COVID 19 GLOBAL

[tko]

1 hour ago, KWA said:

That sounds like how mine was previously - the red title being:

 

That's now gone for me but I'd taken a screenshot back in March when I first came across it which is what I used to get it on my local EU system.  I can't see a way to share rather than screenshot.

I think I may now know a possible reason why mine is wrong.  Do you have the orange text at the top of my first screenshot just above where I redacted my Passport Number?  I had an issue with my passport number that I thought was corrected, but the fix may not have flowed though to here.

Yep, that's what it says.  You have a problem with your passport number.  I don't have that message and can still get the certificate.

[tko]

@KWA can you go into the Digital Health Certificate instead of the Digital Health Pass or is that messed up, too?

[Horizondave]

Not sure if this has been mentioned already. Facemasks no longer required on flights and airports when traveling to Europe.

https://www.express.co.uk/travel/articles/1608663/face-mask-travel-europe-flights-airports-latest-news-update

Edited May 11, 2022 by Horizondave

[Krapow]

Even the WHO telling China to bin their Zero Covid nonsense with Omicron. 

Just all about face now, while they actually are tightening restrictions even more in Shanghai. 

f**k sake just admit Omicron has changed things, completely!

 

Edited May 11, 2022 by Krapow

[Glasseye]

I don't get the fuss over why someone chooses to protect their own health, and has the gal to criticize who does so. Making derogatory comments toward someone who does so is beyond understanding.

Must be bored or something.....   I guess the thought of catching a disease in a snowbound Alaska igloo can cause someone to go a little batty.

 

Perhaps one could ask the offspring of past pandemics in Alaska....

 

https://www.alaskapublic.org/2020/05/06/what-alaskans-learned-from-the-mother-of-all-pandemics-in-1918/

 

What Alaskans learned from ‘the mother of all pandemics’ in 1918

By

 Pablo Arauz Peña, KTOO - Juneau

 -

May 6, 2020

The so-called Spanish flu in 1918-1919 killed more than half of adults and Elders in villages across Alaska. Here, two orphans who survived the pandemic are near Bristol Bay. (Photo courtesy of the Alaska State Archives via Kathryn Ringsmuth and the Alaska Packers Association)

It’s October 1918 in Juneau, and the future of Alaska depends on which comes first — winter or the so-called Spanish flu.

At that time the flu had already been ravaging the outside world, infecting one-third of the global population. It added to the tragic loss of human life in World War I, which was about to end. When it was all over, records show at least 50 million total deaths from the flu worldwide.

Get the latest coverage of the coronavirus in Alaska

Alaska Territorial Governor Thomas Riggs Jr. had read reports of Spanish flu infections and over 350 deaths in Seattle. He asked all steamship companies to inspect passengers for symptoms and to not allow any sick passengers on board.

The S.S. Admiral Farragut docked in Juneau. (Photo courtesy of the Juneau-Douglas City Museum)

But despite the community’s best efforts, the first influenza case in Alaska was reported in Juneau on Oct. 14, 1918 — before winter stopped ships from coming.

Niko Sanguinetti is a curator at the Juneau-Douglas City Museum.

“The main thing was that ships leaving Seattle, if they would do a visual inspection of everyone getting on the ship, and if they looked sick, then they would be told they couldn’t go,” said Sanguinetti. “Obviously the problem with that is that a lot of people didn’t show symptoms until they were already up here.”

Sanguinetti said there are many historical parallels between the influenza pandemic over a century ago and the coronavirus pandemic.

A newspaper article describes Juneau under quarantine in December 1918. (Image courtesy Library of Congress)

Articles from the Alaska Daily Empire (now called the Juneau Empire) paint a gloomy and eerily familiar picture of Juneau during the flu pandemic: stories of schools shutting down, businesses closing and mandatory self-quarantines.

“Some of these newspaper articles honestly could be printed two days ago. The same mentality, the same fears, the same concerns, the same uncertainties,” Sanguinetti said. “It’s very creepy.”

Haida Elder Tom Abel said his Aunt Carrie witnessed the flu pandemic firsthand as it spread through Southeast Alaska.

“She kind of described the situation to me, you know: ‘There’s people are dying so fast that they couldn’t bury them, and bodies are rotting in the streets and … were literally rotting where they dropped,’” said Abel.

A group of orphans build a path outside of Bristol Bay. (Photo courtesy of Charles Black and the family of Linus H. French)

Abel’s family survived in isolation, but going into 1919, whole villages in Alaska were decimated as the second wave of influenza traveled on ships and dog sleds up north.

“It made its way all the way up to the Seward Peninsula and ravaged northern Alaska and, you know, killing and devastating villages,” said Katie Ringsmuth, an Alaska historian at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

Ringsmuth’s family operated the Diamond Cannery in Bristol Bay. Today, as residents are talking about opening up fishing communities in Bristol Bay, fear of a second wave of COVID-19 is very real.

It was the second wave of the flu that hit Alaska the hardest. And for many Alaska Natives, it came with the history of colonization.

“This was a terrible, terrible disease that wiped out really the heart and soul of the population and left behind a population of orphans,” said Ringsmuth.

A group of orphans stands outside in Bristol Bay with Dr. Linus H. French, the only doctor in the area at the time. (Photo courtesy of Charles Black and the family of Linus H. French.)

Historical documents show gruesome scenes. Cannery workers found orphans left to fend for themselves, surrounded by dogs and the remains of their relatives.

Overall, the flu killed a greater percentage of people in Alaska than in any other state or territory in the U.S. except for Samoa.

A group of Alaska Native orphans sit outside near Bristol Bay. (Photo courtesy of the Alaska State Archives via Kathryn Ringsmuth)

But Ringsmuth said the survival stories of those orphans in the face of a pandemic would inspire generations.

“Those courageous kids survived. And not only survived, they would go on to give birth to a generation that’s, you know, gonna lead Alaska into the (Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act) days and (Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act) and in subsistence and becoming some of the most powerful Indigenous people on the planet,” said Ringsmuth.

Stories that go to show that, in times of great tragedy, there are also extraordinary triumphs.

[KWA]

On 5/11/2022 at 11:25 AM, tko said:

@KWA can you go into the Digital Health Certificate instead of the Digital Health Pass or is that messed up, too?

I can get in there, but only having the booster in Thailand it just tells me I'm not fully vaccinated.

The "International Certificate" shows me a QR code that links to the MOPH database that correctly shows the jab but was not suitable for the EU link.  Just as well I had taken a copy of the EU one before the passsport issue that seems to have screwed it up.

[lazarus]

1 hour ago, Glasseye said:

Perhaps one could ask the offspring of past pandemics in Alaska....

Or, the millions of Covid orphans...including 214,000 in the US:

COVID-19’s hidden, heartbreaking toll: millions of orphaned children
An estimated 10.4 million children have lost a parent or caregiver, putting them at higher risk for poverty and every major cause of death—but it doesn’t have to end in catastrophe.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/covid-19-hidden-heartbreaking-toll-millions-of-orphaned-children

... Hidden behind those statistics is an orphanhood crisis unprecedented in modern history. Nearly 10.4 million children worldwide have lost a parent or caregiver to COVID-19, according to latest estimates from Imperial College London. In the U.S., more than 214,000 children have lost a parent or caregiver. Like the death toll itself, the true numbers are likely higher.

Bereavement is life-changing for anyone, and particularly devastating for kids. Decades of research show that losing a caregiver puts children at increased risk of abuse, poverty, and mental health problems such as depression, anxiety, and suicide. If kids don’t get adequate support—or if their hardships are particularly severe—the stress can even change the architecture of their brains and leave them more vulnerable to every major cause of death, says Susan Hillis, co-chair of the Global Reference Group on Children Affected by COVID-19, a partnership between the University of Oxford and the World Health Organization.

COVID-19 also has fomented conditions ripe for chronic stress as children face lockdowns, school closures, and the constant threat of losing more loved ones. But Hillis and other experts say it doesn’t have to end in catastrophe: Lessons learned from past health crises teach us how to help kids cope with the unthinkable...

[Kathmandu]

On 5/11/2022 at 2:11 PM, Krapow said:

 

f**k sake just admit Omicron has changed things, completely!

 

f**k me dead! Stop knocking about Omicron like it's going to be around forever. It's not changed anything completely until new variants come around. 

[forcebwithu]

20 minutes ago, Kathmandu said:

f**k me dead! Stop knocking about Omicron like it's going to be around forever. It's not changed anything completely until new variants come around. 

I took that to mean with Omicron symptoms being quite mild for most, it had a big effect on the world to start living with the China virus and get back to some sense of normalcy.

[lazarus]

15 minutes ago, forcebwithu said:

I took that to mean with Omicron symptoms being quite mild for most, it had a big effect on the world to start living with the China virus and get back to some sense of normalcy.

Omicron ("original") is old news. It's playing itself out at it's own pace depending on location.

In my region infections are up and hospitalizations rising. There's a new germ in town...the BA.2 omicron subvariant.

Masking is recommended again in crowd indoor situations.

Seems personal responsibility only gets us so far with a fast changing virus.

. . .

When will the surge in COVID cases peak? Here’s why the BA.2 curve will be harder to predict

https://www.sfchronicle.com/health/article/When-will-this-COVID-surge-peak-in-the-Bay-Area-17166112.php

Omicron seems to be spinning off more subvariants

This wave is also different in that omicron has spun off several subvariants, which we have not seen before.

While part of that is likely a “phenomenon of how much better or more sophisticated our diagnostics have become,” Swartzberg said, allowing us to tease out these different subvariants in a way we could not before, it could also be a result of omicron being a quicker-changing, less-stable variant.

“There may be more going on ... it may be that this particular variant, omicron BA.1, has more plasticity and is able to change in ways that it can evolve very quickly into newer and more transmissible variants and subvariants,” he said — noting that anything beyond the difference in diagnostics is conjecture.

[forcebwithu]

^^^ Or it could be with the large number of infections from Omicron there's more chances for the virus to mutate.

[lazarus]

8 minutes ago, forcebwithu said:

^^^ Or it could be with the large number of infections from Omicron there's more chances for the virus to mutate.

That's one strong argument for vaccinating and boosting as many people as possible globally.

[fygjam]

Track you variants here.

https://covariants.org/

 

[lazarus]

 

[galenkia]

One rule for one etc.

[Kathmandu]

5 hours ago, forcebwithu said:

^^^ Or it could be with the large number of infections from Omicron there's more chances for the virus to mutate.

Yeah, that's the other side of the coin. We just don't know. 

[Krapow]

7 hours ago, Kathmandu said:

f**k me dead! Stop knocking about Omicron like it's going to be around forever. It's not changed anything completely until new variants come around. 

Of course it's changed things, hence most of the world getting back to some sort of sense of normality apart from the likes of China where it's more that they can't admit they might just be currently taking the wrong approach.

There are variants all the time, the Omicron variants currently panicking the usual panic merchants in this thread and elsewhere we've already had in the UK, no more severe than 'original' Omicron, which is  not severe anyway. 

Lefty panic merchants will be lefty panic merchants. Remember you and usual lefty minded were proclaiming the bodies were going too pile up in Denmark a couple of months ago? Fast forward and they're the 1st country in the world to stop their vaccine roll out, as they say there's now no need for it, Omicron has changed things. But sure you keep up the hysteria ...

You sit worrying your wee head and reading all your favorite media outlets to get your conformation bias,  the rest of us will get on with life again as best we can ..

Oh, and here's even the Lefty Guardian saying that having more mandates did not lead to better outcomes, and that the UK has the lowest excess in Europe from January to date, despite having the least restrictions ...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/may/12/ending-englands-covid-restrictions-was-divisive-but-the-data-shows-we-were-right

[forcebwithu]

9 minutes ago, Krapow said:

Of course it's changed things, hence most of the world getting back to some sort of sense of normality apart from the likes of China where it's more that they can't admit they might just be currently taking the wrong approach.

There are variants all the time, the Omicron variants currently panicking the usual panic merchants in this thread and elsewhere we've already had in the UK, no more severe than 'original' Omicron, which is  not severe anyway. 
...

It's amazing how entrenched the ruling party in China is in regards to their zero China virus policy. Anyone with a functioning brain can see it's not working and causing more hardship to their citizens than the virus ever did, or probably ever will.

I thought some of the other govts' reactions were OTT, but China is hands down the winner of the over reaction award.

[Jambo]

5 minutes ago, Krapow said:

Of course it's changed things, hence most of the world getting back to some sort of sense of normality apart from the likes of China where it's more that they can't admit they might just be currently taking the wrong approach.

There are variants all the time, the Omicron variants currently panicking the usual panic merchants in this thread and elsewhere we've already had in the UK, no more severe than 'original' Omicron, which is  not severe anyway. 

Lefty panic merchants will be lefty panic merchants. Remember you and usual lefty minded were proclaiming the bodies were going too pile up in Denmark a couple of months ago? Fast forward and they're the 1st country in the world to stop their vaccine roll out, as they say there's now no need for it, Omicron has changed things. But sure you keep up the hysteria ...

You sit worrying your wee head and reading all your favorite media outlets to get your conformation bias,  the rest of us will get on with life again as best we can ..

Oh, and here's even the Lefty Guardian saying that having more mandates did not lead to better outcomes, and that the UK has the lowest excess in Europe from January to date, despite having the least restrictions ...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/may/12/ending-englands-covid-restrictions-was-divisive-but-the-data-shows-we-were-right

Those that "panic" (or at least go into more concerned than the majority mode) almost certainly have other medical conditions which somewhat understandably raise their own anxiety levels.

Influenza is endemic, mutates and a small percentage of the multiple millions who catch it sadly die. Most do not die and very many avoid catching it by having , as I did, an annual vaccination.

The world is starting to confirm covid to be endemic as it is accepted that it is never going away and we just have to live with it and get on with our lives even if that means at least annual top up vaccinations.

 

[Krapow]

3 minutes ago, forcebwithu said:

It's amazing how entrenched the ruling party in China is in regards to their zero China virus policy. Anyone with a functioning brain can see it's not working and causing more hardship to their citizens than the virus ever did, or probably ever will.

I thought some of the other govts' reactions were OTT, but China is hands down the winner of the over reaction award.

Yea, of course it's causing more hardship to their citizens than the virus now it's Omicron. Likewise it would've been the same in the UK had the Gov listened to the usual naysayers at Xmas proclaiming doom. Thankfully the get little to no credence now in the UK, even the Guardian saying the UK Gov took the right approach, as the data shows.

China should put more emphasis on their vaccine roll out. 

Could there be a new more deadly variant, yes. 

Could I get hit by a bus crossing the road, yes. 

Am I living my life in fear of ether, no, and I'm happy here in the UK we're getting on with life, and being proven right to take such approach. Omicron has changed things. 

[Krapow]

3 minutes ago, Jambo said:

Those that "panic" (or at least go into more concerned than the majority mode) almost certainly have other medical conditions which somewhat understandably raise their own anxiety levels.

Influenza is endemic, mutates and a small percentage of the multiple millions who catch it sadly die. Most do not die and very many avoid catching it by having , as I did, an annual vaccination.

The world is starting to confirm covid to be endemic as it is accepted that it is never going away and we just have to live with it and get on with our lives even if that means at least annual top up vaccinations.

 

Yes, like many other such viruses we live with, those more vulnerable should take more precautions.

I was talking more about the politically motivated panic merchants creating hysteria when there is no need, it causes more problems and fear in people. As was seen at Xmas in the UK, when had we listened to them, we would have went into a totally unnecessary and damaging in all sorts of ways lockdown. 

[Nightcrawler]

Cautious optimism is the order of the day. 

None of us are experts, none of us know how the Covid virus may mutate in the future. We only know where we are today and that the dominant strain of Omicron is now omni present and far less life threatening than was Delta, enabling most of us to get on with our lives with some semblance of normality. 

For me, politics has little to do with that. 

 

 

[boydeste]

3 hours ago, forcebwithu said:

It's amazing how entrenched the ruling party in China is in regards to their zero China virus policy. Anyone with a functioning brain can see it's not working and causing more hardship to their citizens than the virus ever did, or probably ever did.

There is a flip side to that view. They have manufactured this virus and probably engineered it to do certain things over time.

They may know what's to come and their policy may mean more of them survive in the long run.

Also it seems their vaccine did very little to combat the virus  so I guess politically there is no way they would buy Pfizer for example for their own.

[Kathmandu]

On 5/13/2022 at 2:10 AM, Nightcrawler said:

Cautious optimism is the order of the day. 

None of us are experts

 

 

Yet some on this thread would have us believe otherwise. It's mental!!

[lazarus]

If you're in the camp of those who believe the world is back to "normal" and the epidemic has ended ...

...then please...scroll on by.

If not. and are interested in the latest here's some new info (posted in entirety due to paywall)

Two new Omicron variants are spreading. Will they drive a new U.S. surge?
The subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 may dodge immunity, especially in unvaccinated people, possibly causing a spike in infections worldwide.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/two-new-omicron-variants-are-spreading-will-they-drive-a-new-us-surge?rid=02A7FCB616ADA230E85E7EC3C56BC23D&cmpid=org=ngp::mc=crm-email::src=ngp::cmp=editorial::add=Health_20220516_Audience_Correction

New versions of Omicron are again causing a surge of COVID-19 cases in South Africa, and studies show that these new subvariants are so different from the original version of Omicron that immunity generated from a previous infection may not provide much protection.

Dubbed BA.4 and BA.5, the new subvariants are nearly identical to each other, and both are more transmissible than the Omicron BA.2 subvariant. In South Africa, they replaced the BA.2 strain in less than a month. They are now responsible for a spike in South Africa’s COVID-19 cases, which have tripled since mid-April.

“If you were unvaccinated, what you got is almost no immunity to BA.4 and BA.5,” says Alex Sigal, a virologist at the Africa Health Research Institute and at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. “There might be some immunity that may be enough to protect against severe disease, but not sufficient to protect against symptomatic infection.”

South Africa is the worst hit country on the continent, with more than 100,523 official deaths from COVID-19—and that’s likely a gross underestimate according to a recent study in The Lancet. With BA.4 and BA.5 now on the rise, the death toll is likely to grow, as only a third of the South African population has received a COVID-19 vaccine; the rate of vaccination is even lower in the rest of Africa.

For now, the subvariant known as BA.2.12.1 remains dominant in the U.S., causing new hospitalizations to spike in the last week by more than 17 percent nationally and by as much as 28 percent in the Great Lakes area, and Washington D.C. and the surrounding region. But the new subvariants have spread to more than 20 countries across North America, Asia, and Europe, and already 19 cases of BA.4 and six cases of BA.5 have been identified in the U.S.

How are BA.4 and BA.5 different from other Omicron variants? 

South Africa has become a bright spot within Africa for sequencing samples of SARS-CoV-2. This swift sequencing was critical in alerting the world in December 2021 to the discovery and surge of the original Omicron strain, called BA.1. Now the same team has discovered BA.4 and BA.5.

“The BA.4 and BA.5 sub-variants were identified because South Africa is still doing the vital genetic sequencing that many other countries have stopped doing,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Director General of the World Health Organization, at a press conference on May 4. “In many countries we’re essentially blind to how the virus is mutating. We don’t know what’s coming next.”

That sequencing has revealed that for both BA.4 and BA.5, the spike protein is similar to the one in BA.2, except for six mutations. The spike protein is the part of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that anchors to receptors on human respiratory cells and allows the virus to infect the cell.

“The three modifications present in the spike of BA.4 and BA.5, compared to BA.2, are most likely associated to antibody escape and improved viral fitness and binding to the ACE2 receptor,” says Olivier Schwartz, head of the Virus and Immunity Unit at Institut Pasteur in France.

Two of the changes on the spike can make these viruses more infectious, says Ravindra Gupta, an immunologist and infectious diseases specialist at the University of Cambridge in the U.K. as shown by his previous research. The upside is that these same mutations make it easy for researchers to rapidly distinguish the new subvariants from BA.2 in a standard PCR test.

Another mutation present in BA.4 and BA.5 is also found in other variants of concern, including Delta, Kappa, and Epsilon. It increases infectivity and weakens immunity from existing antibodies, according to a preliminary study from China.

The Chinese study also shows that a rare change seen before only 54 times among 10 million viral sequences helps BA.4 and BA.5 to evade BA.1-specific antibodies. This same mutation also enabled SARS-CoV-2 to infect mink and ferrets during April 2020 outbreaks in mink farms.

In addition to these spike protein mutations, BA.4 and BA.5 also have small changes in viral proteins whose exact function are not well known.

Where did BA.4 and BA.5 evolve? 

A preliminary genetic analysis estimates that the new subvariants may have originated in South Africa at around the same time as other Omicron variants, in mid-December 2021 and early January 2022, respectively. But scientists don’t yet know their origin for sure.

“BA.4 and BA.5 may well have originated from the same kind of common source as BA.1, BA.2, and BA.3, but it's not certain,” says Richard Lessells, an infectious diseases doctor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa. He is part of the nation’s sequencing team that discovered all of these Omicron variants.

Possible routes of evolution may have been an animal host, such as a mouse; or it may have gestated in some immunocompromised patients, as has been shown to occur through accumulation of mutations during a chronic infection by Gupta.

“The alternative is that BA.4 and BA.5 may have evolved from BA.2,” says Lessells.

BA.4 and BA.5 dodge previous immunity 

In the first study of BA4 and BA.5 on immunity, which has not yet been peer reviewed, scientists led by Sigal, of the Africa Health Research Institute, isolated live viruses from nasal swabs. The scientists then ran tests to see whether antibodies from unvaccinated and vaccinated people who had been infected with the original Omicron BA.1 strain just a few months ago were able to neutralize these new variants. Sigal’s team discovered that these antibodies weren’t able to protect against symptomatic infection.

That’s concerning, because in low- and middle-income countries less than one in six people have yet received a single dose of any COVID-19 vaccine. Even in the United States, nearly 23 percent of the population remains unvaccinated.

“BA.4/5 data are interesting and somewhat surprising,” says Gupta, referring to the sharp decline in immunity seen in studies so far. “It is greater than I would have predicted,” he says. “It may be that [the] biology of this virus has completely changed in terms of how quickly it's able to evolve.”

The South African study does have some good news for vaccinated people: “We found that you get a lot of protection from vaccines, even if you got infected with Omicron despite being vaccinated—a lot more protection than if you weren't vaccinated going forward,” says Sigal.

Sigal’s study also suggests that BA.4 and BA.5 may cause less severe disease, especially among vaccinated people, compared to previous Omicron variants. This may explain why fewer people seem to be getting severe disease despite the rise in COVID-19 hospitalizations in South Africa. The median length of hospitalization also appears to be shorter, but deaths due to COVID-19 are rising faster in patients of older age.

“BA.4/5 data do reinforce the need for boosters in vulnerable people to keep the antibody levels high,” says Gupta.

In the meantime, Moderna has published data on its new mRNA-1273.211 candidate booster vaccine—which mixes ancestral spike protein with a mimic of the Beta variant spike. Although not yet peer reviewed, the results seem to show superior protection for up to six months even against the Omicron variant.

“Vaccines are designed to prevent severe disease, to keep us out of hospital and off the ventilator,” says Lessells. “And they are still doing that extremely well, in the face of all these different variants.”