Yes I am hesitant now, however it’s the N501Y mutation. The information I have was from Le Monde who specifically quoted Dr Julian Tang of the University of Leicester. The quote being that this mutation has appeared sporadically in the regions mentioned.
Doesn’t the travel ban take effect in about 2 hours? I think they are probably screwed at this point.
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Yeah those that are here already. Those due to arrive tomorrow probably due a “Boris” and head home
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Australian style traffic
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Yeah, no doubt. Forty-eight hours is one thing, but they have no assurances of what happens after that. I have no idea how the industry works in Europe, in North America drivers are in large measure private operators paid on a distance carried basis. A week stuck in the UK doing nothing means not getting paid, with no recourse to anyone.
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It appears it is the same one - a mutation in the ACE 2 receptor binding region that theoretically would explain it being more communicable.
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Adding Sweden and Switzerland
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and the year’s not even over yet. Not sure I’m looking forward to the 2021 sequel either.
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To say that we are not worried about the “British Mutation” is to lie. It is the main topic in the Norwegian media, that and our Handball women’s team winning today.
Many countries have canceled flights to and from the UK, we are mulling the same thing, Labour party and Progressive Party hammering the government in the media since flights are not yet all canceled. Everyone coming into the country is strongly advised to take a test, but many are angry that this is not mandatory and enforced by law.
The government’s response is that it is difficult, the mutation has already been found in Italy and is probably elsewhere in Europe.
Health Directorate and Folkehelseinstituttet (our two health organisations who deals with Corona) are saying that they review it from hour to hour, what possible new precautions we should take. So far, flights from to and from the UK have not been canceled though.
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My friend whom I visited yesterday has a guy living in his cellar (paying rent obviously). That man insists it’s the End of Days and that Donald Trump is the last US president. I chose not to talk to him when I saw him, was kid of skeptic. But maybe he is on to something. 2020 wasn’t a celebratory year exactly.
Seriously though, I am a bit worried that this mutation discovered in the UK could possible affect Phizer/Biontech vaccine, since that vaccine fills the body with the protein from the virus (but not the virus itself). This of course since the mutation is on that very protein.
Guess time will tell, but as soon as medical experts know more about this mutation other than it being 70% more infectious, I want to read about it.
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So sad to hear about this new mutation. That’s the last nail on the coffin of heard immunity, if there was space for one more.
Waiting for some a**hole to label it brit virus or something like that and threat to held the country accountable, but I guess that fortunately or not that only applies to evil countries, like CCP China.
Anyone knows if this new variant of the virus is related to the minks’ contagion event in Denmark last month or is it entirely new stuff??
I believe all the efforts to stops flight from and to Britain will be useless, as was Trump’s banning of flights from China in the early stages that then resulted in the virus coming from Italy anyway. The outlook does not seem promising at all.
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Herd immunity should have been a laughable concept by the end of March. It was mathematically impossible once it became clear that immunity had a lifetime of less than 8 months.
It was only a matter of time before a seriously problematic mutation occurred, even with the relatively low mutation rate of coronavirus. We let this thing replicate in us trillions of times, policy giving it a free hit at times. It really should not be a surprise that kind of evolution would occur.
Though to your point, the UK is being walled off from the world far more quickly than China was. However, it probably was too late, given it has been circulating at least since September. Best hope is that the UK Government has puffed up the difference as a bogeyman to justify the latest flipflop, rather than a real threat - if so, that has backfired rather badly. No way that border is opening back up in 2 days.
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There is no evidence so far that this variant behaves different.
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But that couldn’t have been known by the end of March, could it? The half year immunity could only have become known about in June/July, no? I wonder now whether immunity might be lasting longer but the cases of reinfection are actually different variants?
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I’m not sure if they know much for certain, even that ‘70% more infectious’ number seems more like an educated guess at this point as far as I understood it - probably wise to be extra-cautious though.
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Quite ironic that a virus can do Brexit better than right wing politicians.
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Virus v right wing politicians
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Cheer up. All immune responses are based on being able to recognize the protein you are talking about. If we observe a mutation with a spike protein changed enough that our immune response no longer recognizes then the traditional vaccines would fail against it as well.
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