Neverending Covid-19 Coronavirus

New variant that looks really nasty. We don't yet know how wide spread it is or if it's any worse, but it has the potential to be highly contagious and possibly resistant to current vaccines.

Two variants of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that causes covid-19 have combined their genomes to form a heavily mutated hybrid version of the virus. The “recombination” event was discovered in a virus sample in California, provoking warnings that we may be poised to enter a new phase of the pandemic.

The hybrid virus is the result of recombination of the highly transmissible B.1.1.7 variant discovered in the UK and the B.1.429 variant that originated in California and which may be responsible for a recent wave of cases in Los Angeles because it carries a mutation making it resistant to some antibodies.

The recombinant was discovered by Bette Korber at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, who told a meeting organised by the New York Academy of Sciences on 2 February that she had seen “pretty clear” evidence of it in her database of US viral genomes.

The implications of the finding aren’t yet clear because very little is known about the recombinant’s biology. However, it does carry a mutation from B.1.1.7, called Δ69/70, which makes the UK virus more transmissible, and another from B.1.429, called L452R, which can confer resistance to antibodies.

“This kind of event could allow the virus to have coupled a more infectious virus with a more resistant virus,” Korber said at the New York meeting.


Read more: Exclusive: Two variants have merged into heavily mutated coronavirus
 
And this is just fun and funny, add some gin soaked raisins to your regime for optimal health. I like that they had to put a disclaimer that the CDC does not recommend this, lol.

A 105-year-old New Jersey woman who survived both the 1918 flu pandemic and a bout with the coronavirus attributed her longevity to her daily ritual of eating nine raisins soaked in gin.

“Fill a jar. Nine raisins a day after it sits for nine days,” Lucia DeClerck told The New York Times.

Gin-soaked raisins are not among the recommended Centers for Disease Control and Prevention treatments for the virus.

 

A coronavirus variant that probably emerged in May and surged to become the dominant strain in California not only spreads more readily than its predecessors but also evades antibodies generated by COVID-19 vaccines or prior infection and is associated with severe illness and death, researchers said.

In a study that helps explain the state’s dramatic holiday surge in COVID-19 cases and deaths — and portends further trouble ahead — scientists at UC San Francisco said the cluster of mutations that characterizes the homegrown strain should mark it as a “variant of concern” on par with those from the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil.
 
New variant that looks really nasty. We don't yet know how wide spread it is or if it's any worse, but it has the potential to be highly contagious and possibly resistant to current vaccines.

Two variants of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that causes covid-19 have combined their genomes to form a heavily mutated hybrid version of the virus. The “recombination” event was discovered in a virus sample in California, provoking warnings that we may be poised to enter a new phase of the pandemic.

The hybrid virus is the result of recombination of the highly transmissible B.1.1.7 variant discovered in the UK and the B.1.429 variant that originated in California and which may be responsible for a recent wave of cases in Los Angeles because it carries a mutation making it resistant to some antibodies.

The recombinant was discovered by Bette Korber at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, who told a meeting organised by the New York Academy of Sciences on 2 February that she had seen “pretty clear” evidence of it in her database of US viral genomes.

The implications of the finding aren’t yet clear because very little is known about the recombinant’s biology. However, it does carry a mutation from B.1.1.7, called Δ69/70, which makes the UK virus more transmissible, and another from B.1.429, called L452R, which can confer resistance to antibodies.

“This kind of event could allow the virus to have coupled a more infectious virus with a more resistant virus,” Korber said at the New York meeting.


Read more: Exclusive: Two variants have merged into heavily mutated coronavirus

I’m sure this was discussed many times in my absence so I apologize for not reading nearly a years’ worth of thread if this is too well worn.


I think folks need to legitimately prepare for this never going away.
 
I’m sure this was discussed many times in my absence so I apologize for not reading nearly a years’ worth of thread if this is too well worn.


I think folks need to legitimately prepare for this never going away.
Yeah, most virologists think that it's going to take us about 7 years before everything gets settled into us having a seasonal Covid variant, much like what we have with the flu.
 
Yeah, most virologists think that it's going to take us about 7 years before everything gets settled into us having a seasonal Covid variant, much like what we have with the flu.
So far, at least, don't the vaccines seem promising that, in spite of that, they may continue to be more effective than flu vaccines if they create COVID boosters?
 
I’m sure this was discussed many times in my absence so I apologize for not reading nearly a years’ worth of thread if this is too well worn.


I think folks need to legitimately prepare for this never going away.

For sure. One way to think of it is that the Spanish Flu (in a form that mutated over the century) is still with us to this day, but it's basically your H1N1 flu.
 
Leave it to the Germans to say what all of us are thinking.

From coronamüde (tired of Covid-19) to Coronafrisur (corona hairstyle), a German project is documenting the huge number of new words coined in the last year as the language races to keep up with lives radically changed by the pandemic.

It includes feelings many can relate to, such as overzoomed (stressed by too many video calls), Coronaangst (when you have anxiety about the virus) and Impfneid (envy of those who have been vaccinated).

Other new words reveal the often strange reality of life under restrictions: Kuschelkontakt (cuddle contact) for the specific person you meet for cuddles and Abstandsbier (distance beer) for when you drink with friends at a safe distance.

Covidiot, a term used in the UK, also appears in the German list. More specific is Maskentrottel (mask idiot), for someone who wears their face covering under their nose.

But the words also tell a story of connection and community. For example, Einkaufshelfer can be used to describe someone who helps others with their shopping.

Möhrs says CoronaFußgruß (corona foot greeting) is her personal favourite because it rhymes and because it shows a human desire for connection, despite our enforced physical distance.

 
Bad math causes distrust. This is why people become "anti science".

The CDC reported that life expectancy in the U.S. declined by one year in 2020. People understood this to mean that Covid-19 had shaved off a year from how long each of us will live on average. That is, after all, how people tend to think of life expectancy. The New York Times characterized the report as “the first full picture of the pandemic’s effect on American expected life spans.”

But wait. Analysts estimate that, on average, a death from Covid-19 robs its victim of around 12 years of life. Approximately 400,000 Americans died Covid-19 in 2020, meaning about 4.8 million years of life collectively vanished. Spread that ghastly number across the U.S. population of 330 million and it comes out to 0.014 years of life lost per person. That’s 5.3 days. There were other excess deaths in 2020, so maybe the answer is seven days lost per person.

No matter how you look at it, the result is a far cry from what the CDC announced.

It’s not that the agency made a math mistake. I checked the calculations myself, and even went over them with one of the CDC analysts. The error was more problematic in my view: The CDC relied on an assumption it had to know was wrong.

The CDC’s life expectancy calculations are, in fact, life expectancy projections (the technical term for the measure is period life expectancy). The calculation is based on a crucial assumption: that for the year you are studying (2019 compared to 2020 in this case) the risk of death, in every age group, will stay as it was in that year for everyone born during it.

So to project the life expectancy of people born in 2020, the CDC assumed that newborns will face the risk of dying that newborns did in 2020. Then when they turn 1, they face the risk of dying that 1-year-olds did in 2020. Then on to them being 2 years old, and so on.

Locking people into 2020 for their entire life spans, from birth to death, may sound like the plot of a dystopian reboot of “Groundhog Day.” But that’s the calculation. The results: The CDC’s report boils down to a finding that bears no relation to any realistic scenario.



The CDC assumed that the risk from dying of Covid is going to be the same for everyone going forward. That's not the truth. Covid is more likely to effect you as you age, not in early life, and it's also something that caused mass devastation, but for only a short time--much like the Spanish flu that eventually became our H1N1 flu. Later in the article it points out that often pandemics and wars can really mess up life span projections. So, no, Covid did not shave one year of life off of us. The CDC released bad math based on faulty assumptions.
 
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