New Covid Strains

M1

Heard this afternoon that the South African variant, which is more contagious, has been detected in this country now.  We should take the recommendation for double-masking seriously:  it's worth buying N95 masks (or Chinese/Korean equivalent, look for brands that have received FDA emergency use authorization) and cover them with a cloth mask too, and DON'T let them slip below your nose (my partner is so claustrophobic she does this all the time).  This is going to be the best best until vaccine production and distribution catches up.  Be careful out there everybody, and hang on....have this discussion with your young family members too, who are going to have to wait the longest......

M1

Correcting myself:  I misread.  NOT shown to be more virulent as yet.  Fingers crossed....

Cynbar

Thanks for the heads up. This COVID situation is so exhausting. As soon as we get a breath of hope from the vaccines, these new variants arrive. I'd feel more confident if I felt that everyone is taking this seriously, but it still doesn't seem to be the case. When and where will it end?

Iris L.

An additional new variant has been reported in Los Angeles.  

Iris

Ed1937

Good advice. Thanks. I just read that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are effective against the new variations, although maybe slightly less so.

Mint

Have also seen that they are keeping an eye on things and if they would need to within two months they can have a tweaked vaccine out.

Crushed

The KIFR
Known infection fatality ratio )

for the last 28 days, with a 21 day lag I essentially 1.5

(infections 10 Dec to 7 January, 6,028,901
deaths 1 -28 January 89,389   just under 3200 a day )

While cases are dropping it may be due to reduced tests.  if  So KIFR would go up 

Known infections peaked on the 10th at 260,000 and have declined to  160,000 so we can expect our 7 day average of 3400 deaths a day to decline to about 2400 in three weeks

Unless we start acting stupid  

BethL

per Dr. Ashish Jha/Twitter: what are implications if we ever want to end this pandemic? We have to bring pandemic under control everywhere. Letting virus run wild, like US, Brazil did, endangers everyone Imagine this Some nations are largely vaccinated. But outbreaks are surging elsewhere. What might happen? We might see rise of variants that eventually escape the vaccines and make everyone vulnerable again. In a future where US is vaccinated but others are not, we could see rise of variants that can infect, cause outbreaks here and other vaccinated places, requiring us to update our vaccines and vaccinate everyone again. It’s the nightmare scenario of a never-ending pandemic. There is only one solution to put this nightmare pandemic behind us: Get outbreaks under control everywhere. How? Put in place virus control policies, get people to wear high quality masks, have more testing AND vaccinate the world. Now. As quickly as possible. Want to end the pandemic? Let's marshal global manufacturing effort to make lots of vaccine quickly and vaccinate everyone because large outbreaks anywhere can give rise to variants that can escape vaccines everywhere. At the end of the day, we really are in this together. 

Jha, an internist and academic, served as director of the Harvard Global Health Institute and Global Health Professor and was frequent commentator in the media on COVID-19. He now serves as the Dean of the School of Public Health at Brown University.

feudman

On the Today show this morning, an epidemiologist was asked his opinion on the importance of double masking. His reply was that although it's probably helpful (no statistics yet), by far, the better focus should be on getting more folks to wear at least one. Recent polls indicate only 59% of us are masking (not sure if this is US or worlwide); by some estimations, that figure needs to be around 75% at a minimum. Even worse is that the compliance with social distancing guidelines is only around 44%. Other polls have shown around 6 in 10 infections were contracted from asymptomatic spreaders. 

It's up to all of us to get this under control. Keep your guard up everybody!