Thailand warns of stricter measures if virus not contained

[Caldera]

The longer they wait, the longer the lockdown will need to be to bring down the numbers. I'm surprised that they didn't at least outright ban interprovincial New Year trips - those will do wonders to spread the virus around across the whole country.

 

[JHicks]

3 hours ago, placnx said:

It would be interesting to compare the mutations in this Indian "variant" with the South Africa and UK strains. Anecdotally this new wave in Thailand seems to be aggressive, but does this strain have the mutations that are forcing lockdown in the UK?

I don't think it can have, or it would have been mentioned in articles about the UK strain. The reporting I saw on that and the SA strain was very much that the increased transmissibility was a new thing. I saw one piece (I think it was in the Guardian) that went into some detail on the mutations and compared the UK and SA variants. If some of them had already been seen in the Indian variant I think that would have been mentioned.

[JHicks]

13 minutes ago, Caldera said:

The longer they wait, the longer the lockdown will need to be to bring down the numbers. I'm surprised that they didn't at least outright ban interprovincial New Year trips - those will do wonders to spread the virus around across the whole country.

 

Same here but relieved to see stricter measures coming in today with school closures and shuttering of bars etc. in some places. 10 days ago would have been better but I'm not uncrossing my fingers just yet.

[Dialemco]

Vaccination is the only long term solution to beating Covid and this must be a priority. Meanwhile to restrict pandemic it is recommended strict safety measures kept in place especially over the New Year

[rabas]

1 hour ago, JHicks said:

5 hours ago, placnx said:

It would be interesting to compare the mutations in this Indian "variant" with the South Africa and UK strains. Anecdotally this new wave in Thailand seems to be aggressive, but does this strain have the mutations that are forcing lockdown in the UK?

I don't think it can have, or it would have been mentioned in articles about the UK strain. The reporting I saw on that and the SA strain was very much that the increased transmissibility was a new thing. I saw one piece (I think it was in the Guardian) that went into some detail on the mutations and compared the UK and SA variants. If some of them had already been seen in the Indian variant I think that would have been mentioned.

A brief summary.

 

Feb-March

D614 strain, Most of Asia including Thailand, slow spreading

G614  much more infectious, dominated EU, US, the West, Russia ...

 

India-->Myanmar-->Thailand is from G614, not related to UK strain.

IOW, Thailand now has the "Western" strain.

 

New Strains

B117 unique, mulit-mutation strain spreading in UK,

501.V2  S. Africa,  similar to (related?) UK B117, but not same.

 

A very rough estimate of aggressiveness:

D114   1-2

G614   5-6

B117   8-9

 

-- No sign any strain causes significantly worse disease.

 

Edited December 30, 2020 by rabas

[JHicks]

2 hours ago, rabas said:

A brief summary.

 

Feb-March

D614 strain, Most of Asia including Thailand, slow spreading

G614  much more infectious, dominated EU, US, the West, Russia ...

 

India-->Myanmar-->Thailand is from G614, not related to UK strain.

IOW, Thailand now has the "Western" strain.

According to the figures here, the Covid that was in Thailand during the back end of March 2020 was mostly G614. I can't remember the numbers at that point but I think lockdown v. 1 was around then, so G614 is not undefeatable provided you go hard and early. The same figures show that Australia was mostly G614, and they had a reasonably good result. NZ didn't make the map so this data doesn't show which strain they showed the door.

[rabas]

48 minutes ago, JHicks said:

According to the figures here, the Covid that was in Thailand during the back end of March 2020 was mostly G614. I can't remember the numbers at that point but I think lockdown v. 1 was around then, so G614 is not undefeatable provided you go hard and early. The same figures show that Australia was mostly G614, and they had a reasonably good result. NZ didn't make the map so this data doesn't show which strain they showed the door.

The Thailand graph is below. Orange represents G614. The major spike in Thailand and most of Asia is the orange D version. You point out that at the tail end of the first Thai wave, there was  more blue G than orange D.  If you look at China, you  see a tiny bit of blue G on Feb 14.

 

It seems that G begins to overtake D everywhere in March when it also seeds the West, but  but the wave in SE Asia is almost over so G never catches on. The blue G in China is mostly from Wuhan. Your right, it's not undefeatable but it is an aggressive mother. If it produces enough big bursts you loose control.

 

There was another 20+ burst today from the Bangkok Karaoke bar.  The one guy from Nonthaburi has seeded about 50 cases. I do hope the Thai can control this.

 

 

Edited December 30, 2020 by rabas

[charmonman]

18 hours ago, johnarth said:

what is with people saying it is not a flue? does that mean we now have to change the name to make it something worse, by the way it is here to stay just like the flue, who ever thinks the flue is gone after all these years is wrong, and the flue is still killing thousands every year and how many of those deaths are being counted as covid 19 now nobody knows

It is normally spelled flu, and it is short for influenza which is caused by a completely different virus than covid-19 so no, it is not a flu, a flue, or influenza.

 

The virus that causes covid-19 is clearly more contagious than the one that causes flu and has resulted in far more deaths than the flu does annually. There are effective vaccines for seasonal flu that are easily obtained while the vaccines for covid-19 are only just starting to be rolled out and most people won't have access to it for at least months.

 

Why is this so hard for people to accept? Everything I've written here is obvious to anyone paying attention. It must be comforting to think this is no worse than the seasonal flu, but it doesn't match up with the facts on the ground. Wishful thinking won't make the pandemic go away.

[SmartyMarty]

stop threatening people and do your job.

[runamok27]

On 12/29/2020 at 6:44 PM, sezze said:

For both cases , i do not know anywhere in the world where any hospital is full with TB or Rabies cases . If you get bitten by a stray dog you should get a vaccine for rabies , since it is 100% deadly ( well there is 1 known case of a girl who has survived it ) .

TB strangely enough was almost out of this world, thamks to vaccination . They only forgot some prisons in the gulag in Russia , so it got out there and since then is back slowly on the rise . It is however treatable as far as i remember .

According to the WHO:

"A total of 1.4 million people died from TB in 2019 (including 208 000 people with HIV). Worldwide, TB is one of the top 10 causes of death and the leading cause from a single infectious agent (above HIV/AIDS). In 2019, an estimated 10 million people fell ill with tuberculosis(TB) worldwide."

 

I think the reason we don't really care about TB is because it is basically eradicated from developed nations and only kills the poor souls in 3rd world countries. Calling TB treatable with a death rate of 14% is just flat out wrong. TB's death rate is far, far higher than Covid-19 but like I mentioned earlier, the developed world does not care because it is not killing people in developed nations.