Variant of concern in South Africa

Ah long Covid, very popular amongst public sector workers and WFH types, I’ve yet to meet a self employed brickie or plumber with it
Funnily enough I was talking to a builder yesterday at my lads training and he can’t do his cycling anymore as he is out of breath all the time. I said what about work, he just said I still have to go but the young uns carry me (it is his business to be fair). I don’t know about Long Covid, the missus had covid back in October, couldn’t get out of bed for 3 days, still has no taste or smell and struggles to breath but she’s had lots of lung type infections in the past including hospital stays for pneumonia, so it could be all related.
 
Cue variant of concern news to boost booster jabs and just in time for xmas. 🦆
I mean you do realise just how many thousands of people world wide with conflicting ethics and loyalties would need to keep this consistent lie, if it were indeed a lie? You can't get 3 people from different agencies to work together without the truth coming out, let alone thousands. This is where these conspiracy theories fall apart.
 
I'm sorry but Covid is going to be with us forever. It is time to accept it and live with it.

If this leads to more lockdowns etc then I think I'd rather be dead as we are simply setting ourselves up for the same thing year after year.

Death is a certainty in life.
 
I'm sorry but Covid is going to be with us forever. It is time to accept it and live with it.

If this leads to more lockdowns etc then I think I'd rather be dead as we are simply setting ourselves up for the same thing year after year.

Death is a certainty in life.
Covid may be with us forever, but until we get better ways of dealing with it there has to be caution. Same as with any virus of the past. We all took pre-covid world for granted, now we have to be thankful for the things we can safely do
 
I mean you do realise just how many thousands of people world wide with conflicting ethics and loyalties would need to keep this consistent lie, if it were indeed a lie? You can't get 3 people from different agencies to work together without the truth coming out, let alone thousands. This is where these conspiracy theories fall apart.
Who mentioned anything about lies and conspiracies. As mentioned. See twitter thread from chise.
 
I'm sorry but Covid is going to be with us forever. It is time to accept it and live with it.

If this leads to more lockdowns etc then I think I'd rather be dead as we are simply setting ourselves up for the same thing year after year.

Death is a certainty in life.
Rather be dead than have another lockdown, yet you moan and moan about any effort taken to try and help prevent another lockdown.
 
I'm sorry but Covid is going to be with us forever. It is time to accept it and live with it.

If this leads to more lockdowns etc then I think I'd rather be dead as we are simply setting ourselves up for the same thing year after year.

Death is a certainty in life.
I would prefer to be locked down as opposed to dead it that's agreeable with you old bean?

Death seems a bit final really.

One could describe it as the ultimate lockdown.
 
Ah long Covid, very popular amongst public sector workers and WFH types, I’ve yet to meet a self employed brickie or plumber with it
It exists. I can vouch for that.

S.O.B lasted for 9 months, short term memory loss, lumpy rash across chest that appears ever 6-7 weeks…….some people are still bed ridden.
I was the first board member to catch it in end of February 2020.
 
I'm sorry but Covid is going to be with us forever. It is time to accept it and live with it.

If this leads to more lockdowns etc then I think I'd rather be dead as we are simply setting ourselves up for the same thing year after year.

Death is a certainty in life.
We aren't though. This is a new disease that is barely 2 years old. It's not like endemic disease that we have learned to live with yet. So there needs to be some measure of control until it gets to be endemic.

Also, it may be this is like smallpox, or cholera, something we actually do, as a human race, need to eradicate.
 
That supports vaccination, but you say it's a ruse to make people get their boosters? Not sure what you are saying really Randy!
I didn't say it was a ruse. I said it came at the same time that the booster program is been pushed. Difference. Should make more of those who are eligible for boosters to go ahead and get them should they wish to.
 
I find it interesting that for decades malaria has been killing 4 times the number of Africans every year than covid.

I don't recall too many dissenting voices on here calling for the eradication of malaria. Some lethal diseases, it seems, are acceptable.

400k people in sub saharan Africa die directly from malaria every year, mostly children. The associated deaths are more than double that.
 
Can some one present me some evidence that vaccination slows down transmission.

from limited info I’ve seen, you still get it and still pass it on. I suppose if it stop you going to hospital it stops more people going there where it’s going to spread more easily.
 
We could all die any day from anything but we don't worry about that.

I really have little interest in spending the next 10 years or more of my life dealing with new variant and getting more and more jabs.

To suggest we just keep locking down is nothing short of ridiculous. Let's just cancel life.
 
I think people just need to calm down a bit. We're just taking early action whilst they figure it out, which is certainly the right thing to do, for now.

There's little indication it would have a percentage of vaccine escape which is not overcome by having a vaccine, two vaccines or by having the booster. i.e you may get a -5% change for the escape, but on a vaccine with 95% protection, it's not a large proportion.
Think of it simply like this, the first vaccine takes to 85% coverage, then wanes fast, the second 90%, then wanes half as fast, the third to 95% then wanes half as fast as the second. Vaccine escape of 5% would matter (a lot), bot not being vaccinated would matter much more, especially if the R0 is higher.

This could be a big problem for countries with low vaccination/ previous infection as it could rip through extremely quickly, but this is not yet known, best off being safe.

Talk of using this as a reason to not have the booster is ludicrous, as is saying a 95% effective vaccine "does not work".

Hard to say if it can outcompete Delta, effectively as SA has next to no Delta to outcompete, they're rising in cases from an extremely low level.

It might have a larger R0 than Delta, but it does not mean it will outcompete it, it needs to come up against a country with a lot of Delta, to find this out. I think from memory that Beta had higher R0 and some problems for vaccine escape, but this didn't outcompete Delta, when it came up against it.

Hard to say if it has any/ much vaccine escape, as only SA has only around 20% of people double jabbed.

It's only 77 confirmed cases of the new variant (will be more unconfirmed mind), we could have Delta do that in a previously unaffected primary school in a single day here, many times, and it would be doing that every single day if we had little previous exposure, we've had Delta doing that in 10-20's for three months etc.
 
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