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UK cut off from EU, due to concerns over new Coronavirus strain

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Ianno87

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They managed for hundreds of thousands of years. If we were that weak a species we wouldn't have made it to Edward Jenner's time!

The Black Death took it's toll. Took out something like 40-60% (depending on source) of the population of Europe.
 
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Bantamzen

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A news item on Sky last night said that for some reason, only the UK had the facilty to pick up the new virus, due to way we test ? If so, and it 'started' in Kent. bearing in mind the stark increase in the EU, it was brought over here and spread, the EU sort of shutting the door after horse has bolted !
The EU's, and indeed a lot of the rest of the world's reactions are not so much as a result of the new strain, as you say its likely everywhere but juts not picked up on. No the reaction was as a result of the prat in playing Health Minister stupidly overplaying it and forcing panic here & abroad.
 

bramling

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A news item on Sky last night said that for some reason, only the UK had the facilty to pick up the new virus, due to way we test ? If so, and it 'started' in Kent. bearing in mind the stark increase in the EU, it was brought over here and spread, the EU sort of shutting the door after horse has bolted !

There's absolutely no way it will have been around since September and not spread beyond the immediately south-east, especially with the upgraded spreading capability. One doesn't need to be a field specialist to work that one one.
 

Richard Scott

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The Black Death took it's toll. Took out something like 40-60% (depending on source) of the population of Europe.
Afraid it comes down to survival of fittest. Also thought plague was bacterial so vaccination wouldn't touch it anyway?

There's absolutely no way it will have been around since September and not spread beyond the immediately south-east, especially with the upgraded spreading capability. One doesn't need to be a field specialist to work that one one.
It could well have been, think how slowly original virus spread in first few months. It takes a while to get going and it had to get past some who'd already contracted another strain, limiting its initial spread?
 

trebor79

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Part of the theory of why India's COVID deaths trailed off a lot and that parts of Africa are doing really well too are that poor sanitation/hygiene mean that peoples' immune systems dealt with it a lot better - this is still yet to be proven, but it is a working theory with some solid science behind it. Human bodies are amazing things, and whilst mass vaccinations could contribute in a small way to the explosion of the population, it is much more down to increased standards of living. Otherwise we wouldn't have made it as species up to the 18th century.
Also, you see fewer elderly people in Africa, far fewer fat people and people generally tend to live healthier lifestyles in that they walk and cycle a lot. Also there are lots of other endemic diseases such as malaria which carry off a fair few people. Conditions which are managed here tend not to be there, which means that instead of living a relatively normal life but being vulnerable to COVID, people are already dead of something else.
For example, both of my parents (early 70's) would be dead two or three times over if we were living in most of Africa.

I think it's got a lot more to do with age and health profile of populations than immunity, but that could be part of it. Remember that up to 80% of people are asymptomatic, so won't know they've even been infected and I bet that proportion rises the younger and fitter you are.
 

Ianno87

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Afraid it comes down to survival of fittest.

That's the golden question; how acceptable is that statement in the 21st century? (I don't know what the right answer is; but it's somewhere in the huge grey area between "let it rip" and "protect everybody at all costs")

Also thought plague was bacterial so vaccination wouldn't touch it anyway?
Beyond my expertise!
 

Richard Scott

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That's the golden question; how acceptable is that statement in the 21st century? (I don't know what the right answer is; but it's somewhere in the huge grey area between "let it rip" and "protect everybody at all costs")
But that's what it was back then!!!
 

Yew

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Part of the theory of why India's COVID deaths trailed off a lot and that parts of Africa are doing really well too are that poor sanitation/hygiene mean that peoples' immune systems dealt with it a lot better - this is still yet to be proven, but it is a working theory with some solid science behind it. Human bodies are amazing things, and whilst mass vaccinations could contribute in a small way to the explosion of the population, it is much more down to increased standards of living. Otherwise we wouldn't have made it as species up to the 18th century.

Personally I think if we become a nation of constant sanitisers (and social distancers) out of habit, it's going to lower our immune response to many simple viruses in the future.
The average age of a Covid death in the UK is in the 80's, sadly in lots of areas of africa, people just don't make it to that sort of age. The average lifespan in Uganda is below the UK's state pension age.
 

alex397

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Afraid it comes down to survival of fittest. Also thought plague was bacterial so vaccination wouldn't touch it anyway?

Survival of the fittest? A slightly disturbing opinion to have.
So, if you ever visited a country that was in a famine, would you look at the people and brush it off as ‘survival of the fittest’, or would you try and get them some food and drink and medical attention?

Same goes for past pandemics. Should scientists and governments not try and have vaccinations because it’s ‘survival of the fittest’? There wouldn’t be much society left if people just had that opinion in the past.
 

VauxhallandI

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I can’t say I’ve seen the details but unaccompanied freight is still flowing, so we’re told. I’d class rail freight as this.
I've just come back from the Post Office and post is not flowing. I was told to come back next week to send my parcel to Spain. Magic
 

Cletus

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There's no way these lorry drivers will be home for Christmas. The photos in the attached link show only a few parked up on the A20 and nearby side roads. There are probably hundreds in Dover alone.

I assume they'll be sent to the back of the queue, wherever that will be!
 

kristiang85

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The average age of a Covid death in the UK is in the 80's, sadly in lots of areas of africa, people just don't make it to that sort of age. The average lifespan in Uganda is below the UK's state pension age.

Also, you see fewer elderly people in Africa, far fewer fat people and people generally tend to live healthier lifestyles in that they walk and cycle a lot. Also there are lots of other endemic diseases such as malaria which carry off a fair few people. Conditions which are managed here tend not to be there, which means that instead of living a relatively normal life but being vulnerable to COVID, people are already dead of something else.
For example, both of my parents (early 70's) would be dead two or three times over if we were living in most of Africa.

I think it's got a lot more to do with age and health profile of populations than immunity, but that could be part of it. Remember that up to 80% of people are asymptomatic, so won't know they've even been infected and I bet that proportion rises the younger and fitter you are.

The age factor is a big one, and most likely quite significant if not the most significant (obesity is also one of the strongest correlations I've seen in this pandemic, but there is more obesity in parts of Africa than many realise). But the point I'm making in this context is that I find it profoundly disturbing that what is basic undergrad immunology is being turned on its head, not just by governments' declarations, but by the World Health Organisation, with no evidence whatsoever that is is only from vaccination.

If it was the case that an individual does not get immunity from catching COVID, there would be tons of reinfections now, as I said.

Does everybody remember getting the Heaf Test prior to having their BCG for TB? This was to see if you'd been exposed to TB infection or not; if you had, you didn't need the BCG. It's always been the case, and by changing the science with no evidence my distrust in what is going on goes ever higher. I've always had it down to simple incompetence, but there are so many signs now it is actually more than that. It's getting worrying indeed.
 

Bantamzen

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It looks like the US might be the first one to put their hands up and admit this variant might be with them already:


Public health experts in the US have been weighing in on the UK's discovery of a new mutant variant of Covid-19, with many saying that there is a solid likelihood that the virus is already present in the US.

Dr Anthony Fauci, the top US disease researcher, told ABC News this morning that it is "certainly possible" that the mutant strain is already present in the US.

"I mean, when you have this amount of spread within a place like the UK that you really need to assume that it's here already," he said. "It may not - and certainly it's not the dominant strain, but I would not be surprised at all if it was already here."

The former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the regulator tasked with approving vaccines and medicines, said the new strain “is already in the US.”

“I don’t think a travel ban [on the UK], at this point, is going to prevent this mutated strain from coming into the United States,” Scott Gottlieb told CNBC.

So the path is cleared for other countries to stop sweating it. Well at least it should, but this is 2020 so who knows what will happen?
 

Richard Scott

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Survival of the fittest? A slightly disturbing opinion to have.
So, if you ever visited a country that was in a famine, would you look at the people and brush it off as ‘survival of the fittest’, or would you try and get them some food and drink and medical attention?

Same goes for past pandemics. Should scientists and governments not try and have vaccinations because it’s ‘survival of the fittest’? There wouldn’t be much society left if people just had that opinion in the past.
There wasn't any other view back then, was talking about the time of the plague and like I said vaccination wouldn't have helped as was bacterial, I believe.
 

alex397

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There wasn't any other view back then, was talking about the time of the plague and like I said vaccination wouldn't have helped as was bacterial, I believe.
Oh ok, I do apologise if I misunderstood what you were trying to say. Frustrations are running high for me right now.
 

AnyFile

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Bearing in mind this 'started' in Kent, and France has a higher figure of covid than us, and numbers were rising fast, who is to say that it did not come fom them in the first place ! But if we keep locking down, the virus will just get stronger each time
Is there any reasons why locking down should increase the strength of the virus?

The more the virus wide spreads and the more it reproduce itself, higher are the possibility that a new variant come out. (and some of these new variant could be more harmful/stronger)

Reducing contacts between people is the only way to surely reduce the widespread of the virus and in this way you both get less people infected and less new more harmful variant starting to circulate
 

Yew

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Is there any reasons why locking down should increase the strength of the virus?

The more the virus wide spreads and the more it reproduce itself, higher are the possibility that a new variant come out. (and some of these new variant could be more harmful/stronger)

Reducing contacts between people is the only way to surely reduce the widespread of the virus and in this way you both get less people infected and less new more harmful variant starting to circulate
More harmful?
 

yorksrob

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Is there any reasons why locking down should increase the strength of the virus?

The more the virus wide spreads and the more it reproduce itself, higher are the possibility that a new variant come out. (and some of these new variant could be more harmful/stronger)

Reducing contacts between people is the only way to surely reduce the widespread of the virus and in this way you both get less people infected and less new more harmful variant starting to circulate

I think the idea is that if the bog standard version of the virus is circulating more freely, it will occupy a greater proportion of the population, getting in the way of mutated versions.

If, however, you prevent the bog standard virus from circulating through distancing etc, there are more virus free people for a more contagious version of the virus, which can get past ordinary distancing, to infect, thus giving it a helping hand in establishing itself through natural selection.
 

The Ham

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I did discover thanks to some Facebook expert that everyone who received the smallpox vaccine in 1796 went on to later die. Indeed, none of them are alive today.

Makes you think...

Likewise everyone who served in WWI, as none of them are alive today. The figures for WWII aren't much better, although there's a few alive.
 

trebor79

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Is there any reasons why locking down should increase the strength of the virus?

The more the virus wide spreads and the more it reproduce itself, higher are the possibility that a new variant come out. (and some of these new variant could be more harmful/stronger)

Reducing contacts between people is the only way to surely reduce the widespread of the virus and in this way you both get less people infected and less new more harmful variant starting to circulate
Mutations happen all the time. If the mutation is of no benefit to the virus it'll tend to not dominate. By locking down and taking other measures, a mutation which makes the virus more transmissible is more likely to become dominant, because it's better at finding new hosts than the original.
If we hadn't taken measures this mutation may not have been a competitive advantage and so may have gone nowhere.
Over time viruses tend to become more infectious but less harmful. A very infectious but harmless virus is going to have a competitive advantage over one that makes people sick, because sick people tend to stay away from others which limits the opportunity for a virus to find new hosts.
 

bramling

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Mutations happen all the time. If the mutation is of no benefit to the virus it'll tend to not dominate. By locking down and taking other measures, a mutation which makes the virus more transmissible is more likely to become dominant, because it's better at finding new hosts than the original.
If we hadn't taken measures this mutation may not have been a competitive advantage and so may have gone nowhere.
Over time viruses tend to become more infectious but less harmful. A very infectious but harmless virus is going to have a competitive advantage over one that makes people sick, because sick people tend to stay away from others which limits the opportunity for a virus to find new hosts.

Whilst that all makes sense, could there be a fly in the ointment that with Covid apparently having a pre-symptomatic period where people have few if any symptoms but can spread, this renders the point about a more harmful virus being less likely to spread less valid for Covid, in either its original or mutated form?
 

trebor79

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Whilst that all makes sense, could there be a fly in the ointment that with Covid apparently having a pre-symptomatic period where people have few if any symptoms but can spread, this renders the point about a more harmful virus being less likely to spread less valid for Covid, in either its original or mutated form?
Well indeed. And for something to mutate to the point of being a mere irritant (such as the many common cold viruses, some of which are coronaviruses) would take a very long time.
A non harmful version is still going to do better in the long run, but obviously the longer any pre symptomatic but infectious stage lasts, the longer that version is going to take to emerge, if ever.
Anyway, vaccination will be the end of it.
 

Richard Scott

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Oh ok, I do apologise if I misunderstood what you were trying to say. Frustrations are running high for me right now.
Understood and thank you, teach me to be clearer too!!!
Can certainly empathise with the frustration!
 

Essan

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Am I the only one to note that all the attention has been on European lorry drivers trying to leave the UK, carrying food to Europe? There has been no mention at all about trucks trying to enter the country with our essentiial supplies of Hungarian cheddar, without which our Christmases will be ruined ....

The problems caused by the French closing their border afflicts France and other countries in Europe. But not the UK. Except, if it continues another week, we may run out of fresh strawberries in January :o
 

alex397

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Am I the only one to note that all the attention has been on European lorry drivers trying to leave the UK, carrying food to Europe? There has been no mention at all about trucks trying to enter the country with our essentiial supplies of Hungarian cheddar, without which our Christmases will be ruined ....

The problems caused by the French closing their border afflicts France and other countries in Europe. But not the UK. Except, if it continues another week, we may run out of fresh strawberries in January :o
Not quite sure what you’re getting at in this post. By ‘Essential supplies’, those lorries bring over more than just niceties.

Seeing all those lorries jammed around Kent, makes me wonder how many of those could be reduced into a freight train. Obviously we would still have problems now, as the train needs a driver. But having thousands of polluting lorries around Kent doesn’t seem very modern. As we know, the Chunnel is carrying much less freight than was intended when built.
 

Nicholas Lewis

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I can’t say I’ve seen the details but unaccompanied freight is still flowing, so we’re told. I’d class rail freight as this.
Some freights shown as running on RTT from Dollands Moor to Calais
The EU's, and indeed a lot of the rest of the world's reactions are not so much as a result of the new strain, as you say its likely everywhere but juts not picked up on. No the reaction was as a result of the prat in playing Health Minister stupidly overplaying it and forcing panic here & abroad.
Absolutely his comment "Its Out of Control" was utterly reckless but political grandstanding to cover the Xmas rule changes at short notice bought about because the idiots over promising weeks ago about Xmas and then not wanting to backdown especially when otehrs told them to
Am I the only one to note that all the attention has been on European lorry drivers trying to leave the UK, carrying food to Europe? There has been no mention at all about trucks trying to enter the country with our essentiial supplies of Hungarian cheddar, without which our Christmases will be ruined ....

The problems caused by the French closing their border afflicts France and other countries in Europe. But not the UK. Except, if it continues another week, we may run out of fresh strawberries in January :o
Only because all the lorries will be stuck over here. Biggest losers are Scottish fisheries who send alot of shellfish to EU this time of year
 
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notlob.divad

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They managed for hundreds of thousands of years. If we were that weak a species we wouldn't have made it to Edward Jenner's time!
When you think of the thousands of years of human evolution, it is only since the mid 1800s that any of us have had life expectancies beyond 40 years of age.
So if you want to go let it rip because the human species has adapted and generated its own immunity to other viruses before, then fine, but I am not sure how many of the over 40s on this forum would be happy with that. Equally as someone who is soon to cross the 'close to 30' / 'close to 40' boundary, i don't know how happy I feel about being classed as the village elder yet.

*please note. This post is to be taken with a truckload of salt. I know there are plenty of people on here will shoot back that I am scaremongering by saying everyone over 40 is at risk. I am not, I am taking a very silly point made by someone else and running with it.
 
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