the same symptoms as a regular cold too.

I'm in the same spot as your daughter, with mild symptoms for the last two days. If they persist or get worse, I'll get a test.