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Coronavirus

Coronavirus - The Poll

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I am worried about this new strain, but I don’t think that one mutation necessarily takes us back to square one. It’s worth remembering that the disease has technically mutated already since it was first discovered in China, so it’s not unheard of for COVID-19 to mutate. Also, when diseases mutate, they are trying to survive within society, so they usually become less severe when they mutate. From the disease’s point of view, it’s counterproductive to survival to kill or cause serious harm to your host.

This article interviewing a number of experts has all of them encouraging people to stay calm and saying that there is currently no evidence that this strain will necessarily render all of our vaccines useless or pose any greater risk to society than the current dominant strain: https://www.statnews.com/2020/11/05...the-scary-buttons-but-fears-may-be-overblown/
 
Matt N said:
I am worried about this new strain, but I don’t think that one mutation necessarily takes us back to square one. It’s worth remembering that the disease has technically mutated already since it was first discovered in China, so it’s not unheard of for COVID-19 to mutate. Also, when diseases mutate, they are trying to survive within society, so they usually become less severe when they mutate. From the disease’s point of view, it’s counterproductive to survival to kill or cause serious harm to your host.

This article interviewing a number of experts has all of them encouraging people to stay calm and saying that there is currently no evidence that this strain will necessarily render all of our vaccines useless or pose any greater risk to society than the current dominant strain: https://www.statnews.com/2020/11/05...the-scary-buttons-but-fears-may-be-overblown/
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This is a concern, especially for us that have been shielding since March and have been hopeful to a potential vaccine which might put an end to all this health crisis.

Here is another read than may lay any concerns to rest

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...virus-whats-happened-and-should-we-be-worried

Should we be worried?
There are reports that virus particles with one of these mutations are less well neutralised by antibodies in people who have had Covid-19. This could in theory render a vaccine less effective, particularly because many of the vaccines under development target the spike protein.

”The true implication of the changes in the spike protein have not yet been evaluated by the international scientific community and are thus unclear,” said Prof James Wood, the head of the department of veterinary medicine at the University of Cambridge. “It is too early to say that the change will cause either vaccines or immunity to fail.”

It is also relatively easy to tweak vaccines. This happens each year with the influenza vaccine.

So although we shouldn’t necessarily be terrified that this mutation has occurred, scientists should keep a close eye on it. Coronavirus cleary has the ability to jump from humans to animals and back again, and it seems to be quite good at it.
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I was going to say about the flu vaccine @RoyJess; even if this mutant strain does render all the current vaccines less effective, couldn’t they just tweak it in the way they do the flu vaccine? I’m not sure whether I’m remembering this right, but I could have sworn that I heard that they modify the flu jab each year to combat the most dominant strain at the time; it’s not the same vaccine each year.

Surely the same could be done with the COVID vaccine, no?
 
In the spring WHO (World Health Organisation) predicts which flu strains will be most prevalent over winter then ramp up production of those vaccines over summer ready for distribution in autumn. I could see a similar thing happen with Covid.
 
I am waiting to see what they are going to do about flu vaccine.
There has been comments about making flu vaccine free to all.

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Still waiting for our flu jab, phoned the GP up a few days ago and been told that they have put ours aside. Just waiting for the home nurse to visit. I think this highlights the problem, it not just how much (or little) vaccine that will be produce, but it is logistically getting it administered to everyone. If they are not coping well with the extra demand for the flu vaccine this year, I dread to think how long Jess and I will be waiting for our Covid vaccine.
 
The problem with this finding in mink is that if these animals can be reservoirs for this virus, then potentially we will never be rid of Covid and each year we will be faced with new variants of the Virus. Maybe like the flu but antibodies from injections do help prevent the flu. If this new variant is less susceptible to the vaccine and existing antidotes then that pose pose a HUGE problem.
 
BigT said:
With the pantomime going on in the US this one seems to of slipped through the news.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54851042

Potentially very serious news coming out of Denmark that has resulted in an immediate ban on all travel from that country to the UK with very few exceptions.
If this mutation is indeed current vaccine development resistant then we are in effect back to square one.
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I mean it's a bit of a side issue, but I struggle to understand your review of the contrasting news reports. The BBC one is much more in depth and gives a clearer overview of the situation and it's causes.

Anyway, it's not worth worrying about at our level, is it? Bugger all we can do about it, just have to wait and see what turns up, if anything.
 
pluk said:
I mean it's a bit of a side issue, but I struggle to understand your review of the contrasting news reports. The BBC one is much more in depth and gives a clearer overview of the situation and it's causes.
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To be fair the BBC story has now been updated so your right the comparison now doesn’t make much sense like it did this morning.
 
2021 *could* be a better year then. Let's hope so. As soon as there's vaccines being made available we need to get things going again or our generation and the next one will be paying for this for rest of our lives.
 
90% efficiency is amazing, especially considering the bar was set at ~60% to be considered a working vaccine and 75% was considered a comfortable level at fixing the world at a reasonable pace. The current measles vaccine is at 94%, so there's some reasonable confidence that this vaccine can fight back against one stinker of a year. Hopefully other pharma companies won't be too much further behind with their vaccines *crosses fingers*

There's concern over the short time it has taken to do get this to market and the arguement of thalidomide and it took 5 years for the ebola vaccine, etc... Rear their heads again. However they don't seem to take into account just how fast science and medicine can move these days. Especially when the whole world is behind it! Genome sequencing was sci-fi hocus pocus in the mainstream up until 2014 and took a considerable amount of time to map diseases, yet COVID-19 was mapped within weeks.

Sure we have to be cautious to some degree, cluster 5 could be a potential blot on the horizon and vaccines aren't a quick fix. But let's put all that away for one day and rejoice in some good news in 2020 :D
 
I know that we shouldn’t get our hopes up too much, but this has me very excited!

Considering the scientists were psyching us up for maybe 50-60% efficacy at best from the first vaccines, 90% is absolutely astounding, and should really make a difference on the pandemic’s future course if it can get through approval!

Am I right in saying that in theory, a higher efficacy would mean that less people need to be vaccinated in order to achieve some form of control over the pandemic and thus be able to start easing measures?
 
It looks promising but still a couple of hurdles to go, one thing is for sure China should be back of the queue for this.
 
As much as this is great news, I'm still apprehensive that despite that Jess and I are shielding, we may have a long wait before we ourselves will get the covid vaccine. We are still waiting for our annual flu vaccine, according to the JCVI independent report, looks like Jess won't be a priority and I will be near the bottom of the list. According to the government, everyone should have gotten the vaccine by the end of spring (Summer) next year.

Just by looking at the JCVI list, it goes to show that you just can't open up the country and shield the vulnerable. It would mean shielding far too many people.

At least we can now see the light at the end of the tunnel, it is now just the case of when will we all emerge from the tunnel.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publi...e-on-priority-groups-for-covid-19-vaccination

We have been shielding since the 17th March, that is 236 days or 34 weeks since we haven't left our home. A vaccine to end this won't come too soon for us.
 
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RoyJess said:
As much as this is great news, I'm still apprehensive that despite that Jess and I are shielding, we may have a long wait before we ourselves will get the covid vaccine. We are still waiting for our annual flu vaccine according to the JCVI independent report, looks like Jess won't be a priority and I will be near the bottom of the list. According to the government, everyone should have gotten the vaccine by the end of spring (Summer) next year.

Just by looking at the JCVI list, it goes to show that you just can't open up the country and shield the vulnerable. It would mean shielding far too many people.

At least we can now see the light at the end of the tunnel, it is now just the case of when we all will emerge from the tunnel.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publi...e-on-priority-groups-for-covid-19-vaccination

We have been shielding since the 17th March, that is 236 days or 34 weeks since we haven't left our home. A vaccine to end this won't come too soon for us.
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236 days!!! How do you cope?
 
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