A former World Health Organisation (WHO) official has claimed that the BA.2 subvariant of Omicron has a basic reproduction number (R0) of around 12 (each infected person passes it on to 12 others), making it as infectious as measles, the most contagious disease known, and nearly six times as infectious than the original Wuhan strain (with an R0 of 2.5). Here’s the report in MailOnline.
Professor Adrian Esterman, a leading epidemiologist in Australia, said BA.2 is 40% more transmissible than the original variant.
He claimed it would have a basic reproduction number (R0) of around 12, meaning if left to spread unchecked every infected person would pass it to a dozen others.
It would make the sub-strain five times more infectious than the original Wuhan virus and one of the most contagious diseases known to science.
The claim would explain why the mutant virus was able to outstrip its parent strain in the U.K. in about a month and undermine China’s Zero Covid policy, which has until now managed to suppress every version of the virus.
Explaining his methodology, Professor Esterman said: “The basic reproduction number (R0) for BA.1 is about 8.2, making R0 for BA.2 about 12. This makes it pretty close to measles, the most contagious disease we know about.”
The R0 number is the average number of people each BA.2 patient would infect, if there was no immunity in a population or behavioural changes.
But most scientists say there is no reason to be concerned over the variant because it is just as mild as the original Omicron.
The BA.2 subvariant is now behind almost every case in England, or 83% of infections last week, according to official estimates.
It became dominant three weeks beforehand, accounting for 52% of all infections in the week to February 20th.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimates cases have been rising since mid-February, with one in 25 people in England estimated to have been infected last week.
Hospitalisations are also creeping up, but the majority appear to be incidental – when someone tests positive after admission for another illness.
But how accurate are these estimates of infectiousness? The UKHSA (and previously PHE) publishes estimates of the secondary attack rates (SARs; the proportion of contacts an infected person infects) of the coronavirus variants in its Technical Briefings. I have plotted some of them in the chart below.
While each data point comes from a PHE or UKHSA Technical Briefing, I should emphasise that these data are not entirely ‘clean’. In particular, the start dates for the studies vary. Also, the first two data points are “direct” SAR, then the next seven are overall SAR, and the rest are “household” SAR – ‘direct’ appears to be broadly comparable to ‘household’, while overall is similar to ‘household’ because the large majority of contacts are household contacts. Thus the anomalous dip in the Alpha SAR results in part from the start date switching to March for six data points. However, despite these limitations, the values are instructive as they give an indication of how the secondary attack rates of different variants change over time and compare with one another.
They show, for example, that the household or direct SAR of any coronavirus variant, as recorded by the U.K. Government, has not exceeded 16%. Alpha when it first appeared had a direct SAR of 15.6%, and Omicron had a household SAR of 15.8%. This means no variant has infected more than 16% of household/direct contacts, and equivalently 84% of household/direct contacts have remained uninfected. We also see that this SAR for each variant declines rapidly to around 10-11%, where it remains. The Delta variant shows that the decline doesn’t necessarily continue, and its SAR actually rose slightly as we went into autumn – a seasonal effect perhaps – sustaining its wave at a relatively low level throughout the second half of 2021. We also see subvariants AY.4.2 (Delta) and BA.2 (Omicron) emerge with higher SARs, which help to sustain their respective waves. BA.2 in particular had an SAR of around 14% when it first appeared, giving the Omicron wave its recent boost. Note, however, that BA.2’s SAR is still under the original Omicron’s initial SAR, and indeed that of Alpha in December 2020. It’s hard to reconcile this with the claim that BA.2 is several times more infectious than the Wuhan strain or Alpha variant, or as infectious as measles. UKHSA data suggest rather it is less infectious than Omicron was in December.
It might be argued that there is more population immunity for later variants, so that the SARs are not directly comparable. However, Omicron has shown significant immune evasion when causing infection, plus it’s hard to see increased population immunity making a huge difference for BA.2 compared to Omicron within a few weeks. Also, it could be argued that households are typically exposed all at once due to difficulties in avoiding exposure when living under the same roof, limiting the impact of population immunity on household transmission rates.
On the other hand, it may be true that population immunity is stunting the spread of new variants within households. It would be worth quantifying the size of this effect. But either way, the SARs as measured by UKHSA and PHE are significant indicators of the actual level of infectiousness of each variant in the current population. And, importantly, they show a disease that has not yet managed to infect more than 16% of household contacts.
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Contempt of court.
seems if they won’t exert left in any party can’t get through their evil policies or find it inconvenient to do do using Parliament they can use the judiciary to deliver.
Now it is clear they over ride even their left wing judges when the answer is inconvenient.
Any decent, honest, law-abiding, patriotic Prime Minister would have forced the resignations of all those engaged in this juvenile plotting.
That sums up the state of this country today.
I am ashamed to think of this man as our Prime Minister.
Why is this Trans Craziness so important to the Uniparty?
Is it just part of the general Satanic Destruction of God’s Creation?
Or is it a convenient Distraction from the Invading Muslim Army still swarming in every day?
Small boat arrivals: last 7 days – GOV.UK
Good question. The most obvious explanation for me is that it’s part of a divide and conquer strategy. I doubt that Starmer cares much about trannies or any of the other “oppressed minorities” he pretends to champion, beyond they are useful to him.
He doesn’t care much about anything. He’s so self obsessed and enamoured with globalism he sees being PM as a stepping stone to an EU/WEF job so he’ll let the country go to ruin, that’s what globalisation wants, the end of nation states.
It is a vital item in the ‘Progressive’ policy agenda being pushed as hard as possible around the world in recent years. I call it the ‘smash society’ agenda. See Canada under Turdew, see USA under Biden and of course see the EU, supporting it to the hilt. Anything to help to ‘smash society’.
Starmer told us serfs, back in July last year, in his speech in the ‘Rose Garden’, after the summer riots, where he said … ‘The Labour Government will continue to introduce progressive policies in order to combat populism and right-wing extremism.’ That’s why he will not do anything to stop the boats.
When the Government circumvent the Courts the whole thing is close to collapse.
I hope.
What rights do trannies want that they don’t already have?
The right to decree that humans must not have a sex would be my guess.
Yet again, another article that avoids to.mention Starmer’s vested interest in the issue.
I recognize that ‘hate crime’ of a skirt! Someone ring the police.
Look at them, hanging round the bogs like a bad smell.
If only more men agreed, James. Imagine stating that women wanting to keep their toilets as female only is somehow a ”privilege”…
”I’ll tell you something for nothing…
If I was with my mother, or my sister, or my aunt, or my nieces, or any of my female friends, & I witnessed them being intimidated, harassed & hectored by this rabble, as they attempted to use THEIR OWN SPACES…
I’d be having words.”
https://x.com/DreyfusJames/status/1914321320235483442
Look at these mingers. Adam’s another decent man unafraid to stand up for women’s rights and protect his female loved ones from this insane ideology. Much respect for the real men out there;
”It is my f*****g business, because my loved ones will be in women’s single sex spaces with you lot & stats suggest that 96% of you still have full male genitalia.
This is a cult.”
https://x.com/EssexPR/status/1914286426453160200
The State Loves Useful Idiots
If he’s no careful this issue will bring him down.
It us SO ludicrous and he is so egregiously on the idiotic side of it…
You can understand them not wanting to offend the muslim vote, but the trans lobby? Purely from cynical self-interest, it makes no sense – can they be motivated by sincerely held principle!
“Principle?”
Not one of Kneel’s mob could define principle.
The Supreme Court was one of Blair’s wondrous pieces of legislation…now it doesn’t suit the new Labour PM.
Arise Sir Kneel stop grovelling to the twisted cult, you absolute hypocrite.
Two-Tier regards “The Law” as the equivalent of Holy Writ. So he can’t condemn this judgement. But he can change “The Law.”
However, McSweeny knows that the vast majority of the electorate agrees with the Supreme Court, so any attempt Two-Tier makes to change “The Law” will get a severe electoral backlash.
So I expect they will “reach out” to the ECHR who will declare what “The Higher Law” is … and Two-Tier will claim that he is obliged to follow “The Higher Law.”
We’ll see ….
I am not left wing biased myself, but I know people who are, and many of them are not in favour of trans ideology. I don’t understand what branch of the left the Labour Party is part of that is against the correct ruling by our judges that Trans “women” are not women. I’m pretty sure many genuine socialists would not want to be part of it.