I thought that was expected (so far as you can “expect” things in this pandemic). I see the thread linked to above seems to confirm my memories and what I’ve been told about it by a doctor.
Keep your labs clean, people!
An apparent coronavirus strain that combines mutations from both the Omicron and Delta variants is likely to be the result of laboratory contamination, scientists have said.
Fears emerged over the weekend that a new strain of Covid, dubbed ‘Deltacron’, had emerged from a so-called recombination event - when two variants co-infect a patient and exchange mutations to produce a new viral offspring.
The eastern Massachusetts sewage authority tests for levels of virus. It’s not super good at comparing one strain to another, as people shed more virus when infected with some strains. But it’s been extremely acturate in predicting whether infection rates will go up or down in the next several days. And it appears to have peaked.
Here’s the general link for the site
FWIW, the epidemiologists where I work are predicting that the surge in our state (NC) will peak either next week or the week after.
Wrapping up the Djokovic thread (hopefully once and for all), the judge did decide that he had complied with all the legal requirements and so his detention under the entry requirements was unlawful. He’s now released and free to play in the Australian Open.
There is still an avenue for the Home Affairs Minister to do a final ‘because I’m the Minister’ cancellation.
It will probably be dressed up as a great victory for vaccine skeptics, but it got down to being able to demonstrate compliance with what turned out to be a set of broadly drafted regulations that probably did not have this in mind.
The evidence showing him attending events after his positive test was not well-canvassed, but reinforces your view that Djokovic is a complete deadshit.
Here’s some news:
Moderna working on a booster that targets Omicron:
Which might not be necessary:
From the article:
Twenty-five sequences of Deltacron have been reported to date, but experts have insisted there is no evidence to suggest that Omicron and Delta have combined to generate a new variant.
“This is almost certainly not a biological recombinant of the Delta and Omicron lineages,” said Dr Jeffrey Barrett, director of the Covid-19 Genomics Initiative at the Wellcome Sanger Institute.
Instead, it’s been suggested that fragments of Omicron have accidentally been inserted into Delta’s genetic make-up during the sequencing process that takes place when attempting to identify a Covid variant infection.
In other words, recombination during a routine laboratory sequencing procedure does not produce a new variant. That can only occur when two viruses infect a cell, recombine, and make a bunch of new variants.
Most things I read say that Omicron is already on the fade.
311,034,676 total cases
5,512,167 dead
260,647,243 recovered
In the US:
62,661,272 total cases
861,336 dead
42,505,374 recovered
Yesterday’s numbers for comparison:
The Center for COVID Control, a company that has opened something like 300 testing sites, is apparently a scam to get personal identification information as well as financial information from people. They claim to provide rapid testing, and all their results are negative. Sometimes before you even take the test! (WINK News is a CBS affiliate in Florida.)
Excellent contribution, Morgyn; thank you very much for posting that.
Searching for the company name turns up news reports from multiple states.
I’m not even surprised by this. Since time immemorial, there have been humans eager to profit from disasters and fear.
What does surprise me is how many other people are surprised that this is happening. There are people selling fake vaccination cards, and fake vaccines, and fake masks, and … why would they be surprised that someone is selling fake tests and telling people what they want to hear?
China is not fucking around:
Well, good luck to them, but they’re not going to be able to contain it indefinitely.
Considering that over 80% of the population is fully vaccinated, the suffering and problems caused by extreme lockdowns may be worse than covid.
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/01/07/china/china-xian-outbreak-analysis-mic-intl-hnk/index.html
“No one cares what you die of – other than Covid-19,” a user wrote on Chinese social media this week.
…looking at the original post:
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/01/06/china/xian-lockdown-zero-covid-intl-hnk/index.html
And comparing it to what I’m seeing happening all over the United States and Australia right now, the anecdotes seem, comparatively, mild. I certainly can’t see what leads you to believe that they won’t be able to contain it.
They may contain it in the short term, but over time it will inevitably spread, whatever they do. They can’t keep imposing extreme lockdowns of whole cities for each outbreak, year after year. Sooner or later they will have to learn to live with it.
…why not? We keep hearing that it is “inevitable.” But why? If “learn to live with it” is the utter chaos that we are seeing around the world at the moment, then perhaps “learning to live with it” isn’t the best of options.
Poland: