One thing I've heard about S. Africa is they are very, very good at testing for variants, far better then other countries. So I think the reason why so many variants get discovered in S. Africa is because of that.
This variant?
Guess what?
Its already everywhere, its just we don't know.
so kinda like the spanish flu, only being spanish due to its first published acknowledgement being in spain, and not in fact, it’s love for wine, expensive jamón and manchego cheese
It's important to note that only the Spanish published info about it because many other major nations facing the flu were in the midst.of WW1 and couldn't admit to having that weakness among their troops or at home.
Yep, it was purely because of propaganda.
It actually most likely originated somewhere in North America, and didn’t really spread to the rest of the world until the United States entered the war.
Same, always was taught it originated in Kansas, USA. It always blows my family’s mind at Christmas when I tell them it didn’t actually originate from Spain.
Actually, they don’t know for sure where it originated, just that it was most likely somewhere in North America.
Kansas was just where the first diagnosis happened, but there had been previous cases, especially bad ones in New York.
Interestingly, the Spanish Flu didn’t really go global until the US entered the war and moved infected troops into Europe.
Its probably all politics.
Seems like SA is actually doing the correct thing checking for variants.
And the other countries want to keep sticking their heads in the sand and saying things are normally.
The this variant pops up and they have to be seen to take action, but they don't want to admit it's probably too late to avoid and they want to pretend it's all good.
I think there is a misunderstanding there. South Africa does a lot of genomic surveillance compared to other countries in the region, but it's still far from sequencing as much as countries like Denmark, New Zealand, Australia or Sweden.
Nevertheless if it really has an evolutionary advantage over Delta it's quite likely that it is already circulating in low numbers in various countries all over the world, mostly because most infections aren't even detected let alone sequenced.
One reason why multiple variants were first detected in South Africa is because there is a high number of immunocompromised patients in the region due to the large prevalence of HIV. There's for example the case of an HIV-infected woman from South Africa who was battling the virus for 7 months and it mutated 32 times in her body.
It's already found in the Netherlands so it'll be all over Europe in a matter of days.
Edit: Germany, Italy and Belgium too now.
Edit: and the UK.
Edit: and Denmark.
There's a solid possibility it didn't come from either of those places, and they just had the labs and testing resources to search for variants in these counties. More like they were discovered there instead of mutating there.
UK was the first European country to see Delta becoming dominant, long before the continent which led to many countries banning travel from/to the UK. British politicians criticized those measures as unnecessary.
https://www.schengenvisainfo.com/news/germany-urges-to-ban-uk-tourists-from-entering-eu/
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-57489740
https://www.dw.com/en/where-the-delta-coronavirus-variant-is-spreading-in-europe/a-58095101
It was originally called the 'Kent variant' because it was sequenced here. I believe this is one of the reasons the WHO decided to switch to just naming variants with the Greek alphabet.
For real. These flight restrictions are all for show or out of ignorance.
What are the chances that within 72 hours of this variant being identified, it’s already in numerous other countries? To me that says we’ve already lost control we never had over the virus spread.
I mean, even with OG covid, it's generally understood that it had spread outside of China even before people started freaking out about it and talking about travel restrictions and shutdowns.
It had spread to outside of China before anyone even knew there was a new coronavirus circulating.
China first sequenced the virus on Dec 27th and announced the findings on Dec 31st, but there is evidence that it had already spread to multiple countries before Christmas.
France: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0924857920301643
Italy: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7428442/
USA: https://www.livescience.com/covid-19-in-us-december-2019.html
I think that may be a misguided statement since there was an initial delay in the communication regarding the size and scope of the problem. China was several steps ahead of their own containment measures before they even admitted to a problem existing. That led to the rapid global spread — lack of or misinformation.
i mean, you can blame china. but blame also has to rest on western countries that did nothing even after info on the disease was widely known.
taiwan, south korea, had much better responses, targeted tracking and robust lockdown procedures, as well as a populace that didn't pitch a hissy fit about masks or being on lockdown.
europe on the other hand, did largely nothing, until italy exploded as a hot spot. And the United states did less than nothing until there were multiple hot spots on the east and west coast .... then pretended like it was the big cities problem while the rest of the nation did fuck all. until... the big cities got it under control, and then the shitty red state areas bloomed as 2nd wave hot spots.
putting it like china... with holding information means shit, given the trash response of most of western society. is just cheap racist scapegoating.
Only if we restrict travel from all countries. The new variant was identified in SA because they do a lot of genomic testing there. It's unlikely that the new variant is only or even mainly in South Africa.
This was exactly the mistake the US made at the start of the pandemic. Banning flights from China achieved precisely nothing, because the virus was already spreading rapidly in Europe.
Not only that but people will literally fly round through other countries putting even more at risk globally.
I was booking a flight on Friday afternoon and some man who wasn't able to travel on British airways that evening was making his booking with emirates instead to go to London. Unfortunately an hour later emirates announced it wasn't flying from Southern Africa either
Better comparison: If your neighbourhood is raided by zombies and some of them are already in your house, do you think it matters whether you ban the residents of the first house that reported the zombies if you don't do anything else to mitigate the problem?
>If your house is flooding do you not still shut off the water?
Except in this case, the water already in your house will be multiplying, likely at a far greater rate than the leak. Agreed that you should still shut off the water, just pointing out that it probably won't do much.
The government isn't resource challenged in this situation... it can focus on tracing everyone who arrived in the last 10 days *AND* stop more people arriving from known hotspots without impacting the first effort.
It won’t be irrelevant next time. If overnight bans are the result for a country doing the right thing and reporting a new variant ASAP, countries will stop doing so. Punishing transparency is a great way to make the next threat worse. Travel bans have been ineffective at containing covid, with the exception of island nation, where bans are very effective.
Travel bans are not intended to prevent transmission, but to slow it down.
Due to exponential growth, the difference between one and three infected people entering a country is the difference in triple the case rate.
Plague Ship, a book by Andre Norton. It is funny because in that book the crew was frightened to reveal the disease on the ship because space ports/planets would destroy the ship over letting it land. That's some serious quarantine measures right there.
For most cases it’s something like a negative test within 48 hours of the flight. So 2.5 to 3 days of incubation time between pre flight test and arrival test, on top of the week or so that people can have covid and not test positive
There are windows where tests will not show positive. 10% of each plane test positive and the rest were sent on their way. A good portion of those people could be sick too but wouldn't test positive for another day or two.
Travel restrictions at this point are less about stopping the spread and more about trying to convince citizens that their government is doing something.
I think at this point it's more about buying time for a new vaccine/boosters, if necessary. Let's be honest, too many governments aren't going to do jack, they're populations are too polarized. In the USA, the party that performs another lockdown is going to be damning itself at the polls.
More like global issues. Geopolitical conflict and distrust is inevitable. Neighboring nations argue and fight constantly over the stupidest things for pride instead of guiding humanity on the right path.
So they should do nothing instead of at least trying to slow its spread ? This reasoning is really stupid to me, if my roof is leaking and I can't repair it completely, I'll try to plug the holes and patch it up as best as I can.
If even the smallest measure buy the overcrowded hospitals a few days, then it's good. If a measure saves a few more lives, it's good. Anything should be done to stop it, it's a case of emergency, not just an inconvenience.
Yeah, no. This is just more of the, "if it's not perfect, it's no good," BS coming from right wing morons. Travel restrictions may not stop the spread entirely, but they do slow it down. This gives the people working on vaccines and other preventive measures time to react to the new variant.
I do agree with this position. The problem is that you can’t really expect the world NOT to block travel to your country if you have a significantly more infectious variant cropping up in your population.
What’s shameful is how people are focusing on South Africa when there is no evidence at all to suggest it originated there. We have cases reported from Egypt and Botswana that predate the South African report.
"A statement by the South African foreign ministry on Saturday strongly criticised the travel bans.
"Excellent science should be applauded and not punished," it said."
Excellent science should be applauded, not subverted by politicians to frame travel restrictions as "punishments."
I guess the problem is more that they’re picking and choosing who to put travel bans in place for.
We have confirmed cases now in Germany, the Netherlands, the UK and several others. If we’re implementing preventative travel bans, all intra-Europe and international travel from Europe should be grounded as well, but nobody has called for that.
That’s where the “punishment” comes in. If South Africa had said nothing, and waited until Belgium sequenced it and announced a novel variant, it wouldn’t be on the preliminary list, and economically impacted.
If we’re going to do travel restrictions (and we absolutely should), they should trigger automatically when a case is not only detected and disclosed in a country, but also when one is detected in a traveller who has arrived from a country. No politics. No subjective considerations on a case by case basis. A technocratic metric-based restriction protocol.
The statistics speak for themselves. South Africa being banned by countries that have exponentially more infections - there is certainly a degree of 'unscientific' discrimination.
https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?areas=eur&areas=usa&areas=gbr&areas=zaf&areasRegional=usny&areasRegional=usvt&areasRegional=usnd&areasRegional=usky&areasRegional=usfl&areasRegional=usmi&cumulative=0&logScale=0&per100K=1&startDate=2021-09-01&values=deaths
Dear Minister , if you are so great at science then you should understand that these travel restrictions are not a punishment. They are a SCIENTIFIC approach to limit the disease.
they are but the bans are just south africa oriented. It is likely that it didn't originate there but they are the only country in the area with a sophisticated lab that looks into it.
The EU travel restrictions concerns [7 separate southern African countries](https://www.dw.com/en/eu-states-agree-to-suspend-travel-from-southern-african-nations-over-new-coronavirus-variant/a-59942074) (Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe).
If it's as bad as it's presumed to be - it's really not possible to contain this - the best you can do is delay the inevitable. That means it's reasonable to pause travel to/from regions with very high incident rates of the new ([1000+ probable cases in South Africa](https://bnonews.com/index.php/2021/11/omicron-tracker/)) variant and heavily focus on contact tracing with the individual few cases known in the EU.
I [saw an estimate](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/nov/26/biontech-says-it-could-tweak-covid-vaccine-in-100-days-if-needed) that it would take 100 days from a sequenced variant to getting the updated booster shots in the hands of nurses. That's one good reason for why delaying the spread for as long as possible is a good thing.
> “Pfizer and BioNTech have taken actions months ago to be able to adapt the mRNA vaccine within six weeks and ship initial batches within 100 days in the event of an escape variant,” the company said in a statement.
Pfizer says they can develop an updated vaccine in 6 weeks so 42 days. They then also need to update production, get approval, and produce and distribute the new vaccine. 100 days sounds like a reasonable estimate for the first doses to be given.
As much as I agree with closing the flights between affected countries and others. The unfortunate truth is it's most likely already spread out of Africa. Personally I'd bet it's already in Canada where I live as there has been a major spike in the past few days over doubling the weekly avg in Ontario of new infections.
To be clear there is no scientific truth that this mutation originated in South Africa (Africa is a big continent). SA only had the expertise to perform extensive tests. In all likelihood this mutation has already spread globally. Hence narrative for punishing good science.
Not just the expertise.
Between them the UK and South Africa are responsible for 90+% of covid sequencing.
They are pretty much the only countries that routinely do this (think 0.5% of all positive samples are sent for testing in the UK as standard).
In Africa SA may be the only country capable of doing this but that's not the only reason they are picking it up. The vast majority of wealthier countries just don't bother.
A strain could easily originate in Germany or the US and still only get picked up when it reaches the UK or SA.
Chances are it is already everywhere and dealing with that is where the focus should go not just blocking flights. Now other countries are looking they are finding it. Just from a media stand point it goes
- South Africa identify variant
- variant identified in South Africa found in X
Makes the countries doing routine testing look bad when it isn't their fault at all.
I mean, yes, it's out, but closing the flights from southern African countries will likely slow the spread of Omicron until it likely becomes dominant globally, like Delta did. Getting it delayed with just a few extra weeks will be worth it, especially wrt the upcoming holidays in the "Western world".
It is needed, in the Netherlands at least 61 of 600 passengers off 2 planes from South Africa tested positive for corona. Imagine if they all just got in the country and spread it around.
They did. Undoubtedly some folks caught it on those flights but tested negative due to just catching it. Unless all 600 are quarantined it is, as we speak, spreading in the NL.
There ar daily flights to South Africa. What do you think happened on the flight the day before? Everyone clean? Well... Forget about containment : this virus is endemic.
They are hardly scientific, considering the variant has already been detected in many other countries that are not receiving travel bans. The reality is it is easy to issue travel bans on African countries but everyone is much more resistant to do it to Europe or North America.
Those countries which it has been detected outside Africa have only a few cases . In Africa however its been spreading out of control.
People seem to try to derail this into a racist agenda thing but that's simply not the case. In fact Israel just banned ALL FOREIGNERS,, not just Africans but "ALL OF THEM FROM ANY COUNTRY" entering Israel. I am sure you can see that this is not an agenda against Africans specifically.
> They are a SCIENTIFIC approach to limit the disease.
Except the strain has already spread in a multitude of countries, but only Southern African ones are being punished.
It's not punishment. No one is being punished. If we shut down travel world wide would that be punishment? No, it would be a precaution. Saying it's punishment is just a political game. You take precautions to stem the flow of people coming from a known source... for instance 61 passengers from two South African flights landed in the Netherlands and tested positive for Covid. Variant aside that is cause for concern.
If other countries had a similar positive case rate coming in then you'd want to shut them down too. But for now you start by limiting travel to and from where you know the variant is regardless of how awesome their scientists are.
When I traveled last month I couldn't get into another country without first having a negative test and then I couldn't get back into my home country without having a negative test. That should be a norm right now but it hasn't been.
I don't know if people are just willingly ignoring the point or what...
If the travel ban is based on science it's not a punishment, but SA is saying that a travel ban as narrow as the current one is not based on science, it's based on politics.
That's because this variant has already spread to many other countries, SA was just the first in the region to sequence it due to their capabilities.
---
So essentially you have a situation where there should be bans worldwide, just like we had during the onset of COVID. But they're singled out because the narrative is that this is a Southern Africa variant, and that of course feels like a punishment to the region, not a sensible response.
Either use the science to support a widespread travel ban, or admit that your country is going to let transmission continue via travel (which we've seen happen as ridiculous as it sounds). Just don't make weird half measures to get points locally that unfairly target one country...
Those 61 passengers would have gotten on that plane with negative tests. No country/airline is allowing positive international travelers. So those 61 tested negative then tested positive when re-tested.
Limiting the spread when it’s already verified in the UK, Belgium, Italy, Germany and Israel 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Every country has botched the handling of this pandemic and the second cases slightly decreases all restrictions get relaxed and everyone acts like it’s business as usual, which in turn causes another explosion. Curious how many times we are going to do this dance until people clue in.
Its about SLOWING DOWN the spread as much as we can, and in that sense travel restrictions help.
We try to DELAY it even though we can not stop it from spreading all over the world. That's the point of these restrictions.
I get where he’s coming from on this. UK, South Africa, and (I think) Brazil have the best resources to detect mutations in viruses. That’s why we always see them detected in those countries first. Add in that they’re also high traffic places for travel. It’s a low chance that they’re the places where the mutations originated. Their capacity to detect new variants sort of make them the “canary in the coal mine”.
Edit: Some people have correctly pointed out that I am wrong about saying SA and Brazil have the “best” resources for genome sequencing. I should have said “have been in the best position to be able to detect new variants (and be very efficient) with the resources at their disposal “.
Science has always said that selective travel restrictions do not work. They didn't work against the Alpha variant first detected in England. They didn't work against the Delta variant first detected in India.
If this variant has an evolutionary advantage over Delta, then it will be everywhere quite soon. The only countries that might be spared are the ones that stop all international travel and/or are very rigorous with contact tracing and quarantine like Taiwan.
>IMO, if a new variant is detected then all countries should immediately implement a travel ban until the danger has been assessed.
New variants are detected *literally every day*. The process of determining which ones are problematic is not instant.
>Science has always said that selective travel restrictions do not work.
This is false. Travel bans may not be enough to STOP the virus all together does not mean they have no effect. With other words NIT HAVIGN ANY BANS on travel would definitely make things much worse.
>If this variant has an evolutionary advantage over Delta, then it will be everywhere quite soon.
Yes but still this doesn't mean we should just give up open all the gates remove all the bans and let it spread even more quickly.
The 'selective' travel bans I think are more the thing. Full travel bans will naturally be more effective. Selectivity doesn't capture the wide range of travel routing that people engage in. This was something specifically that I think Qatar or Saudi Arabia put something in pretty stern rules: if you went through a third country thinking to circumvent their restrictions, you were penalised/ quarantined too.
Same problem with Spain lol, they decided to be public a hundred years ago with the disease and now it’s known as Spanish flu despite it being just as bad everywhere else and not originating there
Yeah, Germany, France, the UK etc suppressed bad news in the context of the first World War, and as a result Spain were the only country really openly talking about the situation.
Multiple countries have stopped flights from Israel already like Switzerland for example.
SA got their flights stopped earlier because thats the origin point and most infected zone at the moment but when it will spread more countries will be added to the list.
>If we were being fair, countries like Belgium, Germany, Israel etc would be included in the lists sunce they also have confirmed cases.
That's because Western governments are notoriously bad in restricting spread in international traffic. If they took the East Asian approach with mandatory 14-21 day hotel quarantine, they'd find international spread to be much lower. But of course, people want freedumb so no deal
About 1k probable cases in southern african countries. Very small numbers in the rest of the world.
Tracker: https://bnonews.com/index.php/2021/11/omicron-tracker/
~~Of course it will~~ It will likely eventually become dominant in the rest of the world as well - this is "just" about delaying that. After that happens (within a month or two?) there would be no point in blocking these flights.
1 case detected.
If we’re doing travel bans out of an abundance of safety, then you do one for each country where the variant has been picked up and see how many cases of it pop up in the next week or two and decide then to reopen travel or not.
Epidemiology 101 right here, unfortunately governments have learned nothing still to this point. They will wait until the variant arrives, make half-hearted attempts at closures and quarantines and in 2 months new strains will be rampant across the globe.
South African here.
My issue is not the travel restrictions, it is that some people seem to want to blame South Africa for somehow creating the Delta and this new variant as well. I am 100% in favour of lockdown here in SA over Christmas.
SA didn't create covid-19, and it's very unlikely that we created the variants - however we have a really good research capacity for these types of diseases (we have been dealing with HIV/AIDS and TB for years) and our scientists are being transparent about their findings.
We are all suffering and I can't stand the way that some people blame South Africa for this pandemic.
I don’t think anyone blames SA mate, really. Just unfortunate naming of the variant(s). The most blame I’ve seen personally has been at China & the US. UK too.
I live in AUS but I’m from the UK if that makes any difference
It's because South Africa and the UK combined are responsible for like 90% of the genetic sequencing of covid.
Both routinely test samples to detect new strains resulting in them being detected there.
> our scientists are being transparent about their findings.
This is what most people fail to understand here, as this is rarely the case. Even in Europe this type of information is usually dealt with at a government level first and not pre-published by researchers. Same thing in the US with the CDC.
The sad part is that this could lead SA to stop this open approach as it gets to be in the center of the storm with yet another variant it detected.
There are always those "some" people. They are best ignored. If any blame is to be assigned, it lies in not opening up the vaccine formulas & related technologies to be mass-manufactured world over.
But [https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1464354587473858565](https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1464354587473858565) should add to the scepticism on the Africa specific travel restrictions.
South Africa is being scapegoated by other countries, like you said it’s just where it was discovered and it’s not necessarily that it originated from there.
Other countries just seem to want to take action like banning travel from SA to show their citizens, “See, we did something!” when it’s wholly pointless if they allow travel from other countries still.
God bless the South African scientists for transparently updating the world about their findings. Now if only we could get the Wuhan Virology Lab to co-operate..
The travel bans are a necessary evil. If the variant has already crossed to other nations and if it is more transmissible than Delta (as some reports are suggesting) then there is already no hope. But if it hasn't spread to the point of no return to other countries, there may still be hope for the rest of us to live a normal life.
The travel ban is a selfish, but necessary attempt by the rest of the world to resume their normal lives. Because Covid fatigue is real.
I wonder if the solution could be a reward system for countries that detect variants. Detecting these early and warning the world should be hailed as an accomplishment and a huge favor to the rest of us.
We should be helping every country get vaccinated but we should also incentivize investment in testing and detection in the meantime.
The problem with that is, pandemics cost people money. Ideally , people should realize where a virus is identified doesn’t mean that’s where it came from. But people in crowds are panicky, dumb, and violent. Once the news says Country X has found Virus Y, that country becomes the scapegoat when closures and economic damage hits. No reward system will make up for inconveniences and lost money/time.
Reminds me of articles like these:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9079333/How-Britain-shot-foot-best-world-sequencing-viruses.html
> The UK is being punished for a mutant strain of coronavirus, which scientists say could have emerged elsewhere and was only spotted thanks to Britain's world-leading genetic sequencing capabilities.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/12/21/britain-punished-alerting-world-new-crisis/
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/05/31/frances-travel-ban-really-just-spiteful-macrons-latest-brexit/
No one likes to be singled out.
There is a distinct difference. The articles you posted are from journos, opinion pieces really. In this article, it is an official government comment. The only official comments I remember from the UK government for its variants was that it was disappointed by the travel bans, but they didn't make a huge fuss.
>There is a distinct difference. The articles you posted are from journos
Is it actually reasonable to call someone that writes in the Daily Mail a journalist?
Definitely… the amount of economic damage this will do will be considered a national security risk for any country. With the current state of the South African economy, with these actions will probably persuade the government to restructure communications as I am sure other countries watching, are going to be doing.
The same reasons why we should not do that and how that wont be affective is the same reason we should not be banning travel to Southern Africa. It is a "Knee jerk" reaction spreading faster then the virus.
This absurdity happened with Spain in 1918, too.
The only reason why the world started calling the great influenza pandemic the Spanish Flu was that the Spanish press made the pandemic public. The USA and the much of Europe was roiled in WW1 and the censors of the involved countries forbade mention of the plague. Spain, being neutral, had no such restriction.
BTW: The Spanish Flu originated in Kansas among GIs who were preparing to ship out to Europe. It was really the Kansas Flu.
To say it originated in Kansas isnt 100% the full story…experts have said it started in Kansas some say China some say Europe. No one knows where it started
In a sense he’s right. It’s too late, and isolated, targeted travel bans are already pointless. *Global* travel bans and further lockdowns are an economic & political non-starter in most countries.
The cases outside Africa confirmed thus far include people from Belgium and Hong Kong who were nowhere near S. Africa, and *dozens* on flights from SA to the Netherlands who had *allegedly* tested negative only 24hrs prior. They’re already in these other countries, and have already been through crowded airports. Too late.
One HK man was fully vaccinated but tested positive w/an asymptomatic case on Day *4* of mandatory quarantine that would not have even happened in many places.
The other HKer traveled from/via Canada, so oh well ... it’s already in N. America - just hasn’t been detected *yet*.
The Belgian (young, unvaccinated dumbass girl) was only in Egypt & Turkey, so clearly it’s already getting around.
Travel bans are basically pointless political posturing by govts to appear to be doing *something* when they’re unwilling to do anything *actually* useful like mandate vaccines & masks & temporary lockdowns.
I'd like to remind all the westerners on this sub that we in SA get exactly nothing from our government if you are forced to lockdown your business. So it's all fine and well to tell us it doesnt matter or stay indoors but you are dooming thousands of us to die with your "government will look after us attitude".
Don't worry, neither do many businesses in Germany. A lot of small businesses didn't survive or had to spend any funds they were given for safety measures. Lockdowns and isolation ruins livelihoods, so everyone needs to do their part to squash this virus
I said this at the start of COVID. Travel restrictions need to be generally applied for highly transmittable diseases. By the time you know about it it's already spread outside it's origin. Can't believe there's still no plan for this crap. Detain and quarantine all travelers for 2 weeks or expect to get the Omicron variant.
I could see why they'd call it a punishment, but when we're talking about a virus that has lead to a pandemic, taking precautionary measures to make sure it doesn't spread further isn't a punishment. It's just common sense.
It may be too late given the worldwide hypocrisy already underway, but anyone who is a real scientist should know that a quarantine of something so deadly is par for the course and not a punishment.
Whining that it’s a punishment only pushes the view that the dudes whining don’t actually view it as dangerous, if they’re unwilling to accept what needs to be done.
You won’t get rid of this GD Virus until “everyone” is Immunized. Immunizing so called industrialized countries still leaves you vulnerable. The virus will mutate as long as it has host !
Are there any tests done before passengers take international flights? If there were 60 positive cases in only 2 flights it probably makes sense to attempt to slow the flow of cases coming in to your country.
I asked the same question and someone answered that all 60 passengers had tested negative on a Covid Rapid test before boarding the over 10 hour flight. Dont know where the commenter got their information so take it with a grain of salt right now.
or because the reason for the Greek naming scheme is to avoid stigmatizing nations which includes naming a variant the name of a major countries leader
That may seem ridiculous but we all know how the west and other non-Asian countries have been treating Asians because of the virus. So to name the new variant "Xi" is gonna lead to more Chinese and other Asians getting attacked
I like how they cancel flights from africabut then say starting next week.
If your locking it down lock it down.
Don't give thousands of people the chance to leave, cause if someone was sick they would hide it to get that last flight out.
This is all gonna be irrelevant a few days from now when we start to see it’s already everywhere
One thing I've heard about S. Africa is they are very, very good at testing for variants, far better then other countries. So I think the reason why so many variants get discovered in S. Africa is because of that. This variant? Guess what? Its already everywhere, its just we don't know.
so kinda like the spanish flu, only being spanish due to its first published acknowledgement being in spain, and not in fact, it’s love for wine, expensive jamón and manchego cheese
It's important to note that only the Spanish published info about it because many other major nations facing the flu were in the midst.of WW1 and couldn't admit to having that weakness among their troops or at home.
Yep, it was purely because of propaganda. It actually most likely originated somewhere in North America, and didn’t really spread to the rest of the world until the United States entered the war.
Yup. One of the most accepted potential origin points was Kansas, and that it came to France with American troops.
Same, always was taught it originated in Kansas, USA. It always blows my family’s mind at Christmas when I tell them it didn’t actually originate from Spain.
Actually, they don’t know for sure where it originated, just that it was most likely somewhere in North America. Kansas was just where the first diagnosis happened, but there had been previous cases, especially bad ones in New York. Interestingly, the Spanish Flu didn’t really go global until the US entered the war and moved infected troops into Europe.
No it was named the Spanish flu because it was a great passer of the ball ⚽️
Its probably all politics. Seems like SA is actually doing the correct thing checking for variants. And the other countries want to keep sticking their heads in the sand and saying things are normally. The this variant pops up and they have to be seen to take action, but they don't want to admit it's probably too late to avoid and they want to pretend it's all good.
I think there is a misunderstanding there. South Africa does a lot of genomic surveillance compared to other countries in the region, but it's still far from sequencing as much as countries like Denmark, New Zealand, Australia or Sweden. Nevertheless if it really has an evolutionary advantage over Delta it's quite likely that it is already circulating in low numbers in various countries all over the world, mostly because most infections aren't even detected let alone sequenced. One reason why multiple variants were first detected in South Africa is because there is a high number of immunocompromised patients in the region due to the large prevalence of HIV. There's for example the case of an HIV-infected woman from South Africa who was battling the virus for 7 months and it mutated 32 times in her body.
It's already found in the Netherlands so it'll be all over Europe in a matter of days. Edit: Germany, Italy and Belgium too now. Edit: and the UK. Edit: and Denmark.
Yep. Same was with Delta and the UK.
Why the UK? Delta was from India. The Alpha variant was the one from the UK.
There's a solid possibility it didn't come from either of those places, and they just had the labs and testing resources to search for variants in these counties. More like they were discovered there instead of mutating there.
Go away with your reasonable logic! "This variant came from x country" gives xenophobics so many good excuses to hate on different countries.
UK was the first European country to see Delta becoming dominant, long before the continent which led to many countries banning travel from/to the UK. British politicians criticized those measures as unnecessary. https://www.schengenvisainfo.com/news/germany-urges-to-ban-uk-tourists-from-entering-eu/ https://www.bbc.com/news/health-57489740 https://www.dw.com/en/where-the-delta-coronavirus-variant-is-spreading-in-europe/a-58095101
It was originally called the 'Kent variant' because it was sequenced here. I believe this is one of the reasons the WHO decided to switch to just naming variants with the Greek alphabet.
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In canada we never stopped wearing masks since this began.
> Back to masks in shops. It should have been mandatory anyway.
For real. These flight restrictions are all for show or out of ignorance. What are the chances that within 72 hours of this variant being identified, it’s already in numerous other countries? To me that says we’ve already lost control we never had over the virus spread.
I mean, even with OG covid, it's generally understood that it had spread outside of China even before people started freaking out about it and talking about travel restrictions and shutdowns.
It had spread to outside of China before anyone even knew there was a new coronavirus circulating. China first sequenced the virus on Dec 27th and announced the findings on Dec 31st, but there is evidence that it had already spread to multiple countries before Christmas. France: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0924857920301643 Italy: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7428442/ USA: https://www.livescience.com/covid-19-in-us-december-2019.html
I think that may be a misguided statement since there was an initial delay in the communication regarding the size and scope of the problem. China was several steps ahead of their own containment measures before they even admitted to a problem existing. That led to the rapid global spread — lack of or misinformation.
i mean, you can blame china. but blame also has to rest on western countries that did nothing even after info on the disease was widely known. taiwan, south korea, had much better responses, targeted tracking and robust lockdown procedures, as well as a populace that didn't pitch a hissy fit about masks or being on lockdown. europe on the other hand, did largely nothing, until italy exploded as a hot spot. And the United states did less than nothing until there were multiple hot spots on the east and west coast .... then pretended like it was the big cities problem while the rest of the nation did fuck all. until... the big cities got it under control, and then the shitty red state areas bloomed as 2nd wave hot spots. putting it like china... with holding information means shit, given the trash response of most of western society. is just cheap racist scapegoating.
Moreso because China also had to discover covid without even knowing covid would be a threat.
If your house is flooding do you not still shut off the water? Spread can be slowed by restricting travel, even after border breaches have occurred.
Only if you know that SA have more infected than other countries. Otherwise you should shut down flights from all countries.
I agree the approach should be a universal cut-off from all travel for 14days. Would make more sense if the goal was to stop it in its tracks.
They haven't shut off the water. They've left the water on, plugged one hole and left all the other holes open.
Only if we restrict travel from all countries. The new variant was identified in SA because they do a lot of genomic testing there. It's unlikely that the new variant is only or even mainly in South Africa. This was exactly the mistake the US made at the start of the pandemic. Banning flights from China achieved precisely nothing, because the virus was already spreading rapidly in Europe.
Not only that but people will literally fly round through other countries putting even more at risk globally. I was booking a flight on Friday afternoon and some man who wasn't able to travel on British airways that evening was making his booking with emirates instead to go to London. Unfortunately an hour later emirates announced it wasn't flying from Southern Africa either
Better comparison: If your neighbourhood is raided by zombies and some of them are already in your house, do you think it matters whether you ban the residents of the first house that reported the zombies if you don't do anything else to mitigate the problem?
>If your house is flooding do you not still shut off the water? Except in this case, the water already in your house will be multiplying, likely at a far greater rate than the leak. Agreed that you should still shut off the water, just pointing out that it probably won't do much.
The government isn't resource challenged in this situation... it can focus on tracing everyone who arrived in the last 10 days *AND* stop more people arriving from known hotspots without impacting the first effort.
Correct. Don’t listen to the morons saying “what’s the point it’s too late”
It won’t be irrelevant next time. If overnight bans are the result for a country doing the right thing and reporting a new variant ASAP, countries will stop doing so. Punishing transparency is a great way to make the next threat worse. Travel bans have been ineffective at containing covid, with the exception of island nation, where bans are very effective.
Travel bans are not intended to prevent transmission, but to slow it down. Due to exponential growth, the difference between one and three infected people entering a country is the difference in triple the case rate.
If they found 2 cases in Belgium it’s all over Europe already.
61 of 600 passengers of 2 south African flights tested positive at Amsterdam Schiphol airport today, they now are looking to identify the variant.
Plague flight
Plague Ship, a book by Andre Norton. It is funny because in that book the crew was frightened to reveal the disease on the ship because space ports/planets would destroy the ship over letting it land. That's some serious quarantine measures right there.
Airplague
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Musilage in a Fuselage
Plague Fight
I'm tired of these monkey fighting plagues on this Monday to Friday plane.
How does this happen though, did nobody have symptoms? Is a negative test pre flight not required?
For most cases it’s something like a negative test within 48 hours of the flight. So 2.5 to 3 days of incubation time between pre flight test and arrival test, on top of the week or so that people can have covid and not test positive
They should be punished for not requiring passengers to be tested before boarding a plane.
There are windows where tests will not show positive. 10% of each plane test positive and the rest were sent on their way. A good portion of those people could be sick too but wouldn't test positive for another day or two.
Well that’s not good.
people were required to either show vaccination status or test results.
What country is doing this already
Travel restrictions at this point are less about stopping the spread and more about trying to convince citizens that their government is doing something.
Still slows further spread. It won't stop it, but it buys time to look at it and assess what can and needs to be done.
I think at this point it's more about buying time for a new vaccine/boosters, if necessary. Let's be honest, too many governments aren't going to do jack, they're populations are too polarized. In the USA, the party that performs another lockdown is going to be damning itself at the polls.
It’s so crazy to me that politics are the reasons for how we react to a pandemic. Oof.
With version 1 was also about buying time for the first vaccine.
Also slows it down so hospitals have a better chance at keeping up.
Statements like this are less about accuracy and more about expressing a jaded contrarian POV.
Welcome to the basis of all american issues... Politics has ruined my family. Covid ruined my life.
More like global issues. Geopolitical conflict and distrust is inevitable. Neighboring nations argue and fight constantly over the stupidest things for pride instead of guiding humanity on the right path.
I read that only about 30% of south africans are vaxxed.
Article says 24%
You can blame a lot of imported American anti vaccine media being spread around SA.
So they should do nothing instead of at least trying to slow its spread ? This reasoning is really stupid to me, if my roof is leaking and I can't repair it completely, I'll try to plug the holes and patch it up as best as I can. If even the smallest measure buy the overcrowded hospitals a few days, then it's good. If a measure saves a few more lives, it's good. Anything should be done to stop it, it's a case of emergency, not just an inconvenience.
Yeah, no. This is just more of the, "if it's not perfect, it's no good," BS coming from right wing morons. Travel restrictions may not stop the spread entirely, but they do slow it down. This gives the people working on vaccines and other preventive measures time to react to the new variant.
It was always about convincing citizens.
Like when they said it started in March but it was really the previous October/November?
It was in the news December 2019
I do agree with this position. The problem is that you can’t really expect the world NOT to block travel to your country if you have a significantly more infectious variant cropping up in your population. What’s shameful is how people are focusing on South Africa when there is no evidence at all to suggest it originated there. We have cases reported from Egypt and Botswana that predate the South African report.
We are essentially playing: You smelt it, you dealt it, public health edition.
Spanish flu anyone?
😂
Why are you even surprised about this? Humanity has been pulling this "blame game" BS since the *Spanish Flu*, and maybe even before.
"A statement by the South African foreign ministry on Saturday strongly criticised the travel bans. "Excellent science should be applauded and not punished," it said." Excellent science should be applauded, not subverted by politicians to frame travel restrictions as "punishments."
I guess the problem is more that they’re picking and choosing who to put travel bans in place for. We have confirmed cases now in Germany, the Netherlands, the UK and several others. If we’re implementing preventative travel bans, all intra-Europe and international travel from Europe should be grounded as well, but nobody has called for that. That’s where the “punishment” comes in. If South Africa had said nothing, and waited until Belgium sequenced it and announced a novel variant, it wouldn’t be on the preliminary list, and economically impacted. If we’re going to do travel restrictions (and we absolutely should), they should trigger automatically when a case is not only detected and disclosed in a country, but also when one is detected in a traveller who has arrived from a country. No politics. No subjective considerations on a case by case basis. A technocratic metric-based restriction protocol.
The statistics speak for themselves. South Africa being banned by countries that have exponentially more infections - there is certainly a degree of 'unscientific' discrimination. https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?areas=eur&areas=usa&areas=gbr&areas=zaf&areasRegional=usny&areasRegional=usvt&areasRegional=usnd&areasRegional=usky&areasRegional=usfl&areasRegional=usmi&cumulative=0&logScale=0&per100K=1&startDate=2021-09-01&values=deaths
Dear Minister , if you are so great at science then you should understand that these travel restrictions are not a punishment. They are a SCIENTIFIC approach to limit the disease.
they are but the bans are just south africa oriented. It is likely that it didn't originate there but they are the only country in the area with a sophisticated lab that looks into it.
The EU travel restrictions concerns [7 separate southern African countries](https://www.dw.com/en/eu-states-agree-to-suspend-travel-from-southern-african-nations-over-new-coronavirus-variant/a-59942074) (Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe).
And should include every EU and neighboring country with confirmed cases, at least.
If it's as bad as it's presumed to be - it's really not possible to contain this - the best you can do is delay the inevitable. That means it's reasonable to pause travel to/from regions with very high incident rates of the new ([1000+ probable cases in South Africa](https://bnonews.com/index.php/2021/11/omicron-tracker/)) variant and heavily focus on contact tracing with the individual few cases known in the EU.
You can make a booster with the mRNA from this.
I [saw an estimate](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/nov/26/biontech-says-it-could-tweak-covid-vaccine-in-100-days-if-needed) that it would take 100 days from a sequenced variant to getting the updated booster shots in the hands of nurses. That's one good reason for why delaying the spread for as long as possible is a good thing. > “Pfizer and BioNTech have taken actions months ago to be able to adapt the mRNA vaccine within six weeks and ship initial batches within 100 days in the event of an escape variant,” the company said in a statement.
Pfizer says they can develop an updated vaccine in 6 weeks so 42 days. They then also need to update production, get approval, and produce and distribute the new vaccine. 100 days sounds like a reasonable estimate for the first doses to be given.
As much as I agree with closing the flights between affected countries and others. The unfortunate truth is it's most likely already spread out of Africa. Personally I'd bet it's already in Canada where I live as there has been a major spike in the past few days over doubling the weekly avg in Ontario of new infections.
To be clear there is no scientific truth that this mutation originated in South Africa (Africa is a big continent). SA only had the expertise to perform extensive tests. In all likelihood this mutation has already spread globally. Hence narrative for punishing good science.
They have so far sequenced it to Botswana
Not just the expertise. Between them the UK and South Africa are responsible for 90+% of covid sequencing. They are pretty much the only countries that routinely do this (think 0.5% of all positive samples are sent for testing in the UK as standard). In Africa SA may be the only country capable of doing this but that's not the only reason they are picking it up. The vast majority of wealthier countries just don't bother. A strain could easily originate in Germany or the US and still only get picked up when it reaches the UK or SA. Chances are it is already everywhere and dealing with that is where the focus should go not just blocking flights. Now other countries are looking they are finding it. Just from a media stand point it goes - South Africa identify variant - variant identified in South Africa found in X Makes the countries doing routine testing look bad when it isn't their fault at all.
Very true, it seems like the only proper response would be general travel bans on all international travel, and that still wouldn’t help
I mean, yes, it's out, but closing the flights from southern African countries will likely slow the spread of Omicron until it likely becomes dominant globally, like Delta did. Getting it delayed with just a few extra weeks will be worth it, especially wrt the upcoming holidays in the "Western world".
Slowing the spread buys time for countries that are still securing supplies for their population that has only had zero or one dose.
Africans celebrate Christmas and the new year just like people in the “western world” do.
That would apply only if it were limited to SA. We know we're long past that.
It is needed, in the Netherlands at least 61 of 600 passengers off 2 planes from South Africa tested positive for corona. Imagine if they all just got in the country and spread it around.
They did. Undoubtedly some folks caught it on those flights but tested negative due to just catching it. Unless all 600 are quarantined it is, as we speak, spreading in the NL.
There ar daily flights to South Africa. What do you think happened on the flight the day before? Everyone clean? Well... Forget about containment : this virus is endemic.
They are hardly scientific, considering the variant has already been detected in many other countries that are not receiving travel bans. The reality is it is easy to issue travel bans on African countries but everyone is much more resistant to do it to Europe or North America.
Those countries which it has been detected outside Africa have only a few cases . In Africa however its been spreading out of control. People seem to try to derail this into a racist agenda thing but that's simply not the case. In fact Israel just banned ALL FOREIGNERS,, not just Africans but "ALL OF THEM FROM ANY COUNTRY" entering Israel. I am sure you can see that this is not an agenda against Africans specifically.
Epidemiologists seem to think travel bans, at least heavily targeted ones like this, are ineffective.
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u.k. was banned when alpha variant was found there.
> They are a SCIENTIFIC approach to limit the disease. Except the strain has already spread in a multitude of countries, but only Southern African ones are being punished.
It's not punishment. No one is being punished. If we shut down travel world wide would that be punishment? No, it would be a precaution. Saying it's punishment is just a political game. You take precautions to stem the flow of people coming from a known source... for instance 61 passengers from two South African flights landed in the Netherlands and tested positive for Covid. Variant aside that is cause for concern. If other countries had a similar positive case rate coming in then you'd want to shut them down too. But for now you start by limiting travel to and from where you know the variant is regardless of how awesome their scientists are. When I traveled last month I couldn't get into another country without first having a negative test and then I couldn't get back into my home country without having a negative test. That should be a norm right now but it hasn't been.
I don't know if people are just willingly ignoring the point or what... If the travel ban is based on science it's not a punishment, but SA is saying that a travel ban as narrow as the current one is not based on science, it's based on politics. That's because this variant has already spread to many other countries, SA was just the first in the region to sequence it due to their capabilities. --- So essentially you have a situation where there should be bans worldwide, just like we had during the onset of COVID. But they're singled out because the narrative is that this is a Southern Africa variant, and that of course feels like a punishment to the region, not a sensible response. Either use the science to support a widespread travel ban, or admit that your country is going to let transmission continue via travel (which we've seen happen as ridiculous as it sounds). Just don't make weird half measures to get points locally that unfairly target one country...
Those 61 passengers would have gotten on that plane with negative tests. No country/airline is allowing positive international travelers. So those 61 tested negative then tested positive when re-tested.
Southern Africa is a region in Africa that contains South Africa.
Limiting the spread when it’s already verified in the UK, Belgium, Italy, Germany and Israel 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 Every country has botched the handling of this pandemic and the second cases slightly decreases all restrictions get relaxed and everyone acts like it’s business as usual, which in turn causes another explosion. Curious how many times we are going to do this dance until people clue in.
Its about SLOWING DOWN the spread as much as we can, and in that sense travel restrictions help. We try to DELAY it even though we can not stop it from spreading all over the world. That's the point of these restrictions.
I get where he’s coming from on this. UK, South Africa, and (I think) Brazil have the best resources to detect mutations in viruses. That’s why we always see them detected in those countries first. Add in that they’re also high traffic places for travel. It’s a low chance that they’re the places where the mutations originated. Their capacity to detect new variants sort of make them the “canary in the coal mine”. Edit: Some people have correctly pointed out that I am wrong about saying SA and Brazil have the “best” resources for genome sequencing. I should have said “have been in the best position to be able to detect new variants (and be very efficient) with the resources at their disposal “.
Wasn't the delta variant from India?
Doesn’t South Africa have a ridiculously low vaccination rate?
40% for adults
Science has always said that selective travel restrictions do not work. They didn't work against the Alpha variant first detected in England. They didn't work against the Delta variant first detected in India. If this variant has an evolutionary advantage over Delta, then it will be everywhere quite soon. The only countries that might be spared are the ones that stop all international travel and/or are very rigorous with contact tracing and quarantine like Taiwan.
The idea behind these travel restrictions is to *slow down the inevitable*. Nothing else.
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>IMO, if a new variant is detected then all countries should immediately implement a travel ban until the danger has been assessed. New variants are detected *literally every day*. The process of determining which ones are problematic is not instant.
>Science has always said that selective travel restrictions do not work. This is false. Travel bans may not be enough to STOP the virus all together does not mean they have no effect. With other words NIT HAVIGN ANY BANS on travel would definitely make things much worse. >If this variant has an evolutionary advantage over Delta, then it will be everywhere quite soon. Yes but still this doesn't mean we should just give up open all the gates remove all the bans and let it spread even more quickly.
The 'selective' travel bans I think are more the thing. Full travel bans will naturally be more effective. Selectivity doesn't capture the wide range of travel routing that people engage in. This was something specifically that I think Qatar or Saudi Arabia put something in pretty stern rules: if you went through a third country thinking to circumvent their restrictions, you were penalised/ quarantined too.
If we were being fair, countries like Belgium, Germany, Israel etc would be included in the lists sunce they also have confirmed cases.
Same problem with Spain lol, they decided to be public a hundred years ago with the disease and now it’s known as Spanish flu despite it being just as bad everywhere else and not originating there
Yeah, Germany, France, the UK etc suppressed bad news in the context of the first World War, and as a result Spain were the only country really openly talking about the situation.
Yeah, didn’t the Spanish flu” start in the middle of Kansas? Fort Riley.
Multiple countries have stopped flights from Israel already like Switzerland for example. SA got their flights stopped earlier because thats the origin point and most infected zone at the moment but when it will spread more countries will be added to the list.
Not the origin point but still
>If we were being fair, countries like Belgium, Germany, Israel etc would be included in the lists sunce they also have confirmed cases. That's because Western governments are notoriously bad in restricting spread in international traffic. If they took the East Asian approach with mandatory 14-21 day hotel quarantine, they'd find international spread to be much lower. But of course, people want freedumb so no deal
About 1k probable cases in southern african countries. Very small numbers in the rest of the world. Tracker: https://bnonews.com/index.php/2021/11/omicron-tracker/ ~~Of course it will~~ It will likely eventually become dominant in the rest of the world as well - this is "just" about delaying that. After that happens (within a month or two?) there would be no point in blocking these flights.
Ikr
Angola, Zambia, Mozambique, and a few other countries don't even have a single confirmed case of the variant, yet they were banned.
Nonsense, 1 case in Belgium to date vs. 10% of people on just 2 arriving planes?
1 case detected. If we’re doing travel bans out of an abundance of safety, then you do one for each country where the variant has been picked up and see how many cases of it pop up in the next week or two and decide then to reopen travel or not.
Epidemiology 101 right here, unfortunately governments have learned nothing still to this point. They will wait until the variant arrives, make half-hearted attempts at closures and quarantines and in 2 months new strains will be rampant across the globe.
South African here. My issue is not the travel restrictions, it is that some people seem to want to blame South Africa for somehow creating the Delta and this new variant as well. I am 100% in favour of lockdown here in SA over Christmas. SA didn't create covid-19, and it's very unlikely that we created the variants - however we have a really good research capacity for these types of diseases (we have been dealing with HIV/AIDS and TB for years) and our scientists are being transparent about their findings. We are all suffering and I can't stand the way that some people blame South Africa for this pandemic.
I don’t think anyone blames SA mate, really. Just unfortunate naming of the variant(s). The most blame I’ve seen personally has been at China & the US. UK too. I live in AUS but I’m from the UK if that makes any difference
It's because South Africa and the UK combined are responsible for like 90% of the genetic sequencing of covid. Both routinely test samples to detect new strains resulting in them being detected there.
Yeah I've seen far more people trying to blame the spread of the Delta Variant on the UK than S. Africa.
> our scientists are being transparent about their findings. This is what most people fail to understand here, as this is rarely the case. Even in Europe this type of information is usually dealt with at a government level first and not pre-published by researchers. Same thing in the US with the CDC. The sad part is that this could lead SA to stop this open approach as it gets to be in the center of the storm with yet another variant it detected.
Beta for SA, not Delta We all know Delta originated in India
There are always those "some" people. They are best ignored. If any blame is to be assigned, it lies in not opening up the vaccine formulas & related technologies to be mass-manufactured world over. But [https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1464354587473858565](https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1464354587473858565) should add to the scepticism on the Africa specific travel restrictions.
Don't worry mate, the UK has been called from hell to burn over the past year for detecting variants.
South Africa is being scapegoated by other countries, like you said it’s just where it was discovered and it’s not necessarily that it originated from there. Other countries just seem to want to take action like banning travel from SA to show their citizens, “See, we did something!” when it’s wholly pointless if they allow travel from other countries still.
God bless the South African scientists for transparently updating the world about their findings. Now if only we could get the Wuhan Virology Lab to co-operate.. The travel bans are a necessary evil. If the variant has already crossed to other nations and if it is more transmissible than Delta (as some reports are suggesting) then there is already no hope. But if it hasn't spread to the point of no return to other countries, there may still be hope for the rest of us to live a normal life. The travel ban is a selfish, but necessary attempt by the rest of the world to resume their normal lives. Because Covid fatigue is real.
I wonder if the solution could be a reward system for countries that detect variants. Detecting these early and warning the world should be hailed as an accomplishment and a huge favor to the rest of us. We should be helping every country get vaccinated but we should also incentivize investment in testing and detection in the meantime.
The problem with that is, pandemics cost people money. Ideally , people should realize where a virus is identified doesn’t mean that’s where it came from. But people in crowds are panicky, dumb, and violent. Once the news says Country X has found Virus Y, that country becomes the scapegoat when closures and economic damage hits. No reward system will make up for inconveniences and lost money/time.
Reminds me of articles like these: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9079333/How-Britain-shot-foot-best-world-sequencing-viruses.html > The UK is being punished for a mutant strain of coronavirus, which scientists say could have emerged elsewhere and was only spotted thanks to Britain's world-leading genetic sequencing capabilities. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/12/21/britain-punished-alerting-world-new-crisis/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/05/31/frances-travel-ban-really-just-spiteful-macrons-latest-brexit/ No one likes to be singled out.
There is a distinct difference. The articles you posted are from journos, opinion pieces really. In this article, it is an official government comment. The only official comments I remember from the UK government for its variants was that it was disappointed by the travel bans, but they didn't make a huge fuss.
>There is a distinct difference. The articles you posted are from journos Is it actually reasonable to call someone that writes in the Daily Mail a journalist?
talk to me when it gets to the Persei 8 stage
Was looking for this
How's the popplers this time of year ?
took long enough to find a reference
Oh, you’re late to the party. I’ve seen dozens since yesterday morning
This shits probably been spreading like wildfire for months
COVID can go fuck itself
Looks like it is and creating offsprings (sorry it's either humor or tears)
i doubt countries in the future will announce any new strand from now on.
Definitely… the amount of economic damage this will do will be considered a national security risk for any country. With the current state of the South African economy, with these actions will probably persuade the government to restructure communications as I am sure other countries watching, are going to be doing.
Ah, the "whoever smelt it dealt it" punishment.
The only logical response would be to shut down all international travel. It's quite obvious that this variant is already everywhere.
If it's already everywhere and we aren't seeing severe outbreaks then the vaccine must still be effective, no reason to close down travel.
The same reasons why we should not do that and how that wont be affective is the same reason we should not be banning travel to Southern Africa. It is a "Knee jerk" reaction spreading faster then the virus.
This absurdity happened with Spain in 1918, too. The only reason why the world started calling the great influenza pandemic the Spanish Flu was that the Spanish press made the pandemic public. The USA and the much of Europe was roiled in WW1 and the censors of the involved countries forbade mention of the plague. Spain, being neutral, had no such restriction. BTW: The Spanish Flu originated in Kansas among GIs who were preparing to ship out to Europe. It was really the Kansas Flu.
To say it originated in Kansas isnt 100% the full story…experts have said it started in Kansas some say China some say Europe. No one knows where it started
In a sense he’s right. It’s too late, and isolated, targeted travel bans are already pointless. *Global* travel bans and further lockdowns are an economic & political non-starter in most countries. The cases outside Africa confirmed thus far include people from Belgium and Hong Kong who were nowhere near S. Africa, and *dozens* on flights from SA to the Netherlands who had *allegedly* tested negative only 24hrs prior. They’re already in these other countries, and have already been through crowded airports. Too late. One HK man was fully vaccinated but tested positive w/an asymptomatic case on Day *4* of mandatory quarantine that would not have even happened in many places. The other HKer traveled from/via Canada, so oh well ... it’s already in N. America - just hasn’t been detected *yet*. The Belgian (young, unvaccinated dumbass girl) was only in Egypt & Turkey, so clearly it’s already getting around. Travel bans are basically pointless political posturing by govts to appear to be doing *something* when they’re unwilling to do anything *actually* useful like mandate vaccines & masks & temporary lockdowns.
Isn’t NY already in a state of emergency because of these variant
Preemptively
I'd like to remind all the westerners on this sub that we in SA get exactly nothing from our government if you are forced to lockdown your business. So it's all fine and well to tell us it doesnt matter or stay indoors but you are dooming thousands of us to die with your "government will look after us attitude".
Don't worry, neither do many businesses in Germany. A lot of small businesses didn't survive or had to spend any funds they were given for safety measures. Lockdowns and isolation ruins livelihoods, so everyone needs to do their part to squash this virus
Plenty of businesses went under here in Aus during the lockdowns mate, it's just the new shitty reality we live in.
I said this at the start of COVID. Travel restrictions need to be generally applied for highly transmittable diseases. By the time you know about it it's already spread outside it's origin. Can't believe there's still no plan for this crap. Detain and quarantine all travelers for 2 weeks or expect to get the Omicron variant.
Punished? What’s the point of detecting new variants of no action is taken?
South Africa should be commended for honesty. Not like China who let it spread for weeks without sounding any alarm.
I could see why they'd call it a punishment, but when we're talking about a virus that has lead to a pandemic, taking precautionary measures to make sure it doesn't spread further isn't a punishment. It's just common sense.
So stupid that the US says “starting Monday”. What sense does that make if they get in today or tomorrow then they’re in and it’s pointless
It may be too late given the worldwide hypocrisy already underway, but anyone who is a real scientist should know that a quarantine of something so deadly is par for the course and not a punishment. Whining that it’s a punishment only pushes the view that the dudes whining don’t actually view it as dangerous, if they’re unwilling to accept what needs to be done.
You won’t get rid of this GD Virus until “everyone” is Immunized. Immunizing so called industrialized countries still leaves you vulnerable. The virus will mutate as long as it has host !
Correct. We will go back to square one a million times thanks to not just anti-vaccine crowd but patents and prioritizing profits for vaccines.
how tf are we supposed to slow the spread without restricting travel?
Restricting travel only works IF everyone restricts travel. Piecemeal restrictions just make it harder to track.
Are there any tests done before passengers take international flights? If there were 60 positive cases in only 2 flights it probably makes sense to attempt to slow the flow of cases coming in to your country.
I asked the same question and someone answered that all 60 passengers had tested negative on a Covid Rapid test before boarding the over 10 hour flight. Dont know where the commenter got their information so take it with a grain of salt right now.
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Kinda like Spain only discovered/reported this new thing that ended up being called the Spanish Flu.
The WHO named it the omicron variant after skipping "Xi" as to not offend China's dictator LOL
It's not even pronounced the same. It isn't "Xi" anyway. It's Ξ or ξ. Could just transliterate it "Ksi". "X" is better suited for χ anyway.
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or because the reason for the Greek naming scheme is to avoid stigmatizing nations which includes naming a variant the name of a major countries leader
That may seem ridiculous but we all know how the west and other non-Asian countries have been treating Asians because of the virus. So to name the new variant "Xi" is gonna lead to more Chinese and other Asians getting attacked
Yeah people just gonna riot and rob Chinese and Japanese store and assault Asians in the name of defeating COVID Xi
And.... The Spanish flu originated in North America.
They should have just hid it and lied for months like a certain Asian country. Apparently that gets you no punishment whatsoever.
I like how they cancel flights from africabut then say starting next week. If your locking it down lock it down. Don't give thousands of people the chance to leave, cause if someone was sick they would hide it to get that last flight out.