Almost certainly developed there judging by the way it first became dominant in the Uk, then Ireland, and is only now starting to become dominant in the rest of Europe.
SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)
- Thread starter Don't Kill Bill
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It seems to be a way to make sure that your PCR reaction worked, by amplifying a sequence with similar ends but a different length. it also seems to be a way to quantify the amount of viral sequence that may be detected by using the amount of amplification seen for this control sequence as a baseline.
in your case, i would guess that the control sequence got fully amplified while there was no amplification of viral sequence.
Many thanks for that. Explained in a way my friend Google was incapable of.
As a footnote it also said that while it wasn't obligatory to take another test it was suggested that I did. My problem is I'm flying on Friday and I didn't want to be
A) turned away at the airport even though the PCR was negative
B) More importantly, risk infecting people if there was even a miniscule change of having covid.
Brave to get that close to a moron. Especially one who seems as aggressively agitated.
Done well to call an agitated idiot an idiot to their face
Maybe oregano oil works. Who read a research paper done by Oregano Pharmaceuticals?
The 'journalist' is vulgar and possibly ignorant, probably a conspiracy theorist.
A guy I know was on a zoom call at work - all fairly senior people - and one of them was boasting about the craic he’d had at a shibeen in Wexford the previous weekend. Said it was jam packed. Not an ounce of shame.
Doesn’t help that the category 4 vaccine roll-out has been an utter fecking shambles. 100k AZ doses promised next week, so hopefully they’ll get their shit together and you’ll get a call. Fingers crossed for you.
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This is... not great...
EDIT: Not sure why she mentions P1. It’s the South African variant that would worry me, as that’s the one with the most evidence of vaccine resistance. Could be selective pressure from vaccines in action.
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I’ll believe it when I see it. Only 9k this week.
as for your man at the shibeen, I tell ya it’s worse with the families from the school, having days out together or sleep overs. They really don’t care
100k new cases in Brazil today, their highest ever day 
Christ this thread is such a rollercoaster from day to day. When I checked it at lunch timeO’m sure it was you saying how great some other data set was. Check back on the evening and it’s the opposite
The great data was from Israel, unfortunately (well, fortunately for them!)
Italy's now moving on to their priority group, people with serious or chronic illnesses (any age). It's taken them this long to do the over-80s.
Ireland at the same stage. Although also doing 70-80s. Turns out identifying the high risk younger cohort is a complete nightmare. They’re leaving it up to secondary care and the lack of electronic records is causing the mother and father of all admin chores. Hopefully Italian health records in better nick.
I doubt it! The arrangement is that people with one of the conditions (and there's a detailed list) who are under a hospital consultant will get automatically called. For other people with the same conditions who aren't seeing a specialist in hospital, you book online or by phone. There are always extensive forms to complete which you have to take with you.
The way they've been doing it in Italy is different from the UK - you don't get a letter or a text, it's up to you to keep an eye on the announcements and make the booking when your category is open. It's like this with a lot of things here - you don't get reminders for things , you have to remember yourself.
edit - there has been a parallel vaccination programme running for teachers, police, firefighters etc, with the AZ vaccine.
I do not know if this has been posted before, but there is a new variant in India too:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-56507988
Too little data so far but first impressions are that it is not as bad as other known variants.
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Also, Michael Osterholm had some sobering thoughts here a day or two ago:
“We’re going to need to test people who have potentially clinically compatible symptoms with Covid-19 forever,” Osterholm said during a webcast on the state of Covid-19 testing hosted by Axios.
"This virus is not going away around the world,” he said. “Remember, we have billions of people in low-income countries, some in middle-income countries, who will never have access to vaccines, and where those cases are occurring in those countries, we’ll also see variants spread out.”
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My thought is that we somehow need the world to come together and massproduce vaccines in such numbers that there is enough for all humans and give away freely to the nations that cannot afford it.
I doubt that will ever happen though..
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-56507988
Too little data so far but first impressions are that it is not as bad as other known variants.
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Also, Michael Osterholm had some sobering thoughts here a day or two ago:
“We’re going to need to test people who have potentially clinically compatible symptoms with Covid-19 forever,” Osterholm said during a webcast on the state of Covid-19 testing hosted by Axios.
"This virus is not going away around the world,” he said. “Remember, we have billions of people in low-income countries, some in middle-income countries, who will never have access to vaccines, and where those cases are occurring in those countries, we’ll also see variants spread out.”
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My thought is that we somehow need the world to come together and massproduce vaccines in such numbers that there is enough for all humans and give away freely to the nations that cannot afford it.
I doubt that will ever happen though..
The experts here can answer this.
Don't artificial diseases have markers that tell us it wasn't a natural occurrence?
Don't artificial diseases have markers that tell us it wasn't a natural occurrence?
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Short answer is no. “Artificial” viruses are created by the exact same process that generated these new variants. Only in a lab, instead of in people.
Its always going to happen even with lockdown. Once a new variant is here and in circulation its always going to spread. The best you can do is slow it down.
There's going to have to be a change in tactics at some point because trying to stop things that you can't realistically expect to stop isn't an answer. Neither is trying to impose lockdowns every time a new variant crops up or flirting with ideas like vaccine passports which would become pointless within months.
I don't know what its like where you are but round here people are carefully obeying lockdown measures by going around doing whatever the feck they feel like, which is always going to be the outcome after 3 months of lockdown. The other option is riots (which we've had a little sprinkling of thrown in). A bit of sun over the easter weekend and half the population of the UK will be back on Southend beach again as well.
Just need to hope we can keep on top of the vaccine game. I would have thought given the death/risk of serious illness rate for different age groups, and the hassle with creating enough vaccines for the entire world, they'd have just had a cut off point for the vaccine and concentrate on getting it updated and ready for the most vulnerable again, rather than obsess with getting it to absolutely everyone, but I don't know how the complexities of these things work or what effect it has on transmission etc. Though I can imagine if they started trying to give everyone in the world the flu jab every year rather than just prioritising the people its actually potentially lifesaving for, for example, it would cause far more problems than it would solve.
The Prime Minister here in Italy has said that health workers working with the sick will be obliged to have the vaccine - there have been cases this week of hospital patients contracting Covid from non-vaccinated staff (who were offered the vaccine at the beginning of the Italian roll-out, but refused it).
There's going to be some formalisation in law it appears (a decree). I assume that if you're a doctor or nurse, have no contraindications to the vaccine and you choose not to have it, you'll have to look for another job.
There's going to be some formalisation in law it appears (a decree). I assume that if you're a doctor or nurse, have no contraindications to the vaccine and you choose not to have it, you'll have to look for another job.
Red zone in Florence! Looks like I'm leaving at the right time. Meanwhile in California:
- The State of California has announced plans to expand vaccine eligibility to people 50 years and older starting April 1, and to people 16 years and older starting April 15.
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Other than seeing where they currently are with regards to their waves there is virtually nothing that can be taken from these charts considering they are all to their own scales.
Thanks.
What is with Turkeys numbers though
that graph man, looks like they started reporting cases, government didn't want backlash, so just have up reporting cases the next week.Nearly 9k cases today in NL, and weekend figures are usually the lowest.
The only value is to show the trends in terms of number of cases.
I totally agree.
I live in London and in mid April, will have been in some form of lockdown for 8 out of the last 13 months.
We have amongst the worst death rates in the World while being one of the most locked down countries on the planet - how does this even happen? Govt incompetence.
The at risk people have all received 1st doses of the vaccines.
I really do hope that this lockdown thing doesn't become the norm in the coming years.
The issue is that a precedent has been set and the Govt may choose to lockdown for other illnesses, such as the flu or even for other reasons.
I live alone and for me, it's been like living under house arrest - barely leaving the home apart from food shopping. Mentally, this has been challenging.
If the scientists had their way, we'd probably be in lockdown for the next 10 years.
rant over
Agreed on this.
Anyone who doesn't want lockdown or wants life to return to normal is a bad human for not caring about those at risk.
In Uk, those at risk have had a chance to have the vaccine. And if they want, they are welcome to shield and stay at home. The whole country and more importantly the economy, is taking a battering and it'll be us, the citizens, who have to pay for it.
That isn't correct, we've only given 3.2m their second dose so those at risk haven't got full protection yet. The road map, at the moment, seems sensible and dare I say it, measured.
So another freakish case yesterday. Was evaluating a 67 year old woman with no priors for an extremely acute dementia. She actually came because she fainted but as I was about to discharge her she started to make some extremely weird questions and I explored her mental state more deeply. Eventually called her husband who told me she was acting very weird for the last 4 days. I called neurology and we decided to have her stay for the night for a brain CT-scan this morning. She spent all night behaving like someone with mid-stage dementia. Coming to me with weird questions (like wanting to pay me for my work several times), forgetting what exam she was about to make, thinking it was already time to leave, etc. I even have the impression her cognitive state deteriorated during my 12-hour shift with her. As the CT came without major changes, neurology wanted to evaluate for epilepsy and electroencepahlography is only available during week days. As she had to wait more than 48 hours in total, she did a Covid test which came positive.
It's either a big coincidence (our incidence is still reasonably low) or is that Covid presenting as acute dementia... Never heard of something like that yet. Perhaps micro-strokes due to coagulation problems?
It's either a big coincidence (our incidence is still reasonably low) or is that Covid presenting as acute dementia... Never heard of something like that yet. Perhaps micro-strokes due to coagulation problems?
Maybe delirium rather than dementia? Doesn’t take much to tip frail elderly into delirium. Be interesting to see how she does after recovering from acute illness.
EDIT: Although calling 67 “elderly” is a stretch. The older I get the further out I push the transition from middle-aged to elderly!
I thought about that, but 1) she wasn't the elderly type, you know what I mean people between 60-70 vary a bit and she generally seems on the healthier end of people of that age and 2) no signs of infection (which will be most of the Covid cases I get because of there's any she would be triaged to the Covid area). Analytics fine, no CRP, etc.
Though for her sake I do hope it's some kind of delirium, because at least that's reversible.
At the risk of turning this into an episode of House did you do a tox screen? Would also wonder about drug induced delerium. Maybe accidental overdose? A guy I know once had both his parents admitted via A&E in an acute confusional state only to later find out they’d found some hash brownies he’d made and ate the lot!
With all these new variants popping up, and probably evolving more and more to be resistant to the vaccines, it feels like we could be in lockdown to varying degrees in perpetuity