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Yeah, 2 confirmed cases in Hong Kong, both returning travellers - one from South Africa, the other from Canada. Both of them quarantined in the same hotel after returning, and the one who travelled back from South Africa is now considered to be the index case in this potential cluster. Other people who quarantined in 12 rooms on the same floor in the same hotel are now put into precautionary quarantine again. In Israel, the confirmed case is a returnee from Malawi, and they are currently investigating two others who are suspected to carry the same new variant. All three vaccinated, so there's more fuel for worries about it potentially escaping immune response, but all reportedly asymptomatic (the same with the two in Hong Kong, I believe).

Charlie Wyke has confirmed he hasn't had the vaccine if that's where you're going with this

Flu is one thing, Covid-19 is around 2-3 times more infectious as influenza though, and that's going off the 2020 data which doesn't account for the increased transmissibility of the Beta variant from Kent and then the Delta variant from India. We heard early on that the natural "R" number for Covid-19 was around 3, while for flu it's around 1.3. This means that if 100 people in a community have the flu, then they'll pass it on to 130 people before they themselves recover from it. Those 130 people will infect roughly 169 people, they will infect 220 people, and then they will go on to infect 282 people. In reality, if people stay at home when they're sick and avoid coughing on others and stuff, this increase can be stemmed pretty easily within reason as long as people get flu jabs and follow basic hygiene. You take the R number up from 1.3 to 3 though (and the studies I've just looked up suggest that the now dominant Delta variant has an R number of more like 5). Start with 100 infected people in a community. They will pass it on to 300 people before they recover if they go about their lives pretty normally. 300 will become 900, then 2700, then 8100 by the fourth set of infections, compared to 282 from the flu's R number of 1.3. This is why the comparisons between influenza and Covid-19 are only relevant up to a point. The symptoms may be similar and if you have 8100 patients with flu in your city at once it might well be as bad as having 8100 patients with Covid-19. The level of infectiousness of each virus makes a massive difference though in how much you should do to track and suppress the case numbers where possible. What the vaccine does is decrease the rate at which Covid-19 cases become hospitalisations and deaths. The flu jab does essentially the same thing for those in vulnerable groups each year. If you have an unvaccinated population then you might be hitting 10,000 cases a day in the UK before that starts to overwhelm hospitals and require intervention from the government. With a fully vaccinated population, you might be able to hover around 50,000 cases a day without causing a problem for the NHS because less of those cases are translating into hospital beds being used up and people dying. It's just maths at the end of the day. And the maths is clear - those countries with high levels of vaccination are seeing less infections turn into hospitalisations, and have seen the rate of transmission decreased as well. What is worrying is that if the new strain has a higher R number than the Delta variant, which it sounds like it does, and it dodges the vaccines with even 25% more success than the strains we've been dealing with to date, over time those slight increases compound to cause a bigger problem, which is the curse of exponential growth. The numbers I've given you above demonstrate that a disease which gets typically transmitted to 3 other people instead of about 1.5 on average might not sound that much worse but causes a pretty big fucking problem over a longer period of time, and that is why it's disingenuous to keep shrugging Covid-19 off as largely similar to the flu in this context.

Any pics?

Looks like Bayern's annual member meeting was a huge success

BUT WHAT ABOUT NATURAL IMMUNITY DANNY YOU DIDN'T THINK OF THAT DID YOU. If covid is the same as flu (like @Happy Blue has said?) why do we have jabs for flu each year. Ergo, HB doesn't mind having jabs each year to treat covid...glad that's all sorted...

I played Uncharted 1 and 2, but never played 3 and cos of that, I never played 4 as a result. However, I do have the Uncharted trio downloaded via Sony's State of Play they did last year so maybe one day.

Have you heard of the Dunning-Krueger effect?

Bit of positive news this morning. Chilwell only suffered a partial ACL tear and will be assessed after 6 weeks post recovery to see if he needs surgery.

Like the flu i don't think you can get rid of a corona virus because it just keeps mutating

The hospitalisation and death rates beg to differ.

Just arrived from Amazon, my next read starting tonight, the 6th novel in his series.

Been playing the first one, am playing on hard which is the second toughest level. Visuals are better than I thought they'd be and I find the game to be really open. The reporter who ends up being his partner. Good thing about her is that she actually kills people in the shoot outs rather than just shooting which happens in these games. Saying that, she does tend to get my fucking way at times during a shoot out. I like how when they throw a grenade, it isn't always accurate and doesn't always end up near you. They do have bad throws as well as good throws. I think sometimes it can be hard finding where to climb now and then as it's older graphics, but that gets easier the more you play it. One annoying thing is the right analogue stick to show your surroundings. In a few cases it doesn't allow you to move so you're stuck with what's on your screen. Just starting chapter 4 after the plane came down. I've read that this is the most difficult chapter in the game.

People can still acquire natural immunity by catching the virus after being vaccinated and it's much safer to catch it having had the vaccine. Not rocket science, mate.

Well we can distract as much as we like but you've made an assumption about those three players, one of them hasn't even had the vaccine so that put's the "must have been the vaccine claim" 1-0 down. At the very least you now need to prove that one of the other two players not only had the vaccine, but collapsed because of it, just to level the score.

I just watched this and came here to post it. Looks hilarious, and what a cast, dear lord.

If you know, you know.

That would explain the drastically fallen sales

I think the way out is expand the hospital system in every country to cater to a new baseline of winter respiratory hospitalisations. But it's odd that I don't hear of that happening, and I'm surprised Europe seems to have been caught with its pants down over boosters going into flu season, which was always going to be the annual peak.

Good information

Glad we agree, only when we all have natural immunity will things get better or they make a vaccine that works a lot better I said it's a flu virus (corona) i didn't say it's the same as the flu, it's a new strain which seems to be slightly worse but nothing to go crazy or worry about for most of us, life should continue, the over 60's and the sick get the shots, the rest of us don't need them. i've never had a flu shot, another shot that's not needed

Already posted at the top of this page ... Marty Makary is a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Bloomberg School of Public Health, editor-in-chief of Medpage Today, and author of “The Price We Pay: What Broke American Health Care — and How to Fix It." More than 15 studies have demonstrated the power of immunity acquired by previously having the virus. A 700,000-person study from Israel two weeks ago found that those who had experienced prior infections were 27 times less likely to get a second symptomatic covid infection than those who were vaccinated. This affirmed a June Cleveland Clinic study of health-care workers (who are often exposed to the virus), in which none who had previously tested positive for the coronavirus got reinfected. The study authors concluded that “individuals who have had SARS-CoV-2 infection are unlikely to benefit from covid-19 vaccination.” And in May, a Washington University study found that even a mild covid infection resulted in long-lasting immunity. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/09/15/natural-immunity-vaccine-mandate/

Aaaaaand the new variant is in Europe. Belgium registered it's first case.

Just saw this data from Germany about hospitalisations. The dark blue curve are unvaccinated people in hospitals, and the orange one are fully vaccinated people in hospitals per 100.000 people.

10 Things that could go wrong in the first 20 years of the 21st century - Wire Magazine 1997

You are one strange little man ..i understand you are afraid and part of the herd but common sense has to kick in with you at some point the vax is not working and natural immunity has been proven to be 27 times better at fighting off covid so if the vaccinated can stay in doors please while we fight it off for you ..oh, and don't have a power wank because you heart might blow up

The new variant is already found in Hong Kong and Israel. I can smell new lockdowns already.

If HappyBlue was North Korean, he'd be one of those people who believe that Kim Jong-un doesn't poop.

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