24 thoughts on “covid-19 Ongoing disaster from Shambolic Clots”

1. I watched the first hour of DC’s testimony to joint parliamentary committee (7 hours in total) … v interesting exposure of how government gets it wrong

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   • Please add link. I plan to watch and will definately read transcript which I assume has nearby link. BTW his twitter feed does go beyond 59 tweets in that series now.

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2. I haven’t watched the video but have listened to or read the whole 118pp transcript:

   26 May 2021
   Inquiry Coronavirus: lessons learnt
   Witnesses Dominic Cummings, Former Chief Adviser to the Prime Minister
   Committees Science and Technology Committee, and Health and Social Care Committee
   Published 27 May 2021 Oral Evidence
   https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/2249/pdf/

   Lots more related documents at pages linked from:
   https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/135/science-and-technology-committee-commons/publications/

   I haven’t read any others but the evidence from Dominic Cummings is VERY important (and easy to listen to or read). Not only important issues re current pandemic but also on why the state machine requires smashing.

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3. WHO briefings Feb -March 2020 (just a quick cut and paste from a collection of quotes that seemed important). They are disorganized .. I seem not to have consistently dated them or tried to order them properly)

   https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/media-resources/press-briefings

   see March briefings and also those from Feb 24 -28 when the WHO Mission to China first became influential )

   Some selected quotes:

   I seem not to have consistently dated them or tried to order them properly)

   NB The explanation for not calling a pandemic earlier is interesting.

   The contrast with a flu pandemic is made a number of times. However the fact that Covid 19 is “overdispersed” and that’s *why* it’s possible to contain and even eliminate community transmission, may not have been known at the time.

   https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/09/k-overlooked-variable-driving-pandemic/616548/
   https://www.pnas.org/content/118/14/e2016623118
   etc

   (I’ve been thinking that the Delta variant may be spreading more like flu …… )

   ——————————————–
   Feb ?
   “we must protect countries that are the most vulnerable by doing our utmost to contain epidemics in countries with the capacity to do it ”

   March 3

   ” Countries like Korea, like Japan, like China have implemented very, very strong measures that have affected their own economies and their own societies, and that has bought time for others. And it is really the duty of others to use that time that’s been bought.”

   ***** “And there’s a very dangerous and I think unhelpful alignment in people’s minds between this pandemic word and some sort of major shift in approach. This is not the case. ”

   ” Remember China has moved back along the chain. China started with individual cases, China moved to large clusters and then moved to very serious sustained community transmission, and now many of the provinces have moved back to single cases; all the way through clusters back to single cases. That is not a reverse you can achieve with influenza. Korea, Japan are making progress towards the same goal. We need to support all the other countries to try and do that. And yes, if we fail and if that is a failure, we will have slowed down the virus. We would have significantly given time to other health systems to be ready, and it is time for health systems to be ready. ”

   (in response to a journalist question)” I don’t even understand why the person who you indicated is saying we should surrender. There is no reason to do that. We have to go for containment. ”

   “If I can just add to that, we’ve said in this press room many times the experience that China has had needs to be shared, and this is an excellent example of that in peer to peer and sharing what has been done, what can be done in other countries, and having them as part of this mission and having direct interaction with another country, sharing those experiences whether it’s about case and contact finding, whether it’s about the care and management of patients, whether it’s about how they’re readying hospitals and PPE and infection prevention and control. ”

   “I’d like to remind you all again that we’re eight weeks into this and we have serologic assays. I think this is unprecedented, and someone needs to correct me if I’m wrong here, but this is unprecedented to have a virus identified, a sequence shared a few days later, PCR assays to be ready a week or so later after that, and to have serologic assays in use eight weeks into an outbreak. ”

   March 5

   “The experience of these countries, and of China, continues to demonstrate that this is not a one-way street. This epidemic can be pushed back, but only with a collective coordinated and comprehensive approach that engages the entire machinery of government. We’re calling on every country to act with speed, scale, and clear-minded determination. Although we continue to see the majority of cases in handful of countries, we’re deeply concerned about the increasing number of countries reporting cases, especially those with weaker health systems. However, this epidemic is a threat for every country, rich and poor, and as we have said before, even the high income countries should expect surprises. The solution is aggressive preparedness. We’re concerned that some countries have either not taken this seriously enough, or have decided there is nothing they can do. We’re concerned that in some countries the level of political commitment and the actions that demonstrate that commitment do not match the level of the threat we all face.

   If we take the approach that there is nothing we can do, that will quickly become a self-fulfilling prophesy. It’s in our hands. WHO has published step-by-step guidelines for countries to develop their national action plans according to eight key areas, which are supported by detailed, technical guidance. ”

   __________

   “All countries now need to take a very close look at what are their objectives in responding to the epidemic; are they accepting that the disease can now spread completely in an uncontrolled fashion to all corners of their country and they’re going to focus on just trying to keep the health system moving forward and trying to keep the health system from collapsing? That’s what’s known as mitigation and the focus is on effectively supporting the health system to reduce fatality.”
   _______________________________

   In a flu pandemic you are mitigating in the sense that you don’t have an element of controllability. You can’t stop the virus in any meaningful way. So you focus on reducing the impact of the virus. A control strategy says you have an element of control, and what you do is both seek to control the virus and reduce its impact at the same time. And I think we’ve had this unfortunate emergence of camps around the containment camp, the mitigation camp, and different groups presenting and championing their view of the world. 00:57:33 And frankly speaking, it’s not helpful. I think we need to now look at the last eight to ten weeks, we need to look at what we’ve learnt about this virus, both negatively in terms of its concerns and positively around what can be done about the virus, and we need to put our heads together and evolve our strategy. Not to live on strategies of the past, and the past may be years ago, but the past right now with this virus is eight weeks ago.

   _______________________
   “If we look at China, today, 20 provinces in China have today downgraded their public health emergency risk level. That’s 20 of 31 have actually gone in the reverse. 00:21:25 They’ve gone from red to yellow, or from yellow to green. Now that’s flying in the face of that prediction. I’m not saying which one is correct. What I’m telling you, in the real world today, China is moving back towards the green. In their… 11 provinces in China today moved to green, which is their lowest level of risk. They’ve five levels of risk. On the 29th January, all provinces in China were at level one risk, the highest possible risk. Red, red, the whole of China was red. So there’s hope in that. Today there were only four cases of… Or yesterday, the last 24 hours, only four cases of confirmed COVID-19 infection outside Hubei, were actually from China. Most cases outside Hubei, in China yesterday, came from other countries. So when I look at that, which is happening in the real world, and then I look at predictions, I need to look, and we need to look at both of those.
   ________________________________________

   I just wanted to say that one of the things we’ve learnt is that the fundamentals work. The fundamentals of public health work. The fundamentals of identifying your cases, identifying your contacts. I’m an epidemiologist. This is epidemiology at its core. You need to look for your cases aggressively. You need to find all of those contacts, and find those contacts. You need to mobilise your population.
   ____________________________

   Just because you have cases, doesn’t mean you’re going to have clusters. It doesn’t mean you’re going to have large outbreaks. It doesn’t mean that it’s going to go out of control. We’ve seen not only in China, we’ve seen these fundamentals being used in Singapore, being used in Vietnam, being used in many countries, and they’re bringing that back down. And it comes back down to these fundamental public health measures. And that is something every country can do.
   ___________________________

   “Here we have a disease for which we have no vaccine and no treatment. We don’t fully understand transmission. We don’t fully understand case fatality, but what we have been genuinely heartened by is that, unlike influenza, where countries have fought back, where they’ve put in place strong measures, we’ve remarkably seen that the virus is suppressed or at least the clinical appearance or the number of clinically apparent cases has been greatly suppressed.  It’s not influenza and it’s not behaving like influenza. It is behaving like COVID-19. The problem is, we don’t know exactly how COVID-19 behaves, but we know it’s not transmitting in exactly the same way as influenza and that offers us a glimmer, a chink of light that this virus can be suppressed and pushed and contained. ”

   ______________________________

   Can I just add, the DG has used two very important words there, in terms of the difference between uncontrollable and uncontrolled. And I think it’s an important and very precise distinction that he’s used. In an influenza situation, pandemic situation, the usual assumption is that the disease is uncontrolled. The spread is uncontrollable. Regardless of what we do. So we focus on saving lives. We focus on saving lives by treating cases or developing a vaccine to protect the most vulnerable in our population. That’s the approach. In this case, what some countries are demonstrating, that it is possible to control the spread. It’s possible to slow it down. And in that calculation you now have two chances to save lives. If you contain and suppress the virus you save lives by making sure that vulnerable people in your society are not exposed. And then if they are exposed, you have more time to get your system ready to save their lives. You get another shot at lifesaving interventions
   __________________________
   March 6 ??

   China is bringing its epidemic under control, and there is now a decline in new cases being reported from the Republic of Korea. 00:11:38 Both these countries demonstrate that it’s never too late to turn back the tide on the virus.

   The rule of the game is never give up. I’ll repeat that. The rule of the game is never give up.
   ________________________________
   In other words, I said in the press conference here a number of weeks ago, *****if this was influenza we would have called a pandemic ages ago. Because we know something inherently about the transmission dynamics of influenza. 00:14:22 So it’s not an avoidance of the word. But the word is important because in many situations the word involves countries moving to a purely mitigation approach. And what we’ve seen is that moving to a purely mitigation approach is essentially saying the disease will spread uncontrolled, in an uncontrolled fashion. But we’ve seen other countries, like Singapore, like China, demonstrate real success in turning the disease around. ****

   The contradiction to that is unlike flu we can still push this back. We can still significantly slow down this virus. So the word for us is not a problem. ****The issue is what the reaction to the word will be. Will the reaction to the word be, let’s fight? Let’s push? Let’s push this disease back? Or will the reaction to the word be, let’s give up? And for me, I’m not worried about the word. I’m more concerned about what the world’s reaction will be to that word. Will we use it as a call to action? Will we use it to fight? Or will we use that word to give up? *****
   ___________________
   We have several countries now who have demonstrated the ability to turn the tide, to reduce transmission in countries and to bring these outbreaks under control. Korea is a good example. I’ve seen first-hand the approach that the Republic of Korea can take in terms of really aggressive case and contact finding. What we’re seeing that is successful are the fundamentals of public health. There’s nothing special, nothing unique to this; it’s just the rigorous application of public health measures which include activating your emergency mechanisms, taking this seriously from the start.
   …………
   Why do we say containment works? One, a good number of countries – around eight – have actually not reported cases in the past two weeks, more than two weeks, although they had cases before that they have reported and then they were able to contain it, but in addition to that, if you see what’s happening in China, it shows from the result so far that this outbreak can actually be contained even where there are many cases. So it would be safe to assume that, especially in countries where they have less number of cases, it’s even more possible to contain it.
   ………….
   What everyone expects is that you go from cases, you go to clusters, you go to communities, and that’s it. What we are actually seeing is that we’re seeing community transmission in some countries actually bring this back down to seeing clusters again and that is something that we need to learn from, and we are learning from. That is the hope. That is where we can see that you can drive this down. You can bring it back.
   _________________________
   And I think it’s very important when we make the sometimes brutal calculations of herd immunity and delaying of spread and achieving herd immunity, and how maybe we should let the wave pass over us and then more people will be immune, and this will all go away, that there are many vulnerable people in our communities for this still will not go way. And turning to face that fire is very important. Our elderly, our people with underlying conditions, people with cancer on chemotherapy and others, are precious members of our society, and the arithmetic of epidemiology, as I said, for me, in epidemiology we talk about the n, the size of the population we’re dealing with. We often say the n is the population of the country or the population of the world. So is n 7.8 billion? Well, for me, as a medical professional, n equals one. Every person matters.

   I think this particular issue, especially about our senior citizens or the elderly is very, very important. If anything is going to hurt the world, it’s a moral decay. And not taking the death of the elderly or the senior citizens as a serious issue is one of the moral decays. And Mike has said it. Any individual, whatever age, any human being, matters. And it pains us to see, actually, in some places, when they want to move into mitigation, because the virus kills seniors or older people only.

   ___________________

   Feb 25 Bruce Aylward https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/who-audio-emergencies-coronavirus-press-conference-aylwardb-25feb2020-final.pdf?sfvrsn=9d732ce3_0

   FEB 25 Press conference (Bruce Aylward)

   The world needs the experience and materials of China to be successful in battling this coronavirus disease. China has the most experience in the world with this disease, and it’s the only country to have turned around serious large-scale outbreaks. But if countries create barriers between themselves and China in terms of travel or trade, it is only going to compromise everyone’s ability to get this done. And those kinds of measures need to be anything that goes beyond what’s been recommended by the IHR committee, has got to be reassessed, because the risk from China is dropping, and what China has to add to the global response is rapidly rising

   There’s really important lesson about speed here and the aggressiveness of these. These are not control measures that people know how to do anymore. They don’t do case finding or contact tracing, except for Ebola in West Africa or in DR Congo. This is old fashioned stuff using really modern tools like these to try and that’s what China did.

   Teams in Congo were chasing 25,000 contacts a day in the middle of a shooting war and doing it every day under fire and they did it so I think we need to reach a bit further into how far can public health measures be used, how far can we push contact tracing and case finding and quarantine of contacts because countries like Korea, countries like Singapore and countries like China have shown that sticking harder to that strategy has resulted in benefits.  
   ………
     We’ve seen some countries use technology to help them with contact tracing. There are a lot of tools that are out there. It’s not a matter of tools; it’s a matter of will. It’s a matter of, how do we use our best efforts to drive this down. There’s no excuse to say that we cannot do this. We have shown in many countries… Not we. Countries themselves have shown that they are able to do this and we must push countries, all of us, to fight as hard as they can to suppress this virus because by doing so you are saving lives, by doing so you are buying more time for your hospitals to prepare.   
   ……..
   Someone asked it here earlier; how can we continue to invest in the very expensive business of contact tracing? Contact tracing is not an expensive business, contact tracing is a very basic public health intervention. It does involve interrupting the lives of a small proportion of the population in terms of quarantine, of contacts, isolation of cases and that’s very tough on those individual families. 
   …….
   For contact tracing you don’t need a trained medical professional. You can accelerate and amplify the number of contact tracers almost instantly using other civil servants, using volunteers, using community organisations. 

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   • Thanks! Will study carefully.

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4. Chris Whitty, March 20 2020

   On March 20 last year Chris Whitty  spoke to journalists and at one point made it clear that he was against trying to stamp out community transmission. What he said (see quote below) is a bit garbled – maybe because he was speaking off the top of his head . He didn’t even attempt to give a coherent explanation for his position, he just asserted it. Perhaps he wasn’t clear in his own mind.   (He and Vallance had been pushing the herd immunity position less than a week earlier )

    “it is my judgement that the idea that we’re going to make this virus go away whilst not theoretically impossible, seems so improbable that basing scientific (sic) evidence on the theory that that is something we’re trying to do seems to me a mistake. The reason I say that is if what you’re trying to do is get rid of an epidemic completely, the most important thing you do in public health terms is you try and find all the cases, isolate all the cases, lock it down, or play for time till you’ve got a vaccine. There are a variety of other things you can do, but there’s one set of strategies you follow – based on the principle that actually  we  want this epidemic to go away. So for example the stuff that we’ve done in W Africa on Ebola  was predicated on the idea that our aim was to get the epidemic to go away . 

   You do completely different things if what you’re saying is that actually however much we might like that to happen, and however much we would like there to be a vaccine riding to the rescue in 6 months time, currently we think that’s improbable so now we’ve got to work on a different theoretical framework for actually managing this epidemic.  …… People say why are you not trying to get this virus to go away using the standard methods to do so??   My own view on this is that the science does not support that as the right theoretical framework at this stage of the epidemic. It’s a perfectly reasonable thing to do at the **beginning, and for some countries it may still be the right approach, but I want to be really clear that   in my view we’re probably not quite in the right stage of the outbreak to be debating that.”

   (transcribed from this video:

   ____________________________________________________________________________
   ____________________________________________________________________________

   During January and February 2020, Boris Johnson favored the “Yes Minister Approach”:

   And in September he went for the “Hands, Face, Space Approach” (“Hands, face, space, that’s how we’ll defeat the virus”) This in NOT a spoof!

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5. Thanks again! Looks VERY useful.

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   • TAB EXPLOSION

     First list of links for Arthur

     Evolutionary Tracking of SARS-CoV-2 Genetic Variants Highlights an Intricate Balance of Stabilizing and Destabilizing Mutations:
     https://journals.asm.org/doi/epub/10.1128/mBio.01188-21

     Quanta Mag:   Vaccines Are Pushing Pathogens to Evolve (2018)  https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-vaccines-can-drive-pathogens-to-evolve-20180510/

     Zetnep Tufeki: The overlooked variable that’s driving the pandemic:  https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/09/k-overlooked-variable-driving-pandemic/616548/

     Zetnep Tufeki: We Need To Get Real About How the Pandemic Will End:  https://www.theinsight.org/p/we-need-to-get-real-about-how-the
      
     Zeynep Tufekci  :Covid’s Deadliest Phase May Be Here Soon:   https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/28/opinion/covid-vaccine-variants.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage  
      
     Zeynep Tufekci: https://twitter.com/zeynep?lang=en

     Novelty Means Severity: The Key to the Pandemic:
      https://www.theinsight.org/p/novelty-means-severity-the-key-to

     attack on Bossche:  https://www.deplatformdisease.com/blog/addressing-geert-vanden-bossches-claims

     Why England’s COVID ‘freedom day’ alarms researchers: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01938-4

     Imperfect Vaccination Can Enhance the Transmission of Highly Virulent Pathogens  (2015):  https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1002198_

     Oh deer! Antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 detected in 40% of wild white-tailed deer in four U.S. states: 
     https://www.news-medical.net/news/20210801/Oh-deer!-Antibodies-to-SARS-CoV-2-detected-in-4025-of-wild-white-tailed-deer-in-four-US-states.aspx

     As The Variants Threaten Lives And COVID-19 Vaccines, Here’s What We Can Do To Fight Back:
      https://gothamist.com/news/as-the-variants-threaten-lives-and-covid-19-vaccines-heres-what-we-can-do-to-fight-back

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     • TAB EXPLOSION 2
       (2013 article) Viral Population Dynamics and Virulence Thresholds: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3424342/
       (2004) The population genetics and evolutionary epidemiology of RNA viruses : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7096949/
       (2013) The role of mutational robustness in RNA virus evolution: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3981611/
       (2016) Assessing the Epidemic Potential of RNA and DNA Viruses: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5189130/
       Vaccine escape in a heterogeneous population: insights for SARS-CoV-2 from a simple model: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8278051/
       Partial immunity and SARS-CoV-2 mutations: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6540/354.1
       The wealthy world must rally or nations will collapse across Africa: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01964-2
       What it will take to vaccinate the world against COVID-19: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00727-3

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6. There are more links, but WP is refusing to post them. Might think it’s spam, I suppose..

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   • I just clicked “Approve” on comment from Kerry Craig that “There are more links, but WP is refusing to post them…”. Did not work
     Probably after having accidentally reversed an existing “Approved”.
     Have previously been able to reverse without problems. Testing whether I can post this.

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     • Test ok and 3 new comments from Kerry now visible. Looks like previous glitches now ok.
       Links look VERY useful but I won’t be able to follow them till later.
       Did not notice hoped for news item specifically referencing the UK SAGE report on “realistic possibility” of more deadly variants.

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7. link about variant that might be resistant to vaccines, I can’t assess credibility:
   https://covid1.substack.com/p/new-lambda-variant-might-be-resistant

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   • Beta, Gamma and Delta are already resistant. Also Alpha but not greatly. Beta rendered AstraZeneca useless (10% effective) in South Africa.

     Delta bigger problem because also much more infectious and also more severe.

     What follows from updates of vaccines to overcome Delta resistance is a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” as stated by Biden.

     That includes most of the world’s population. Then we get more severe variants that don’t kill the large numbers infected with Delta but protected by vaccines which increase the mortality rate among the unvaccinated when they spread. Then further new variants become either more infectious or better at escapiing from the vaccines against Delta or eventually both.

     What goes around comes around.

     Hence there has to be enough manufacturing capacty to deliver two doses per year to about 7.5 billion people until we get a sterilizing vaccine instead of the current “leaky” vaccines. That is about 7 times currently planned mRNA capacity. Delivering it fast enough to avoid mass casualties with each update would multiply it again eg to deliver within 1 month of a new update instead of over the following 6 months would require 6 times at much again.

     I don’t know how to write about this but will try to just post some links soon.

     Meanwhile I recommend SAGE 93 and 94 documents:

     https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/sage-meetings-july-2021

     Especially:

     https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/how-long-will-vaccines-continue-to-protect-against-covid-19-30-july-2021

     https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/long-term-evolution-of-sars-cov-2-26-july-2021

     Latter includes succinct summary of latest virology, immunology and phylodynamics from p6 to end at p15.
     “Supporting information:
     paras 17 to 59.”

     Paras 1-16 are the conclusions.

     “Scenario One: A variant that causes severe disease in a greater proportion of the
     population than has occurred to date. For example, with similar morbidity/mortality to
     other zoonotic coronaviruses such as SARS-CoV (~10% case fatality) or MERS-CoV
     (~35% case fatality).”

     …

     Likelihood of genotypic change in internal genes: Likely whilst the circulation of SARS-
     CoV-2 is high.
     Likelihood of increased severity phenotype: Realistic possibility.
     Impact: High. Unless there is significant drift in the spike glycoprotein gene sequence,
     then the current spike glycoprotein-based vaccines are highly likely to continue to
     provide protection against serious disease. However, an increase in morbidity and
     mortality would be expected even in the face of vaccination since vaccines do not
     provide absolute sterilising immunity i.e. they do not fully prevent infection in most
     individuals.
     What can we do?
     • Consider vaccine booster doses to maintain protection against severe disease.
     • Reduce transmission of SARS-CoV-2 within the UK (to reduce risk of point
     mutations, recombination).
     • Minimise introduction of new variants from other territories (to reduce risk of
     recombination between variants).
     • Targeted surveillance for reverse zoonoses, and if necessary, consider animal
     vaccination, slaughter, or isolation policies.
     • Continue to monitor disease severity associated with variants (to identify
     changes in phenotype).
     • Continue to develop improved prophylactic and therapeutic drugs for SARS-
     CoV-2 and disease symptoms.
     • Consider stockpiling prophylactic and therapeutic drugs for SARS-CoV-2.”

     For future trials on charge of crimes against humanity under universal jurisdiction note the complete lack of interest in reducing introduction of new variants from UK to other territories and intention to boost vaccination among the already vaccinated rather than the rest of the world.

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8. TAB EXPLOSION 3

   The recent SAGE report:https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1007566/S1335_Long_term_evolution_of_SARS-CoV-2.pdf

   https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamhaseltine/2021/08/04/a-warning-about-the-future-of-covid-19-from-the-scientific-advisory-group-for-emergencies-of-the-united-kingdom/?sh=12e5972e2e54

   https://metro.co.uk/2021/07/30/sage-experts-almost-certain-new-variants-will-eventually-beat-vaccines-15017199/

   https://www.techtimes.com/articles/263584/20210730/sage-warns-next-covid-19-variant-more-deadly-delta-kill-1-out-of-3-people-high-mutation.htm

   https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/future-covid-variant-could-kill-110531679.html

   https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/covid-vaccine-supply-variants-warning-b1890644.html

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   • TAB EXPLOSION 4
     Will ‘Doomsday’ Variant Emerge?: https://khn.org/morning-breakout/clock-ticking-herd-immunity-bar-now-higher-will-doomsday-variant-emerge/
     https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/20210802/vaccination-alone-wont-stop-rise-of-resistant-variants
     SARS-CoV-2 transmission, vaccination rate and the fate of resistant strains: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.08.21251383v1.full.pdf
     _____________________
     CDC – Outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 Infections, Including COVID-19 Vaccine Breakthrough Infections, Associated with Large Public Gatherings — Barnstable County, Massachusetts, July 2021:
     https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7031e2.htm?s_cid=mm7031e2_x
     _____________
     Antibody-Dependent Enhancement and the Coronavirus Vaccines: https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/02/12/antibody-dependent-enhancement-and-the-coronavirus-vaccines
     Even with vaccination efforts in full force, the theoretical threshold for vanquishing COVID-19 looks to be out of reach: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00728-2
     https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22598415/covid-vaccinate-world-virus-variant-delta-lambda
     For decades, Africa has imported 99% of its vaccines. Now the continent’s leaders want to bring manufacturing home: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01048-1
     https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/08/03/gurd-a03.html

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     • TAB EXPLOSION 5
       https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2021/01/covid-19-variants
       https://lens.monash.edu/@coronavirus-articles/2021/07/23/1383547/covid-variants-lambda-and-delta-plus-all-you-need-to-know-about-the-emerging-strains
       https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/07/3-principles-now-define-pandemic/619336/
       https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/03/massive-global-hunt-variants-under-way/618230/
       https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/are-we-creating-ideal-conditions-for-new-coronavirus-variants
       https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/7/23/indonesia-raging-pandemic-offers-fertile-ground-for-new-variants
       Send Vaccines Where People Want Them: Developing Nations:
       https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/send-vaccines-where-people-want-them-developing-nations?fbclid=IwAR2lfANQbpnaTUSDRM-otr92CPWLgF0d_gstDcp1-Y3LmEU6uKppwyURpjU
       https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/374/bmj.n1876.full.pdf
       https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/07/08/1013794996/why-the-delta-variant-is-so-contagious-a-new-study-sheds-light
       https://www.khmertimeskh.com/50906372/coronavirus-lambda-variant-spreads-across-latin-america/
       https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/07/20/lambda-variant-coronavirus/

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9. TAB EXPLOSION 6
   (don’t blame me)
   BTW, is there a text editor for comment postings on this site??????
   https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-do-variants-such-as-delta-become-dominant1/
   https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/07/28/what-should-the-end-of-the-covid-pandemic-look-like-501373
   https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/29/delta-variant-israel-to-give-pfizer-covid-booster-shots-to-elderly-.html
   https://theconversation.com/covid-the-reason-cases-are-rising-among-the-double-vaccinated-its-not-because-vaccines-arent-working-164797
   https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamhaseltine/2021/07/20/the-uks-dangerous-and-deadly-gamble/?sh=2140724b400a
   https://edition.cnn.com/2021/07/07/health/uk-opening-scientist-letter/index.html
   https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/a-new-strain-of-coronavirus-what-you-should-know
   https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/07/18/1029638/why-englands-sudden-lifting-of-covid-restrictions-is-a-massive-gamble/
   https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/two-thirds-epidemiologists-warn-mutations-could-render-current-covid-vaccines
   https://www.reuters.com/world/china/how-delta-variant-upends-assumptions-about-coronavirus-2021-07-26/
   https://fortune.com/2021/08/04/covid-vaccine-delta-variant-efficacy-uk-study/
   https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/heart-matters-magazine/news/coronavirus-and-your-health/covid-variant
   https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/02/health-experts-fear-england-may-become-incubator-for-covid-variants.html
   https://www.wsj.com/articles/opening-its-economy-as-delta-variant-surges-the-u-k-becomes-a-covid-19-test-case-11626884725
   https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/07/3-principles-now-define-pandemic/619336/
   https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20210802-covid-19-uk-opens-borders-to-fully-vaccinated-travelers-from-eu-and-us
   https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/covid-b-1-617-2-delta-variant-what-we-know.html
   https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/charities-boris-johnson-share-covid-19-vaccine/
   https://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/d00733/
   https://www.scarymommy.com/new-covid-variant-taking-hold-in-florida/
   https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/whats-to-blame-for-the-latest-covid-19-outbreaks-in-australia
   https://slate.com/human-interest/2021/08/provincetown-delta-variant-cluster-diary.html
   https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/07/06/1013582342/delta-is-now-the-dominant-coronavirus-variant-in-the-u-s

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   • Thanks!!! I still haven’t caught up with the previous lot but will look at both while writing
     There is a WordPress App.

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     • Covid-19 Delta variant is a warning to act before virus becomes more dangerous.- delta’s
       outpacing all other variants but virologists have dissected its attributes – and they’ve found it can get much more powerful yet.

       Delta is a winner. In the viral race to reproduce, it’s outpacing all comers. But virologists have dissected its attributes. And they’ve found it can get much more powerful yet.

       At the moment, it’s just a simulation.

       It takes everything we know about Covid-19’s ability to invade human cells. It breaks this down into its building blocks. It then tests every possible recombination to see what they can do.

       The outcome is a ‘Covid Ultimate’.

       “Delta is a warning — it’s a warning that the virus is evolving, but it is also a call to action that we need to move now before more dangerous variants emerge,” says World Health Organisation director of emergencies Michael Ryan.
       …..
       An ‘ultimate’ Covid?

       Several recent studies have attempted to extrapolate where Covid-19 is headed.

       One in particular, by Gideon Schreiber in Israel, has attracted Dr Turville’s attention. It zeroes in on the makeup of Covid-19’s spike ‘hook’. It broke that binding receptor down into its component building blocks and then calculated all their possible combinations.

       Then Schreiber sifted through these for ones that did something.

       “Curiously, he could predict the changes that emerged in the current variants of concern, ones we see in the real world,” Dr Turville says.”

       https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/global/covid19-delta-variant-is-a-warning-to-act-before-virus-becomes-more-dangerous/news-story/85414f326ed58492c836414b2ab4dea6

       ____________________________

       “Immunizing most of humanity in short order is a monumental task, one never attempted before, and one that experts say the world wasn’t ready to confront. They note that things have already moved with unprecedented speed: A year and a half ago, the disease was unknown, and the first vaccine authorizations came less than six months ago……”

       ___________________

       “Until the whole world is vaccinated, the whole world will be at risk. The longer the world lets the virus run free to infect and mutate, the more likely the world will face a prolonged pandemic or another outbreak altogether, pervasive economic decline, and other crises. One year after the pandemic began, the question is not how the world can vaccinate itself, but whether the global commitment exists to do so. Now is the time to decide—ending this pandemic depends on it.”

       https://fortune.com/2021/03/19/rich-countries-covid-vaccine-developing-world-options/
       _____________________________

       “Absent a concerted global commitment to vaccine equity, the virus will continue to evolve, and humanity may be consigned to a never-ending pandemic. ……Last summer, more than a hundred Nobel laureates, former heads of state, clerics, and business leaders urged the World Health Organization to designate covid-19 vaccines “a global common good.” Their petition asked the W.H.O. to “set up an international committee responsible for monitoring the vaccine research and to assure equal access to the vaccine for all countries and all people within a publicly announced pre-determined time frame.” There were then around a hundred and seventy vaccine candidates, none of which had crossed the finish line; the most promising were still in the early phases of clinical trials. As those trials progressed, a movement also began to coalesce around the idea of a “people’s vaccine.” It would be patent-free, mass-produced, and available to everyone, in every country, free of charge.” https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-peril-of-not-vaccinating-the-world
       ______________________
       WHO asks wealthy nations to hold off on Covid vaccine boosters at least through September

       https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/04/who-calls-for-moratorium-on-covid-vaccine-boosters-at-least-through-september.html

       ________________

       _____________________________
       “World Health Organization officials said they are still trying to understand why the delta variant is more transmissible and potentially makes people sicker than the original coronavirus strain.”
       https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/30/who-officials-try-to-figure-out-why-delta-is-so-much-dangerous-than-earlier-covid-strains.html?recirc=taboolainternal
       _______________________________________
       Dr. Fauci: ‘Things are going to get worse’ — here’s what that could look like

       “The worry has to be that something new is going to evolve, call it epsilon or some other variant, and we need to be monitoring very carefully for that,” Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, vice provost for global initiatives and co-director of the Health Transformation Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, said in a briefing with the Infectious Diseases Society of America on Tuesday.

       “Unfortunately, if you’re missing breakthrough infections, you may be missing some evolution here, that would be very important for us to follow,” Emanuel said.”
       https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/05/dr-fauci-things-will-get-worse-amid-covid-delta-surge-unvaccinated.html
       _________________________________________________

       “White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci warned that a more severe Covid variant could emerge as the U.S. daily new case average is now approaching 100,000 per day, exceeding the level of transmission last summer before vaccines were available.

       If another one comes along that has an equally high capability of transmitting but is also much more severe, then we could really be in trouble,” Fauci told McClatchy. “People who are not getting vaccinated mistakenly think it’s only about them. But it isn’t. It’s about everybody else, also.”
       https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/05/fauci-warns-more-severe-covid-variant-could-emerge-as-us-cases-near-100000.html?recirc=taboolainternal
       __________________________________________
       November 2000!! “By failing to swiftly vaccinate the world’s billions of young people, and allowing them to become infected, we could inadvertently nurture a new pandemic. A mutated virus could become an entirely new disease that sidesteps the vaccines now under development and whatever progress we have made toward herd immunity.”

       https://fortune.com/2020/11/12/pfizer-biontech-covid-vaccine-herd-immunity/
       ____________________
       A Blueprint to Vaccinate the World:

       “As long as the virus is still out there, it is still
       mutating. We have warned for months of this threat, and it is now
       obvious that the virus is getting better at evading vaccines. Every
       extra infection is a risk; the billions more infections we will likely see
       over the next two years are a huge gamble”

       Click to access How-to-vaccinate-the-world-GreenLight-0326.pdf

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10. Excellent collection of links!!! I suggest drafting a post and others collaborating to improve it for wider publication.

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11. I haven’t looked at all the links but will put a couple up about the TRIPs waiver (seems to stand for ‘This Request for Intellectual Property’ waiver about COVID combatting technologies initiated by South Africa and India in October 2020 and now supported by more than 100 countries) just in case it hasn’t been flagged yet. At any rate it need emphasising IMO:
    https://msfaccess.org/no-patents-no-monopolies-pandemic
    https://msfaccess.org/opposing-countries-must-stop-filibustering-negotiations-trips-waiver-wto

    The map (first link, scroll down) shows that the Australian government is opposed to the waiver along with a bunch of European countries (but not the USA).

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    • Trade Related Intellectual Property relevant but not central. “Know how” is central. Pandemic “War Production Boards” needed globally and locally to coordinate massive expansion of supply chains for mRNA production capacity to deliver 15 billion update doses per year until a sterilizing vaccine and for public good R and D to develop sterilizing vaccine since private competitive BigPharma R and D oriented towards ongoing sales rather than stamping out diseases.

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