rabas

Beautiful piece of work. Here is a short video from the lead author's twitter account: https://twitter.com/i/status/1459283884164538368

Others back his numbers. Note: when using log a scale, a straight line indicates exponential grown whose slope is proportional to R0. This lets you read doubling times from a graph. Dr Malgorzata Gasperowicz compares log graphs for SA-Omicron with current Delta rises in Portugal and Spain to get doubling times: South Africa: 3-4 days. Spain & Portugal: 12-14 days I made a similar comparison of SA-Omicron with SA-Delta in the June outbreak that shows a 3.4x increase in rate. The two graphs combined remove seasonal and regional influences. Slo

Not necessary so. Last week my wife and a few family travelled to our home in Phuthaisong to make some merit. The village head had given her explicit instructions to bring a vax certificate and at which hospital to get an ATK test on arrival. When she got there hospital said testing was closed for the day and they would have to enter public quarantine. After some squabble, they were allowed to quarantine at home until the next morning when they could return to the hospital for the test. All this was well monitored. A lot of it depends on the village head. Ours runs a ti

"all the scientists I've talked to . . . are like 'this is not going to be good'," Bancel said." (Moderna's CEO) A quick look at what scientists are seeing, which is unprecedented (for better or for worse). 1. Graph comparing unique mutations as SARS-2 progresses from Alpha through Delta to Omicron. In numbers, n=4, 6, 8, 10, 26. From Alpha through Delta, this generally resulted in higher transmission and moderately higher severity. [ref] Note: images can be zoomed.

The old saw that viruses trade high mortality to gain transmissibility to survive is not universal. SARS-2 Delta, one of the most transmissible respiratory viruses known, has little need to trade its already low lethality to gain more transmission. So far, each major step of the pandemic has shown both an increase in transmission and a mild increase in severity. I suspect that omicron ... (were's my coin? )

B.1.1.529 is not symptomless. It was discovered because of its unusual symptoms, not by genetic surveillance. By Nov 18 (10 days ago!), Dr. Angelique Coetzee had seen many young but otherwise healthy patients with "unusual Covid-19 symptoms that did not make immediate sense". She informed authorities she suspected a new variant. Roughly half of the patients were vaccinated. Symptoms were generally mild except for extreme fatigue which was common. However, her patients were younger people and she was concerned about older, more venerable people. More here.

While true not all, there are numerous cases. See Wiki-Omicron. "All four initial cases reported from Botswana occurred among fully vaccinated individuals.[24] All three initial confirmed and suspected cases reported from Israel occurred among fully vaccinated individuals. [25]" The case in HK quarantine was fully vaccinated as was a person infected by him in a room across the hall. [ref] Just today: "On 27 November 2021, the Dutch health ministry estimated about 85 of the ~600 passengers on two flights from South Africa that landed at Amsterdam Airpor

Here's finer detail from South African authorities and scientists in today's (Nov 25) video conference uploaded to Youtube. You may want to skip the first 10 minutes setting up the conference. South Africa's speed and openness are highly commendable. This is the way it should be.