2019 Novel Coronavirus Covid-19 Discussion

Forums › Health and fitness › 2019 Novel Coronavirus Covid-19 Discussion

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#2642038 26-Jan-2021 07:21

GV27:
But what about Australians and their rights to return at any given time etc

I'd suggest you read about the number of Australians stranded overseas. It's much worse than it is for NZ, especially since the Australian government halved their miq caps.

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chatterbox

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#2642039 26-Jan-2021 07:23

rugrat:

https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/national/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-south-african-covid-19-strain/ar-BB1d3C94

Hope this bit isn't right, else the vaccines going out currently are not going to cut it.

"There is evidence in the public domain - although we are not sure of this data so I wouldn't say this in public - that the South African variant reduces by about 50 percent the vaccine efficacy," Matt Hancock said.

Also says it hits young people harder then other variants.

https://www.axios.com/moderna-vaccine-new-variants-6128e1a0-8533-4f6d-bec5-cfdb9c6b9c9d.html?

6 fold reduction in antibodies for South African variant but still protective. Link to Moderna press release in article. Moderna looking into booster jabs for variants. No significant drop in levels for UK variant.

Seems there’s a new variant on the block. LA COVID strain B.1.426 with yet another spike protein mutation.

Never say never

KrazyKid

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#2642058 26-Jan-2021 08:50

This varient thing is a bit of a panic driven by a the media. There have been varients since day one and the media have only just noticed.

Yes this is be more infectious now, but surely that has been the case over time during the last year. Evolution in action.

What has worked before will work again for NZ when it come to contact tracing. Covid-19 is not yet a "walk past and become infected" bug. Yes we can tighten up and improve processes over time, but we are doing ok.

Long term it will become like the flu with the vaccine focused on different strains in different years.

sbiddle

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#2642065 26-Jan-2021 09:06

KrazyKid: This varient thing is a bit of a panic driven by a the media. There have been varients since day one and the media have only just noticed.

Yes this is be more infectious now, but surely that has been the case over time during the last year. Evolution in action.

What has worked before will work again for NZ when it come to contact tracing. Covid-19 is not yet a "walk past and become infected" bug. Yes we can tighten up and improve processes over time, but we are doing ok.

Long term it will become like the flu with the vaccine focused on different strains in different years.

Have to agree 100%

The media and public response to this has IMHO been very much a case of overreaction. We've had good contact tracing and know who patient zero was. This means things are very contained.

Recent Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane cases have shown that with good contract tracing that these types of cases can be contained pretty quickly, and in this case it looks like everything (so far at least) has worked just as it should. We've progressed significantly from say May or June when we were getting cases because we weren't testing people in MIQ properties and had pretty limited contact tracing capabilities.

What happened is probably how life will be like beyond July 2022 (assuming that is out border reopening date) for at least a year or two when we see cases of Covid pop up in the community. Those closest are contact traced and locations of interest publicised.

Geektastic

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#2642103 26-Jan-2021 09:56

GV27:But what about Australians and their rights to return at any given time etc

All rights are tempered by reality. For example free speech is.

A right to return isn’t denied or extinguished because a temporary situation reduces the ease with which you can exercise it.

Neither does that right encompass an obligation on anyone to provide the means for you to exercise it. If flights to NZ were stopped altogether, you can still buy a boat and sail home and your citizenship will entitle you to live in NZ on your arrival. For example.

MikeB4

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#2642369 26-Jan-2021 13:51

KrazyKid:

Long term it will become like the flu with the vaccine focused on different strains in different years.

I don't believe that anyone on GZ is in a position to make such an assertion.

Fred99

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#2642392 26-Jan-2021 14:50

MikeB4:

KrazyKid:

Long term it will become like the flu with the vaccine focused on different strains in different years.

I don't believe that anyone on GZ is in a position to make such an assertion.

Seems pretty likely though - as one possibility for the "end game".

The South African strain results in a measurably reduced immune response to (at least) the Moderna vaccine, even if still expected to be effective:

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/01/25/960341384/moderna-finds-covid-19-vaccine-less-effective-against-variant-found-in-south-afr

Flu vaccine isn't particularly high efficacy, immunity to specific target strains is typically in the range 20-60%, nowhere near "herd immunity" but enough to reduce epidemic and protect some of the vulnerable. However, normal "seasonal" flu is nowhere near as dangerous as C-19.

So, selection pressure favours mutation to evade "what we do", the seasonal flu virus mutates quickly (comparted to C-19), but OTOH, there are tens of millions of active cases of C-19 on the planet for the foreseeable future, what we're seeing with the variants is to be expected. Lower rate of mutation (and risk of recombination with other strains in the case of seasonal flu) but very many cases in an almost completely naïve (ie near zero herd immunity) population.

What we should have done was control the pandemic globally. Halve the number of active cases and you halve the chance of a (vaccine / immunity from past infection) resistant strain etc.

As the vaccine rollout gains pace, then we'll eventually find out what the end game may be.

The most hopeful thing may be that the mRNA vaccines may be able to be "tweaked" relatively quickly to respond to new variants. However I guess 2/3 of the planet isn't going to get vaccinated for economic/logistic reasons (let alone the anti-vaxxers in first world nations). That's a problem, maybe the USA joining up with WHO and taking a global science based approach improves our chances.

I'm guessing we'll be stuck with C-19 for many years. It's already established in other species as a viral reservoir we won't be able to eliminate.

mattwnz

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#2642431 26-Jan-2021 16:21

Handle9:
GV27:

But what about Australians and their rights to return at any given time etc

I'd suggest you read about the number of Australians stranded overseas. It's much worse than it is for NZ, especially since the Australian government halved their miq caps.

They often seem a lot tougher over there with many things.

Oblivian

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#2642445 26-Jan-2021 16:46

And in other news.. The UK have realised they might have some self isolators.. not doing so.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/covid-quarantine-hotels-uk-travel-news-b901025.html

Scott3

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#2642451 26-Jan-2021 17:06

Oblivian:

And in other news.. The UK have realised they might have some self isolators.. not doing so.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/covid-quarantine-hotels-uk-travel-news-b901025.html

I'm a bit surprised by this.

Surly given they already have rampant covid-19, incl one of the more contagious strains, they allready have to deal with the costs of it being in the community. (masks, lock-downs, distancing, hospital care etc).

Given this, also carrying the costs of an expensive border isolation program seems like poor value.

They must be really concerned about the risk's that one of the particular strains poses.

As a counterpoint it reinforces what a good call it was for NZ to change to the elimination strategy early on. Even if the border restrictions are very expensive at least we don't have to carry both them and the cost of widespread covid-19 in the community.

Scott3

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#2642453 26-Jan-2021 17:14

Fred99:

.....

I'm guessing we'll be stuck with C-19 for many years. It's already established in other species as a viral reservoir we won't be able to eliminate.

We haven't even been able to eliminate the likes of polio, measles etc globally despite highly effective vaccines existing for decades, so yeah, this one is going to around for a while.

One of the vaccine makers (Novavax) is exploring a combined influenza / covid-19 jab.

vexxxboy

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#2642458 26-Jan-2021 17:39

Scott3:

Fred99:

.....

I'm guessing we'll be stuck with C-19 for many years. It's already established in other species as a viral reservoir we won't be able to eliminate.

We haven't even been able to eliminate the likes of polio, measles etc globally despite highly effective vaccines existing for decades, so yeah, this one is going to around for a while.

One of the vaccine makers (Novavax) is exploring a combined influenza / covid-19 jab.

TB is a good example of a virus that could be eliminated with vaccines but still kills 3 million people a year.

Common sense is not as common as you think.

cshwone

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#2642463 26-Jan-2021 17:49

vexxxboy:

TB is a good example of a virus that could be eliminated with vaccines but still kills 3 million people a year.

Or 1.4 million for 2019, the latest figures available from WHO

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tuberculosis

Fred99

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#2642464 26-Jan-2021 17:56

vexxxboy:

TB is a good example of a virus that could be eliminated with vaccines but still kills 3 million people a year.

TB is a mycobacterium - not a virus.

The vaccine (BCG) has been around a long time, was a standard vaccine administered at first year of high schools in NZ up until some time in the '70s. It's only partially effective - elimination isn't possible, unless there's a new effective vaccine. Drug industry may be less prone to want to develop new vaccines mainly for use in third world countries who can't afford to pay much. Capitalism fails for public health because it doesn't treat value of human life equally.

We almost eliminated polio. Polio epidemics from the mid 20th century are a great example of how public health and wealth correlate. If this happened in third world or the poor, nobody would have cared much. The panic and fast response were due to the fact that it disproportionately affected the young / adult children of the well-to-do. That to do with improved sanitation, prior to that almost all children would have been exposed when infants when adverse effects are far less likely, and were thus immune when at the age most at risk.

ezbee

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#2642486 26-Jan-2021 19:12

Well there was SmallPox.

Smallpox is one of two infectious diseases to have been eradicated, the other being rinderpest, which was declared eradicated in 2011.[9][10][11]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_smallpox

The first remedies were a bit ickky as you can see in the wiki, but later we got better.

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