Covid 19 C&P

The vaccine alone will not make us safe.


Emerging evidence suggests the first-generation vaccines currently in clinical trials have a good chance of preventing SARS-CoV-2 related illness, but they are less likely to prevent infection with the virus altogether. This means it is unlikely current vaccines will adequately suppress viral transmission.

This means there’s not yet a “silver bullet” that can return Australia and the world to pre-COVID normality. Instead, we anticipate a scenario in which vaccines, antiviral therapies and other tools that become available will help reduce COVID-associated hospitalisation and deaths.


Vaccines alone won't keep Australia safe in 2021. Here's what else we need to do (theconversation.com)

NSW response to the virus is putting Australia at risk.


NSW coronavirus response puts Australia at risk, experts warn (thenewdaily.com.au)

New lock down orders for Sydney.

New lockdown health orders for Northern Beaches (msn.com)

Are we sure it is from the USA ?

A Whitehall source insider told The Sun: 'This is a fluid situation but it's not looking good and we have to act fast.'
UK experts have so far found more than 1,000 people carrying the new variant, called VUI – 202012/01, Health Secretary Matt Hancock told the House of Commons on Monday.
There have been reports of the strain in at least 60 local authority areas and it is believed to be similar to other strains in Europe, he claimed.
The fast-spreading strain is believed to have originated in Kent before spreading to London and the Home Counties.



London and south east could be 'cut off' from the rest of the UK (msn.com)

Britains new COVID strain IS more contagious.

Chris Whitty confirms new Covid strain IS more contagious

The UK has cancelled Xmas.

UK cancels Christmas as mutated virus 'is now spreading very fast' (thenewdaily.com.au)

The variant is up to 70 percent more transmissible than earlier versions, officials said. People in southeast England, including London, were told to stay at home.


U.K. Imposes Harsher Lockdown on London, Citing New Version of Virus - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

Another day, another announcement about a COVID-19 vaccine. Whether that’s talk of results from clinical trials, emergency approval or plans for countries to prioritise certain groups for vaccination.
But we still don’t know if current vaccines prevent disease and also prevent people transmitting the virus to others.

A COVID-19 vaccine that prevents both the disease and viral transmission is the aim. Until then, here's what we need to do (theconversation.com)

The story of Henrietta Lacks—a Black woman who died in 1951 of cervical cancer, and whose cancerous cells had been harvested for research, without her knowledge, by Johns Hopkins Hospital, replicated, sent to labs around the world, and later sold commercially—has likewise become shorthand for medical exploitation. That history, chronicled in works such as Harriet Washington’s “Medical Apartheid” and Dorothy Roberts’s “Killing the Black Body,” is, in part, what hampered efforts to recruit African-American volunteers for the trials, and now hampers efforts to get African-Americans vaccinated.





African-American Resistance to the COVID-19 Vaccine Reflects a Broader Problem | The New Yorker

What we know about the new variant of the virus, The New York Times.

A new variant: What we know

This weekend, Britain imposed a wholesale lockdown on London and most of the country’s southeast, citing fears about a new strain of the coronavirus, which officials say is more contagious..

Countries in the European Union, the Middle East and Asia raced to bar travelers from the United Kingdom, suspending flights and cutting off trade routes. People crowded into train stations and airports, trying to flee the city before the restrictions went into effect.

But from a contagion perspective, scientists and experts say, the travel bans may be an overreaction. Here’s what we know so far.

Viral variants are not a shock. As our colleague Apoorva Mandavilli has reported, the new variant has worried scientists, but not surprised them. Researchers have recorded thousands of tiny modifications in the genetic material of the coronavirus as it has hopscotched across the world.

Natural selection tends to make viruses more contagious. As immunity and vaccinations make it harder for the coronavirus to spread, random mutations occur. Those changes can enable the virus to spread more easily or to escape detection by the body’s immune system.

We’re still learning about the mutations. Scientists estimate the variant is 50 percent to 70 percent more transmissible than the original virus. But that number is based on modeling and has not been confirmed in lab experiments, experts told Apoorva.

The vaccines should still work. Experts say it would take years, not months, for the virus to evolve enough to render the current vaccines impotent. “No one should worry that there is going to be a single catastrophic mutation that suddenly renders all immunity and antibodies useless,” said Jesse Bloom, an evolutionary biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. “It’s not going to be like an on-off switch.”

The travel bans might be too late. A similar version of the virus has emerged in South Africa, which shares one of the mutations seen in the British variant, according to scientists who detected it. It is possible that the variant has already spread beyond those countries.

Human behavior drives transmission. Even without the new variant, the biggest variable driving contagion is human behavior. Wherever you are in the world, it is sensible to limit your exposure to other people. And, of course, wear a mask.