Ouch. Norway 4117 new cases is equivalent to over 50k in the U.K. But the kickers are the sheer speed of increase (43% in a day) and the positivity rate of c24% suggesting plenty more cases undetected.

Booster access brought forward to slow spread of Omicron COVID-19 variant

Massive French study on school transmission should now put a stopper to the “no transmission in schools” U.K. mantra: transmission rates were higher in schools than community.

"...the vaccine provided 70 percent protection in fully vaccinated individuals against severe complications that would require a patient to be hospitalized." (That is WITHOUT boosting).

Check out the #OpenWHO course "#Infodemic Management 101" https://openwho.org/courses/infodemic-management-101… via @WHO @TDPurnat cc @ScienceUpFirst @GovCanHealth Infodemic "is making it hard for people to find trusted information" & "leads to risk-taking behaviours & is eroding social cohesion & trust."

BREAKING South Africa: 82% increase in cases, week over week. 34.9% positive rate. Record 7-day average. Not near plateau. Even with milder disease (irrespective of cause), this will lead to more hospitalizations and deaths.

one thing I keep coming back to in my thoughts is the formerly respected scientists who completely lost their way in this pandemic. Is there something we could be teaching young researchers that would help minimise this in future? Are there norms of science we could strengthen?

https://travellingtabby.com/scotland-coronavirus-tracker/… There were over 6,700 new cases reported today, which is one of the highest days we've had. And a positivity rate of over 15% too, which is the joint highest we've had since reporting began. #covid19scotland #coronavirusscotland #DailyCovidUpdate

Two headlines, one year apart. ~74,000 dead. Nothing learned whatsoever.

Update for 20th Dec. The trend line still reflects 1.8 day doubling (it's 1.7 days if we look at just the last week). Today's number is down, but I wouldn't read too much into that at this point.

Breaking: ECDC has designated B.1.1.529 today as a #VOC

View of key mutations of Omicron's 50, with 30 in the spike protein, 15 in its receptor binding domain https://ft.com/content/42c5ff3d-e676-4076-9b9f-7243a00cba5e… http://covariants.org @EllingUlrich @_b_meyer

Dr @mvankerkhove updates on what we know so far about the new #COVID19 variant of concern, Omicron

Given an estimate whereby the average person knows ca. 600 people, assuming 50% vaxxed, the average person would know 8 people who died of the vaccine. It is hard to believe numeracy is so low that people cannot see how crazy these "statistics" are...

Update: only one of these four is a fully confirmed case of Omicron. The other three (plus three more) are suspected cases, but their viral loads are too low now to confirm fully. Which itself might be a good sign?

As this thread is being shared to support all sorts of different views, here's my spotters' guide to Covid conspiracy theorists

Clarification here: No reports IF they had symptoms or not. I'm not saying for sure that they are asymptomatic.

On the one hand, B.1.1.529 became the dominant variant in SA frighteningly quickly; on the other, it did so from a very low base number of cases, which makes it easier to be dominant in percentage terms.

Tiny sample size of course, very early days, etc. We still no next to nothing about this variant.

No reports yet if these people are suffering from any symptoms at all; all travelers are screened with PCR tests on arrival, which is how they were identified.

Another, a hotel worker from Malawi, had her second dose of AZ in mid-July. A third had her second J&J dose two months ago.

Israel has identified four cases of the B.1.1.529 variant, all recent travellers. One case, a 32-year-old woman returning from South Africa, was triple vaccinated with Pfizer and had her 3rd dose just two months ago.

The bottom line that is worth a few seconds for you to read

The Great Conspiracy Theory Paradox!

New data from CDC finds that the Omicron variant represented 2.9% of new cases in the US last week. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#variant-proportions

*Returning French nationals/residents must register (guessing this is similar to UK "locator" form) and isolate for 7 days "in a place of their choice". This can be reduced to 48hrs if they take another Covid test that is negative. 2/2

Let's try again...new "drastic" regulations for anyone planning to come to France from UK. *There must be a "compelling" reason. This does not include tourism or business *French nationals/residents can return but must have a negative Covid test within 24hrs before departure. 1/2

A 1-figure Gauteng update, bringing in data through Wednesday 15/12 (PCR only; by date of collection). The turn continues. On similar metrics (not shown) ALL northern provinces (NW, GT, MP, LP) seem to have now turned.

This is #SARSCoV2 evading both vaccine & virus induced immunity *against infection* unlike any variant before. That's only explanation for dramatic jump in positivity. Consensus for now (but subject to change) is that immunity *against severe disease* should be far better. (2/2)

Um, we've never seen this before in #NYC. Test positivity doubling in three days 12/9 - 3.9% 12/10 - 4.2% 12/11 - 6.4% 12/12 - 7.8% Note: Test % is only for PCR & NYC does more per capita daily than most places ~67K PCR/day + 19K [reported] antigen over past few days (1/2)

Connecticut has gone practically vertical https://nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html?referringSource=articleShare…

4. Whose idea was OWS and when did it kick in? Peter Marks @US_FDA https://nytimes.com/2020/11/21/us/politics/coronavirus-vaccine.html?searchResultPosition=1… @SharonLNYT It was announced May 15th https://defense.gov/Explore/Spotlight/Coronavirus/Operation-Warp-Speed/

3. The 5 days from sequencing the virus to design of an mRNA vaccine, relayed by Tony Fauci in our conversation https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1284503783045623809… @Medscape

2. 3 scientists led the way Katalin Karikó, worked on a mRNA vaccine for ~30 years, was demoted from @PennMedicine d/t losing her grants, went to @moderna_tx https://statnews.com/2020/11/10/the-story-of-mrna-how-a-once-dismissed-idea-became-a-leading-technology-in-the-covid-vaccine-race/… and the husband and wife team @BioNTech_Group https://nytimes.com/2020/11/10/business/biontech-covid-vaccine.html…

There are several points noteworthy related to this timeline: 1. Moderna had a head-start, so why didn't their Phase 3 trial finish first? Part of #OperationWarpSpeed (OWS), they were requested to slow down enrollment to get better minority representation https://nytimes.com/2020/11/21/us/politics/coronavirus-vaccine.html?searchResultPosition=1

This will go down in history as one of science and medical research's greatest achievements. Perhaps the most impressive. I put together a preliminary timeline of some key milestones to show how several years of work were compressed into months.

71.9% of cases in London with specimens from 13 December were Omicron. Overall London cases are already reaching the maximum values ever seen in the pandemic.

Indeed.

R-value for Omicron across England is currently 5.5 (C.I 4.7-6.4) Doubling time 2.04 days (CI 1.87 - 2.23) 22% of TaqPath processed specimens from 11th December are SGTF

For posterity this is what the Joy Morrissey now deleted tweet said:

COVID rates are heading even higher - the last three days in Lambeth are equivalent to a weekly rate of 2.2% The kinds of numbers we've normally only seen in small areas (MSOAs) with a University residence or a prison But it's the whole Borough https://archive.uea.ac.uk/~e130/Latest.html

Cases on the dashboard *exclude* reinfections.And there are a *lot* of reinfections as far as Omicron is concerned h/t @AlistairHaimes and @Peston *And* this is only cases *reported* today - not from *infections* today With a 2-day doubling time for Omicron, this isn't great

Graph of Pfizer 3rd shot (booster) vs Omicron symptomatic infection, restoring to 75% protection, significantly less compared to its effect vs Delta (95%) with 95% CI, @UKHSA data, vs unvaccinated https://ft.com/content/8a6a0ec8-fd07-49cd-a3f5-386a06269a5c… by @hannahkuchler @donatopmancini @mroliverbarnes

Conservative MP Desmond Swayne says the “carnage” on UK roads is “certainly killing more people than Covid at the moment”. For context there were just 1,460 deaths on British roads in the whole of 2020, compared to more than 4,000 deaths of people with Covid last month alone.

If you have any doubts about the benefits of #COVIDVaccination, than please look at the graph below on patients admitted to intensive care unit with #COVID19 #VaccinesSaveLives https://icnarc.org/our-audit/audits/cmp/reports… @fascinatorfun

Another view of rapid sequence evolution, here in the S1 domain of the spike protein.

Quite a long branch here leading to B.1.1.529 / 21K / Omicron. Lots of (probably within-host?) evolutionary change along this branch.

The bad news, of course, is that B.1.1.529 is increasing in South Africa at a time when Delta has been is decreasing. *If* the turn-around is due to increased transmissibility, instead of other e.g. behavior factors, it's going to a rough winter. Obviously we'll know more soon.

In the same thread, John provided this graph as well. There were far more cases of previous strains around when Alpha and Delta took off, so they had further to go, so to speak, to reach high prevalence.

I'd be careful not to overinterpret the following graph from @jburnmurdoch. Yes, the fraction of B.1.1.529 is increasing faster. But I think that is that is largely due to different denominators.

Given everything we know at this stage, I'd be very surprised if the current mRNA vaccines did not continue to offer strong protection against severe disease and death from B.1.1.529. I'm more concerned about it sweeping through areas that have not been able to acquire vaccines.54230970

While some degree of immune escape is possible, and the presence of the E484K mutation is suggestive of change in that direction, immune escape alone cannot explain the rapid the increase in prevalence. If that's not some of founder effect, it must have higher transmissibility.

People are asking what I think about the B.1.1.529 variant that is rapidly increasing in frequency in South Africa. It certainly merits close monitoring. That said: I believe the hockey-stick graphs from yesterday are in error. We are nowhere near the delta peak prevalence.205461.6K

OMICRON VARIANT CONFIRMED IN NSW CASES

BREAKING: Hospitalizations South Africa Hospitalizations67% week over week. Gauteng Province66%. GP1.6% from yesterday (weekend effect) ICU 2 from yesterday. Indications remain that morbidity & mortality are reduced in this wave, relative to size of outbreak.

DOUBLING % in one day: the spike of probable #Omicron variant in Scotland has critically surged—now at 13.3%, up from 6.8% in just **1 day** (SGTF PCR proxy test). At this alarming rate of climb and displacing Delta— it will be near 100% before Xmas. https://gov.scot/binaries/content/documents/govscot/publications/research-and-analysis/2021/12/omicron-scotland-evidence-paper/documents/omicron-scotland-evidence-paper/omicron-scotland-evidence-paper/govscot%3Adocument/omicron-scotland-evidence-paper.pdf?forceDownload=true

New preprint led by Kaori Sano in collaboration with @VivianaSimonLab https://medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.06.21267352v1…. Convalescent individuals induce strong mucosal secretory IgA response after mRNA vaccination. This may help to explain the robust protection from infection in that group.

Getting Africa fully vaccinated is complicated. It isn't as simple as just sending more doses https://cbc.ca/news/world/vaccine-inequity-covid-19-africa-1.6275262?__vfz=medium%3Dsharebar… @markgollom Only 7.5% of Africa fully vaccinated. "...capacity & logistical challenges, along with vaccine hesitancy, are also creating significant challenges."

If you think Prior Covid protects against Omicron (B.1.1.529), think again https://medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.08.21267491v1… and "Neutralizing antibody titers against Omicron were low, even below the limit of detection in a significant fraction of convalescent individuals https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zjJWsybGaa3egiyn5nQqTzBtl0kmvMUu/view

In the battle to debunk COVID-19 misinformation, Ottawa Public Health officials lead the way https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/in-the-battle-to-debunk-covid-19-misinformation-ottawa-public-health-officials-lead-the-way… v @ottawacitizen cc @OttawaHealth @ScienceUpFirst Me: "Debunking really does work, especially if it is done by experts. Your voice really can make a difference."

India, U.S. account for a quarter of #COVID19 #misinformation: @UAlberta study https://ualberta.ca/folio/2021/12/india-us-account-for-a-quarter-of-covid-19-misinformation-study.html… “Misinformation surged before or amid infection & death rate surges." "We need to understand how social media is used in other cultures and in different political situations,”

Excess deaths are now above 900,000 in the US. Conservative estimate as reporting takes weeks to fill in: https://cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm

NEW: @UKHSA Mini Omicron Update Omicron VOC-21NOV-01 (B.1.1.529) update on cases, S gene target failure and risk assessment https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1039470/Omicron_SGTF_case_update.pdf… Updated Risk Assessment https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1039420/8_December-2021-risk-assessment-for-SARS_Omicron_VOC-21NOV-01_B.1.1.529.pdf

> A new diverse genome has appeared within the B.1.1.529 lineage that has all of the shared mutations of B.1.1.529, some of the mutations unique to BA.1 and some unique to BA.2 plus a few of its own.

BREAKING: South Africa: Week over week increase of only 4.8% today. 16.4% positive rate is near half of recent levels. 36 deaths remains in line with totals of last month Still need more info, but this combined with hospitalization data is better news....

"...With nearly 5 million children ages 5 to 11 now vaccinated against COVID-19, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky says real-world monitoring finds vaccines are safe for young children..."

important update on the now withdrawn @BallouxFrancois tweet identifying hopeful turning of the corner in SA omicron data

11) Omicron is doubling every 1.6 days in UK according to @DrWilliamKu’s figure. That’s way faster growth than in South Africa. I think it’s maybe due to 2x doses of AstraZeneca being the main vaccine in the UK while SA haven’t used any AZ for a long time. Boosters now!

BREAKING: Hospitalizations South Africa Hospitalizations70% week over week Gauteng Province50% GP1.2% from yesterday ICU4 from yesterday Growth in cases in GP continues to slow. Will await case/death data, later, but this trend remains same (favorable).

Moreover, most of the attention of the industry goes not to random people on social media, but the doctors who prescribe medications and the government officials who approve them - this is no secret, it's a very effective strategy!

The pharmaceutical industry has incredibly detailed, complex methods to influence people, and spend decades developing relationships to sell products (as with any industry), and it's almost never as simple as paying people to lie

Accusing everyone you disagree with of being a shill for pharmaceutical companies is a very simple way to tell anyone with even the slightest insight that you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about and no desire to do simple things to educate yourself

Home LFDs too

Zero lateral flows available at four pharmacies over the last two days. Where is Matt Hancock's landlord when you need him.

Zero lateral flows available at four pharmacies over the last two days. Where is Matt Hancock's landlord when you need him.

Just noticed this terrible advice in the NHS Covid app. #COVIDisAirborne

Both I and Lewis Hamilton can drive.Quote TweetMaxime Bernier@MaximeBernier · Dec 10Both the vaccinated and unvaccinated can spread the virus.

All of these are offered in the weekly NICD report, published here: https://nicd.ac.za/diseases-a-z-index/disease-index-covid-19/surveillance-reports/weekly-testing-summary/… (6/6)

It therefore follows that any proper analysis of the South African testing data HAS TO (at the very least) * analyse by date of collection (not reporting) * analyse PCR tests distinct from Ag tests * monitor differentials in public/private testing (5/6)

2. The VOLUME of daily tests is highly periodic, low on weekends, for example. The count of CASES is also highly periodic. But the proportion testing positive is ALSO periodic - so it's not a case of the two periodicities in cases and tests cancelling each other out. (3/6)

3. We know that many negative Ag test results are NOT loaded AT ALL. EVER. AND that delays in loading Ag test results are longer than delays in loading PCR results. (4/6)111118

1. The daily tests announced are those that are LOADED that day. The test may have been conducted several days/weeks earlier. What those daily reports mean is pretty hard to interpret. (2/6)

Given the comedic misinterpretation of the South African testing data offered by @BallouxFrancois (and many others!) last night ... I offer some tips having contributed to the analysis of the testing data for the @nicd_sa since April last year. (1/6)

The number of confirmed COVID cases is rising in all of Southern Africa.

Denmark, already up shit creek because of Delta, has just met Omicron. Near-vertical growth. #auspol #covid19aus

I love how I, an actual GP...who was involved in the initial covid vaccination programme ...has to tune in at 8pm with the public to find out that apparently we are vaccinating the entire adult population with boosters by the end of the year

Now that there is evidence for community transmission in the U.K. and we have tighter testing for travellers we should reassess the red list - travel bans for countries doing excellent surveillance causes more damage than good even in the medium term. And COVID has not gone away.

With community transmission widespread in the U.K. we are seeing more “home grown cases” than we will import. The red list is only effective if you are doing something to control transmission in your own country, but given that we are not, I don’t think it makes sense anymore.

Updated table of Omicron neuts studies with @Pfizer results (which did the worst job in terms of reporting raw data). Strong discrepancy between studies with live vs pseudo.

#Omicron update from Denmark. Omicron was 3.1% of all cases on the 5th of December. @SSI_dk is releasing daily updates in the link below (in Danish): https://covid19.ssi.dk/virusvarianter/omikron…

a rather worrying development- a (local) newspaper "fact checking" the new German health minister simply by interviewing a virologist who happens to have a different view. There's simply no established "fact" as to the severity of omicron in children at this point in time

“the severity profile of Omicron cases must be interpreted along with an understanding of its capacity to re-infect (and infect the vaccinated)“ This is what I have been trying to explain the last few days. As usual @nataliexdean does it better (and in color)!

Estimates of COVID-19 vaccine uptake in the US based on large surveys that are used to guide policy-making decisions tend to overestimate the number of vaccinated individuals, according to research published in @Nature. https://go.nature.com/3EBQPOh

This means that a more transmissible variant with no difference in immune escape properties *or* a variant with no difference in transmissibility, but with more immune escape properties could explain available evidence. 30/

... all of this is also ignoring other factors that influence Rt, including contact patterns, duration of infectiousness, NPI usage, etc. 29/

Here lies the problem, because while we can reasonably estimate Rt, we don't know whether an increase is due to R0 being higher (e.g., increased transmission) or x being higher (e.g., increased immune evasion). 28/

Immunity will lower the fraction of susceptibles (x), leading to lower Rt. A more transmissible variant will increase R0, increasing Rt. But, Rt will also increase if a variant is capable of eroding immunity in the population - R0 stays the same, but x is now higher. 27/

This is the difference between estimating R0 (the basic reproductive number) vs Rt (the effective reproductive number, which is Rt = R0*x, where x = fraction of susceptible). https://healthknowledge.org.uk/public-health-textbook/research-methods/1a-epidemiology/epidemic-theory… 26/

The reason why we can't yet distinguish the two, is because a scenario in which Omicron has no immune escape, but is more transmissible can explain what we're observing. The same for a very 'escapy' VOC with the same (or lower) transmission. https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/1465364300936085506?s=20… 25/

Here's where it gets sketchy - because we really don't have any good data to make any firm conclusions on what/which factor(s) we think contribute the most. Remember Oli's advice: 24/

Combine the rapid rise of Omicron with the observation from genetic data that it appears to be relatively young, what best explains that? 1. Increased immune evasion 2. Increased transmission 3. Combination of both 23/

3. Cases are rising rapidly in places where Omicron seems to be dominating https://twitter.com/Tuliodna/status/1463911554538160130?s=20… 22/Quote Tweet

2. It's been observed in travel associated cases originating from multiple locations, including a single flight with ~10% of passengers being positive for COVID-19 (caveat - not yet clear if they were all Omicron): https://washingtonpost.com/world/2021/11/27/amsterdam-omicron-covid-variant-lockdown/… 21/

How did Omicron become widespread so quickly? We believe Omicron has increased rapidly in frequency for a few reasons: 1. It appears to be displacing Delta in South Africa .. https://youtube.com/watch?v=Vh4XMueP1zQ&t=5s… 20/

Many articles have already concluded that Omicron came from an immunocompromised person ("HIV" is often mentioned), but I disagree with that conclusion. While that's certainly possible, we don't have any data showing that's the case. Let's keep all hypotheses open. 19/

3. Several of the mutations in Omicron have been observed in animals, including rodents: https://virological.org/t/mutations-arising-in-sars-cov-2-spike-on-sustained-human-to-human-transmission-and-human-to-animal-passage/578/11… 18/

I slightly favor reverse zoonosis for a few reasons: 1. The lineage is old and undetected circulation in immunocompromised patient(s) for this long seems unlikely 2. SARS-CoV-2 is a generalist virus and we have seen human>animal>human transmission happen in e.g., mink .. 17/13111450

I don't believe #1 is likely, leaving evolution in immunocompromised patient(s) or a reverse zoonosis, followed by a new zoonosis (human>animal>human) as the two hypotheses I find most plausible - although I have no confidence in either. 16/

We believe (a) the lineage leading to Omicron branched off a long time ago, (b) Omicron is young, but (c) is already widespread in parts of Africa. So what led to Omicron? Three main hypotheses: 1. Undetected circulation 2. Immunocompromised patient(s) 3. Animal reservoir 15/

For how long has Omicron been circulating in humans? We can estimate that based on the diversity in sampled genomes and most estimates land ~mid October (with wide uncertainty), so we believe it's relatively young. Good thread from @trvrb here: https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/1464353224417325066?s=20… 14/

It's clear that the lineage leading to Omicron is old - possibly mid-2020, but there's a huge amount of uncertainty in exactly when and where. We also don't know from what basal lineage this branched off and convergent evolution makes this tricky. https://nextstrain.org/groups/neherlab/ncov/21K.Omicron… 13/

Emergence and reservoir So where did Omicron come from? And when? We don't know... But let's take a look at some of the data and hypotheses. When it comes to age, we can answer two primary questions: 1. When did the lineage brach off? 2. How old is Omicron itself? 12/

Omicron also has two indels around position 631 that look to be the result of copy-choice recombination, potentially with host, not virus, origin. Recently described in this excellent study: https://virological.org/t/putative-host-origins-of-rna-insertions-in-sars-cov-2-genomes/761… 11/

Compare the mutations seen in Omicron vs those in Delta - it's a big difference: https://twitter.com/COGUK_ME/status/1465455990204252160?s=20… 10/Quote Tweet

What is clear though, is that many of these mutations are on the surface of the spike, where, for example, they may be involved in: - Optimization to human ACE2? - Optimization to non-human ACE2? - Alternative/additional receptor? - Immune evasion? 9/

So what are these mutations doing? We don't know - and remember, what really matters here is the combination of mutations and not any single mutation on its own. Good article here: https://nytimes.com/2021/11/29/health/omicron-covid-mutation-epistasis.html… 8/

Many of the mutations have been seen before in other VOCs, but others have not - and some are 'private' to Omicron (not seen in the larger SARSr-CoV phylogeny). Interestingly, many of the mutations are basic R or K with a lot of N>K (pos: 440, 478, 547, 679, 764, 856, 969): 7/

The recently identified BANAL-52 virus only has ~20 differences to Hu-1 (16 AA substitutions + no furin cleavage site). In nucleotide space, however, that switches - 61 for Omicron vs 206 for BANAL-52. Why the difference? Selection: https://twitter.com/sergeilkp/status/1465134289603858435?s=20… 6/

Mutation profile Omicron has a lot of mutations - more so than previous VOCs. In the spike it has ~40 differences to the original Hu-1 virus (33 AA substitutions, 3 deletions, and 1 insertion). You can compare Omicron to other VOCs here: https://outbreak.info/compare-lineages… 5/

.. and read this great article from @kakape on some of the early observations. https://science.org/content/article/patience-crucial-why-we-won-t-know-weeks-how-dangerous-omicron… 4/

Before we start, please heed this advice from @EvolveDotZoo because it really is important to understand - there are so many different scenarios that can explain what we're observing. So we can discuss "possible" scenarios, but not assign meaningful likelihoods yet. 3/

Gut feeling: Timing: recent, deep roots (high confidence) Emergence: animals (very low confidence) Immune escape: significant (medium-high confidence) Transmission: increased (low confidence) Virulence: similar (low confidence) Details

The key questions I'll address in descending order of confidence in currently available evidence: 1. Mutation profile 2. Emergence 3. Immune escape properties 4. Transmission fitness 5. Virulence 2/

Omicron - on a scale from 1-10, how bad is this going to be? This one's a weirdo, so I'm a 3, a 10, or anything in-between. A thread below with my take on some of the key questions. https://outbreak.info/situation-reports/omicron… 1/

SGTF Regional data to Dec 6 from https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1039470/Omicron_SGTF_case_update.pdf… (Last data point would be expected to be incomplete based on the dates and so to slightly understate growth. And also will already have moved substantially from the midpoint of that last week on 3rd Dec.)

Boris Johnson's continued pretence that UK is one of the most vaccinated countries in the world, repeated again in press conference just now announcing new restrictions, is getting tiresome. That has not been the case for many many months, despite vaccine hoarding early on.

this is not good news for Scotland (and I suspect England not too far behind)

German brands, incl. food companies and retailers, teaming up in the pro-vaccination campaign #ZusammenGegenCorona

How can we connect #metascience to established #science fields? Find out at this afternoon's session at #aimos2021 Remco Heesen @fallonmody Felipe Romeo will discuss. Come join us. #OpenScience #OpenData #reproducibility

Just one of many msgs I've received today:

Striking how some media coverage is assuming (without caveats) that the Belgian case brought the new variant "from" Egypt or Turkey.There's no chance they picked it up after returning to Belgium of course. How could that happen..we only have a 7-day average of 17,000 cases a day

friendly reminder that “more transmissible” is by itself REALLY BAD for a pandemic. even small increases in R₀ mean more potential for spread, more cases, more deaths etc please get your vax & help others get theirs

countries banned because of the omicron variant vs. countries with confirmed omicron cases

Ok, so vax take-up in Gauteng is 38.6%. Given 9% of inpatients whose vax status is known are vaxxed, I think that's pretty encouraging (odds, log odds, etc.)

When literally every country “banning” you has a higher infection rate

#Omicron is sending more kids to the hospital than #Delta in South Africa

Covid conspiracy theories born in the U.S. are having a deadly impact around the world. @BrandyZadrozny takes us to Romania. Watch NOW: http://nbcnews.com/NOW

If it's anything like Beta, then boosters should clobber it just fine.

Our first https://filogeneti.ca/CoVizu update with B.1.1.529. As expected, number of mutations is well over molecular clock prediction (~13 diffs). Relatively low numbers of identical genomes implies large number of unsampled infections. We update every two days from GISAID.

@Twitter why are you promoting civil war #Bürgerkrieg in Germany? @TwitterSupport Can you try to be at least slightly responsible about ot promoting these antivaxers?

A rise in possible #Omicron in England—tripling (0.1 to 0.3) of S-Gene dropout PCR signal, which is a proxy for Omicron (before sequencing confirms). @_nickdavies estimates this represents around ~60 cases in . Still early—but it displacing #DeltaVariant is not good sign.

Switzerland just clocked 10,466 cases today, which normalised to the U.K. would be 81,500, with a positive test frequency of 15.83%.

If you’re curious how likely #omicron is to have spread from South Africa or Botswana to different places, @DirkBrockmann and colleagues have done some interesting calculations based on the world aviation network from 08/2021 You can see that US seems a very likely destination

The number of U.S. deaths from COVID-19 has surpassed 775K. But left behind are tens of thousands of children — some orphaned entirely — after their parents or a grandparent who cared for them died.

Update: The first doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for kids between the ages of 5 and 11 have arrived. We’ll have 2.9 million doses in the country by the end of the week - that’s enough for every eligible child to get their first shot. So please, get your kids vaccinated.

BREAKING: 2.5 million nurses from 28 countries have filed for a UN investigation of human rights violations by the EU, UK, Switzerland, Norway, and Singapore for blocking the waiver on Covid-19 vaccine patents as new strains proliferate: http://covid19criminals.exposed

Here is how B.1.1.529 (#Omicron #B11529) compares to Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta variants. Omicron has highest novel Spike mutations including striking cluster on the "crown" suggesting significant selection pressure & antigenic distinction from prior strains (Credits: nference)

gauteng just updated 47 week and its shit https://twitter.com/gianlucac1/status/1465273830046371847

Presented without comment. #Omicron cc @jburnmurdoch

Child Vaccinations England 30th November (Data to 29th) 16-17 59.4% 0.1% up on previous day 12-15 41.6% 0.2% up on previous day #coronavirus #COVID19 #SARSCoV2

55.1% of the worlds population has had one dose of Covid vaccine. 29% in South Africa 10.1% in Africa as a whole Only 6% of Africans are fully vaccinated So is it any surprise new variants are arising from Africa? What doesn't go around (as vaccine) Comes around (as Covid).

South Africa reports 2,828 new coronavirus cases, an increase of 258% from last week, with a positivity rate of 9.1%

B.1.1.529 in the UK • Designated a Variant Under Investigation (VUI) VUI-21NOV-01 • No cases in the UK to date • Enhanced case finding & rapid assessment is underway

European centres for disease prevention and control has designated B.1.1.259 as a variant of concern. Fast work.

possible answer: 'quarantining of healthy individuals' (as I understand it, presently witnessing situation in Germany 1st hand), is about preventing collapse of the health service. Even if transmission were equal the onward effects on ICUs are not. not left/right? 2/2

query: https://unherd.com/2021/11/the-lefts-covid-failure/… "Is there really no progressive criticism to be made about the quarantining of healthy individuals, when the latest research suggests there is a vanishingly small difference in terms of transmission between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated?" 1/2

Meanwhile AY.4.2 (Delta grandchild) continues its very slow path to English dominance. Makes life a bit harder by being a bit more transmissible but luckily doesn't seem any worse than Delta in any other respect.

if seatbelts work so well why do we have airbags crumple zones speed limits licensing road signs traffic lights road safety engineering ambulances EMTs trauma centers brakes

If you’re wondering what difference a booster makes.

America 2021 in one image.

Holy guacamole.

Tokyo coronavirus case count for today is just 6 Previous two Mondays: 7, 18 7-day average: 17.1 Serious cases -1 to 8 Newly reported deaths: 1

Data shows us that the higher the vaccination rate, the lower the death rate. #COVID19 #VaccinesWork

Valentine reportedly changed his tune on vaccination after getting COVID, but it was too late. Here are a few of the tweets he sent in the months leading up to his (preventable) death.

Right-wing talk radio host Phil Valentine just died of COVID-19. He promoted vaccine skepticism until he himself got sick with the virus.