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Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high

japantimes.co.jp

261–270 of 291 posts

Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate by which moral principle you come to the conclusion that a vague slippery slope and even more vague outrage is more important than stopping a pandemic with hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths? Most moral systems of my acquantance are based on a hierachy of values that puts saving human lives over just about anything.

I don't necessarily subscribe to this point of view (I don't know what I believe; I need to think more), but allow me to play devil's advocate consider: most of the people who die from this disease are old people who have already lived their lives. The young are giving up the opportunity to live their lives by staying home to stop the spread, when they predominately aren't at risk of death. Should the young give up t…

If you get COVID and survive it some of the side effects you can look forward to are: motor control issues, traumatic brain injury, lung scarring, heart tissue scarring, and even limb amputation. It is not “milder than the flu.”

Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high

#262

What happens if the world gets into a situation where the virus mutates rapidly and we find the vaccines becoming less effective? We assume the drug companies will be able to adapt the vaccine quickly to the new variants. If this happens then it creates a few problems.. One problem is having to continuously distribute a new vaccine to people indefinitely. Another problem is only certain countries are capable of manuf…

This news started to break and fear mongering ticked up once the vaccine was out, to get people accustomed to the idea that one vaccine won’t be enough.

I came across the nextstrain site [1] in March, where they showed multiple variants in the wild, concentrated to certain regions.

The media is turning this into a bigger deal than it is, else they’ll lose control over the population. Imagine what would happen if there wasn’t constant coverage of the est. case count...life would go back to normal.

[1] https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global

Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high

#263
post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.axios.com/moderna-barda-coronavirus-funding-disc...

Moderna has received many grants from the government even before their Covid play.

Yes, e.g. the DARPA ADEPT program in 2011, as part of the P3 effort in response to H1N1.

(More details might help your points)

Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high

#264
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What could we be doing differently beyond what we already should be doing? Are you referring to things like border closing?

I feel we (US) should absolutely be closing the border to the UK, Japan, Italy and whoever else has the new strain/variant. Why would we wait on this when the evidence suggests the new version is more infectious?

FWIW, the US is now requiring negative covid tests from UK travelers - announced <24 hours after this comment was posted.

Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high

#265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why Taiwan? China has had even fewer deaths per capita and much larger much more connected population.

Because it's democratic. Much more realistic to implement what they do.

And China is not? Taiwan's official name is "Republic of China".

Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high

#266
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or acceptable in the free world, fact is that the virus has only successfully been contained in big brother countries and island states. The rest of the world can not (and should not) try to replicate the same behaviour.

What do you find objectionable about Taiwan's Covid response, taking into account its success, not to mention the cost (in a general sense) of quarantining whole countries (which means restricting the freedom of millions of health citizens), and then not being successful, unlike Taiwan? In 2020, my mother (and millions of other citizens) spent more time at home quarantined than she would have spent in prison, had she…

Since Taiwan is an island, it makes sense to control who visits it.

A similar approach was tried in the Faroe Islands, but was not very successful.

It is likely that people of Taiwan are more willing to give up their freedom than western countries. But I don't know that for sure.

Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high

#267
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How about South Korea? It isn’t an island, and it’s doing pretty well. Cases are at all-time highs, and have pretty much escalated out of control: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2020...

All-time high being around 1000 cases per day in a country of 50M, and they haven't given up yet -- they've successfully beaten back two previous waves.

“all-time high“ meaning “all-time high“...and continuing to accelerate.

I love the way you keep shifting the goalposts. When you’re shown that they haven’t controlled the virus, you pretend that it matters what the absolute magnitude of the case count is today. To wit: “You just don’t understand exponential growth!”

By the way, Korea has tested about 2M people, total, or about the same number of tests that the US did yesterday. So yeah...they’re probably finding a few less cases:

http://ncov.mohw.go.kr/en

Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high

#268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's democratic. Much more realistic to implement what they do.

And China is not? Taiwan's official name is "Republic of China".

China is many things. It’s certainly not democratic.

Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high

#269
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How about South Korea? It isn’t an island, and it’s doing pretty well. Cases are at all-time highs, and have pretty much escalated out of control: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2020...

All-time high being around 1000 cases per day in a country of 50M, and they haven't given up yet -- they've successfully beaten back two previous waves.

It was 100 cases per day two months ago, and their peak after the initial wave was 441 per day. It's not as bad as the US or UK, but they don't have the virus under control right now.

Re: Mutated Covid-19 strain confirmed in Japan as case tally hits record high

#270
post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel we (US) should absolutely be closing the border to the UK, Japan, Italy and whoever else has the new strain/variant. Why would we wait on this when the evidence suggests the new version is more infectious?

If the new strain is showing up in the UK now, and you haven’t had the borders closed for the past 2-4 weeks, there is little point to starting now (in terms of stopping it from getting to the US entirely anyway).

And the new strain was first recorded on September 16th. It's laughable to think it hasn't spread further (although hopefully I'm wrong on this).
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