Over-50s will be offered a third Covid vaccine dose before winter, in part to tackle new variants. But according to the Head of the Covid Genomics U.K. Consortium (COG-UK), there is currently “no hint” of a variant that can fully evade the effectiveness of vaccines. If anything, future variants could be less infectious. The Express and Star has the story.
Sharon Peacock, Head of COG-UK and Professor of Public Health and Microbiology at the University of Cambridge, said it could be the case that coronavirus mutates to become less infectious, though she warned it could take years for it to become like the common cold.
Asked whether a variant will emerge somewhere across the globe that is resistant to current vaccines, Professor Peacock told Times Radio: “That’s what we’d call it, a variant of major concern. We haven’t seen anything like that to date, and the question you’re asking is the million dollar question in many ways, everybody wants to know what’s the likelihood and when is it likely to occur, if at all.
“What we don’t know is if it is likely to occur. We know that as mutations accumulate in the virus, it can actually make it more fit in terms of avoiding our immune system, but the more mutations it accumulates, it could actually lead to a virus that is less infectious, for example.
“So there’s a trade-off for the virus in terms of how many mutations it can tolerate.
“Now, some people have predicted that a virus could emerge that is pretty resistant to vaccines, but we haven’t seen any hint of that at the moment.
“And the idea that this could arise is based on models from previous viruses, not this current one, so at the moment, I remain optimistic that we’re in a good place – that the viruses that are circulating are susceptible to vaccinations.”
Despite the continual fall of Covid cases and deaths, and the success of the vaccine rollout, the Government and media narrative around the virus continues to be fairly pessimistic – largely due to the perceived threat of variants. Imperial College’s Danny Altmann said last month that the Indian Covid variant could “scupper” Britain’s “roadmap” out of lockdown – a statement which a member of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation criticised as “pessimistic“. Professor Neil Ferguson also believes that life in Britain will “not [be] completely back to normal” by summer because of Covid variants, despite advisers to SAGE saying last week that Pfizer’s vaccine does protect well against the South African variant after people have had both doses.
The Express and Star report is worth reading in full.
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Free speech and the woke mind virus cannot both co-habit Clown World because, as we’ve seen with many examples now, serious ructions do occur as a result, so one of them must die otherwise it’s just the never-ending battle. Consequently we keep hearing of more and more pathetic garbage and the messing about with our literature, as well as our language, such as this latest Woketard offering, which defies common sense and is basically censorship on steroids;
”Saying a patient has “blacked out” when they have fainted is racist, pharmacists have been warned.
Chemist workers have been banned from using the traditional phrase for briefly losing consciousness in case it causes offence.
Other words and phrases with “racial undertones” on a barred list drawn up by union bosses – in what horrified critics branded “virtue signalling” – include black sheep, black market and “blackmail”.
The – for want of a better phrase – “blacklist” was compiled by Nav Bhogal, a member of the Pharmacists’ Defence Association’s BAME (Black, Asian, and minority ethnic) network.
Titled “Addressing racial undertones in the language of pharmacy”, Mr Bhogal said that the words have become “embedded in our professional vocabulary”.
He claims the words and phrases also have “associations with race, power dynamics, and negativity” which “can be harmful”.
The article, published on the website of the Pharmacists’ Defence Association (PDA), is the latest in a series of controversial “woke” language guides.”
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1993540/pharmacy-guide-woke-nonsense
Nav Bhogal wants shipping back to his ancestral home.
#w#t.
It’s a Captain Obvious cameo, but it always amazes me why people who demonstrably hate white people and have no interest in respecting/tolerating our culture, insist on moving where the white folk live. Perplexing.
Just stay the feck away then!
It’d be like me moving to Dubai and making a formal complaint to the municipality about all the women walking around looking like mobile tents and how that offends my liberal Western female sensibilities, because ‘Women’s Rights’. You move to a place that has a completely different culture and you accept that culture and respect the contrasting laws and customs. It’s just the sheer arrogance of it. Of course, I don’t think many places, even those such as the UAE, which are a bit more relaxed and tolerant of Westerners and other religions, would suffer the “suicidal empathy” and outright treachery from its own leaders and citizens that we’re experiencing here in most of Europe.
You nailed it Mogs.
She did
Yes but it’s all being organised & constructed – this downfall of western civilisation – by our own European ilk who are using every trick in the book which includes these useful ( to them ) idiots, foreign or otherwise to help carry out their plans !!
I was hoping to dream of a white Christmas next year. I know it’s not going to happen. But I fear even hoping it may get me into trouble.
This case will show how politicised the High Court has become. I think we all suspect but just how far has it gone.
‘The DfE document informed Ms Phillipson that failure to intervene over the Act would mean the legislation automatically going live at the start of August…’
Extraordinary to reflect that civil servants advised a Minister to ‘intervene’ to stop legislation that had been passed by Parliament. Quite obviously, that is a power reserved to the House of Commons, and presumably the FSU argument will be based on that fact.
But I expect the Court to find that, because of the ECHR, Parliament was ulta vires in the first place, and had no power to pass the legislation.
We shouldn’t joke about such possibilities.
Surprisingly I don’t believe this story.
Are we really expected to accept that just after winning the election Phillipson decided to put a complete stop to legislation that was scheduled to go live within a couple of weeks? Bollox. And the Civil service seems to have had a remarkably well prepared response to her whingeing. I’m not buying it. So, Labour knew they had the election in the bag before it was run or Phillipson thought she’d wing it before she even had her feet under her desk.
This story has a distinct whiff of jackanory attached to it.
Everyone knew that Labour had the election in the bag before it was run. Weren’t you paying attention?
Bridget Phillipson Classroom Dictator
The “Hate Speech” Strawman….As ever, who gets to decide what is hate speech.
Who? Those running The State, its apparatchiks, cronies and useful idiots.
Is it the rôle of Civil Servants to brief Ministers on how to circumvent or evade legislation?
A guy called Julius Streicher was hanged at Nuremberg for incitement to genocide, ie, publishing an antisemitic German newspaper (Der Stürmer) which is all he was ever personally responsible for. So, why on earth do you keep claiming there was something like free speech? There ain’t and that Philipps tried to get Jewish organisations onboard just demonstrates that she understood how to get rid of supposedly free speech she really doesn’t like.
You want to censor and kill people who don’t obey. Guess what? She wants that as well. Same difference. Petty squabbles about who is or isn’t to be hanged for speaking freely don’t change the quality of the discussion.
BTW: Wasn’t there also an Irish-born American who got executed by the British state for speaking English?