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.

Far-right groups have latched onto anti-vaccine protests and rallies, creating a pipeline to extremism. 

How the Far-Right Is Radicalizing Anti-Vaxxers

10.1136/bmj.n2806

Old school public health and technology can allow aggressive containment to succeed

What can the world learn from China’s response to covid-19?

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%.

GSK-Vir antibody-based Covid-19 treatment works against Omicron variant

Britain’s drug regulator has approved Xevudy treatment

The World Health Organisation has also urged countries to apply "an evidence-informed and risk-based approach" to travel measures, saying blanket bans will not prevent the spread of the new Omicron COVID variant.

COVID-19: Most Omicron cases are 'mild' and there's no evidence to suggest vaccines may be less effective against the variant, says WHO official

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

Journalists and academics are developing a new language for truth. The results are not always clearer.

Inside the ‘Misinformation’ Wars

Four coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccines have now been approved for use in the UK. Rigorous clinical trials have been undertaken to understand the immune response, safety profile and efficacy of these vaccines as part of the regulatory process. Ongoing monitoring of the vaccines as they are rolled out in the population is important to continually ensure that clinical and public health guidance on the vaccination programme is built upon the best available evidence. UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), formerly Public Health England (PHE), works closely with the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency (MHRA), NHS England, and other government, devolved administration and academic partners to monitor the COVID-19 vaccination programme. Details of the vaccine surveillance strategy are set on the page COVID-19: vaccine surveillance strategy (1). As with all vaccines, the safety of COVID-19 vaccines is continuously being monitored by the MHRA. They conclude that overall, the benefits of COVID-19 vaccines outweigh any potential risks (2). Please note that there will be no publication of this report in week 52 2021. Publication will resume in week 1 2022

COVID-19 vaccine surveillance report Week 47

Presented without comment. #Omicron cc @jburnmurdoch

10.31234/osf.io/ft8dc

The scientific reform movement, which is frequently referred to as open science, has the potential to substantially reshape how science is done, and for this reason, its socio-political antecedents and consequences deserve serious scholarly attention. In a recently formed literature that professes to meet this need, it has been widely argued that the movement is neoliberal. However, for two reasons it is hard to justify this wide-scale attribution: 1) the critics mistakenly attribute the movement a monolithic structure, and 2) the critics' arguments associating the movement with neoliberalism are highly questionable. In particular, critics too hastily associate the movement’s preferential focus on methodological issues and its underlying philosophy of science with neoliberalism, and their allegations regarding the pro-market proclivities of the reform movement do not hold under closer scrutiny. What is needed are more nuanced accounts of the socio-political underpinnings of scientific reform that show more respect to the complexity of the subject matter. To address this need, we propose a meta-model for the analysis of reform proposals, which represents methodology, axiology, science policy, and ideology as interconnected but relatively distinct domains, and allows for recognizing the divergent tendencies in the movement.

Is Open Science Neoliberal?

Social Democrat reportedly in favour of mandatory vaccines, with Austria poised to take step in February

Germany’s chancellor-to-be Olaf Scholz ‘backs mandatory Covid jabs’

The National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) says 87% of patients admitted to hospital in Tshwane are not vaccinated against Covid-19. The NICD says unvaccinated people are more likely to die from the disease. The Gauteng health department says it is ready for the fourth wave. 

Covid-19: Almost 90% of people hospitalised in Tshwane not vaccinated, NICD

PM says government does not want people to cancel events such as Christmas parties and nativity plays Omicron infections: eight further cases found in England All adults to be offered third jab by end of January, says Johnson MPs vote to approve stricter rules on masks and isolation in England Boris Johnson rejects health official’s advice to reduce festive socialising Scottish Omicron cases all linked to one ‘private event’, says Sturgeon

Boris Johnson says people should not cancel Christmas parties over Omicron – as it happened

/10.1016/S1473-3099(21)00680-0

Background SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern (VOCs) have threatened COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness. We aimed to assess the effectiveness of the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine, predominantly against the delta (B.1.617.2) variant, in addition to the cellular immune response to vaccination.Methods We did a test-negative, case-control study at two medical research centres in Faridabad, India. All individuals who had a positive RT-PCR test for SARS-CoV-2 infection between April 1, 2021, and May 31, 2021, were included as cases and individuals who had a negative RT-PCR test were included as controls after matching with cases on calendar week of RT-PCR test. The primary outcome was effectiveness of complete vaccination with the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine against laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection. The secondary outcomes were effectiveness of a single dose against SARS-CoV-2 infection and effectiveness of a single dose and complete vaccination against moderate-to-severe disease among infected individuals. Additionally, we tested in-vitro live-virus neutralisation and T-cell immune responses to the spike protein of the wild-type SARS-CoV-2 and VOCs among healthy (anti-nucleocapsid antibody negative) recipients of the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine.Findings Of 2379 cases of confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection, 85 (3·6%) were fully vaccinated compared with 168 (8·5%) of 1981 controls (adjusted OR [aOR] 0·37 [95% CI 0·28–0·48]), giving a vaccine effectiveness against SARS-CoV-2 infection of 63·1% (95% CI 51·5–72·1). 157 (6·4%) of 2451 of cases and 181 (9·1%) of 1994) controls had received a single dose of the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine (aOR 0·54 [95% CI 0·42–0·68]), thus vaccine effectiveness of a single dose against SARS-CoV-2 infection was 46·2% (95% CI 31·6–57·7). One of 84 cases with moderate-to-severe COVID-19 was fully vaccinated compared with 84 of 2295 cases with mild COVID-19 (aOR 0·19 [95% CI 0·01–0·90]), giving a vaccine effectiveness of complete vaccination against moderate-to-severe disease of 81·5% (95% CI 9·9–99·0). The effectiveness of a single dose against moderate-to-severe disease was 79·2% (95% CI 46·1–94·0); four of 87 individuals with moderate-to-severe COVID-19 had received a single dose compared with 153 of 2364 participants with mild disease (aOR 0·20 [95% CI 0·06–0·54]). Among 49 healthy, fully vaccinated individuals, neutralising antibody responses were lower against the alpha (B.1.1.7; geometric mean titre 244·7 [95% CI 151·8–394·4]), beta (B.1.351; 97·6 [61·2–155·8]), kappa (B.1.617.1; 112·8 [72·7–175·0]), and delta (88·4 [61·2–127·8]) variants than against wild-type SARS-CoV-2 (599·4 [376·9–953·2]). However, the antigen-specific CD4 and CD8 T-cell responses were conserved against both the delta variant and wild-type SARS-CoV-2.Interpretation The ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine remained effective against moderate-to-severe COVID-19, even during a surge that was dominated by the highly transmissible delta variant of SARS-CoV-2. Spike-specific T-cell responses were maintained against the delta variant. Such cellular immune protection might compensate for waning humoral immunity.

Effectiveness of ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 infection during the delta (B.1.617.2) variant surge in India: a test-negative, case-control study and a mechanistic study of post-vaccination immune responses

Two cases of new Covid variant found in Netherlands predate last week’s alert from South Africa

Omicron Covid variant ‘present in Europe at least 10 days ago

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

10.1038/d41586-021-03569-1

Anthony Fauci on four decades of progress against HIV, and what’s needed for the future.

Victories against AIDS have lessons for COVID-19

Scotland’s health secretary Humza Yousaf said the vaccination programme will be accelerated.

Number of Omicron variant cases in Scotland rises to nine

The U.S. dragged its feet on lateral flow tests and is now struggling with supply problems when they’re needed most.

Why Is It So Hard to Get a Rapid Covid Test in the U.S.?

10.1016/S1473-3099(21)00688-5

The clinical development and global rollout of highly effective vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 has been unprecedentedly rapid. Nevertheless, viral evolution has continued at pace to the extent that questions are being raised about the continued effectiveness of first-generation vaccines in the face of variants of concern (VOCs). In particular, the rise of the delta variant (B.1.617.2) to become the dominant virus in most of the world has spurred efforts to assess vaccine effectiveness against VOCs and to understand the associated immune mechanisms of protection.1

COVID-19 vaccines in the age of the delta variant

10.1016/S1473-3099(21)00680-0

BackgroundSARS-CoV-2 variants of concern (VOCs) have threatened COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness. We aimed to assess the effectiveness of the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine, predominantly against the delta (B.1.617.2) variant, in addition to the cellular immune response to vaccination.MethodsWe did a test-negative, case-control study at two medical research centres in Faridabad, India. All individuals who had a positive RT-PCR test for SARS-CoV-2 infection between April 1, 2021, and May 31, 2021, were included as cases and individuals who had a negative RT-PCR test were included as controls after matching with cases on calendar week of RT-PCR test. The primary outcome was effectiveness of complete vaccination with the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine against laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection. The secondary outcomes were effectiveness of a single dose against SARS-CoV-2 infection and effectiveness of a single dose and complete vaccination against moderate-to-severe disease among infected individuals. Additionally, we tested in-vitro live-virus neutralisation and T-cell immune responses to the spike protein of the wild-type SARS-CoV-2 and VOCs among healthy (anti-nucleocapsid antibody negative) recipients of the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine.FindingsOf 2379 cases of confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection, 85 (3·6%) were fully vaccinated compared with 168 (8·5%) of 1981 controls (adjusted OR [aOR] 0·37 [95% CI 0·28–0·48]), giving a vaccine effectiveness against SARS-CoV-2 infection of 63·1% (95% CI 51·5–72·1). 157 (6·4%) of 2451 of cases and 181 (9·1%) of 1994) controls had received a single dose of the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine (aOR 0·54 [95% CI 0·42–0·68]), thus vaccine effectiveness of a single dose against SARS-CoV-2 infection was 46·2% (95% CI 31·6–57·7). One of 84 cases with moderate-to-severe COVID-19 was fully vaccinated compared with 84 of 2295 cases with mild COVID-19 (aOR 0·19 [95% CI 0·01–0·90]), giving a vaccine effectiveness of complete vaccination against moderate-to-severe disease of 81·5% (95% CI 9·9–99·0). The effectiveness of a single dose against moderate-to-severe disease was 79·2% (95% CI 46·1–94·0); four of 87 individuals with moderate-to-severe COVID-19 had received a single dose compared with 153 of 2364 participants with mild disease (aOR 0·20 [95% CI 0·06–0·54]). Among 49 healthy, fully vaccinated individuals, neutralising antibody responses were lower against the alpha (B.1.1.7; geometric mean titre 244·7 [95% CI 151·8–394·4]), beta (B.1.351; 97·6 [61·2–155·8]), kappa (B.1.617.1; 112·8 [72·7–175·0]), and delta (88·4 [61·2–127·8]) variants than against wild-type SARS-CoV-2 (599·4 [376·9–953·2]). However, the antigen-specific CD4 and CD8 T-cell responses were conserved against both the delta variant and wild-type SARS-CoV-2.InterpretationThe ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine remained effective against moderate-to-severe COVID-19, even during a surge that was dominated by the highly transmissible delta variant of SARS-CoV-2. Spike-specific T-cell responses were maintained against the delta variant. Such cellular immune protection might compensate for waning humoral immunity.

Effectiveness of ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 infection during the delta (B.1.617.2) variant surge in India: a test-negative, case-control study and a mechanistic study of post-vaccination immune responses

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).

Today’s top headlines:Israel shuts nearly all Africa travel and enforces quarantine rulesBioNTech will take two weeks to assess vaccine against latest Covid variantBelgium confirms first European case of new Covid variantFrance’s Macron admonishes UK for not acting ‘seriously’ over migrant crisisCoronavirus variant concerns push global stocks lower

News updates from November 26: Coronavirus variant concerns send global stocks lower, nations restrict travel from southern Africa, Black Friday sales grow as shoppers return to stores

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

10.1136/bmj.n2826

Media coverage has been criticised for minimising the effect of covid-19 on children, implying that the lives of those with underlying health conditions are somehow less important than the lives of healthy individuals. Jacqui Wise reports

Headlines play down the gravity of covid-19 in children

10.1136/bmj.n2932

Covid-19 during late stages of pregnancy has been linked to an increased risk of severe disease requiring hospital and intensive care admission, and unvaccinated pregnant women have been found to have a substantially higher risk of needing hospital treatment for covid than those who are vaccinated. Between February and September 2021, 98% of the 1714 pregnant women admitted to hospital with symptomatic covid were unvaccinated.1The UKHSA’s latest surveillance report2 showed that between January and August 2021 a total of 355 299 women gave birth, of whom 24 759 (22%) had received at least one dose of covid-19 vaccine before delivery. But while vaccine coverage in the pregnant population is increasing, uptake in younger women, those in the most deprived areas, and in ethnic minority communities, particularly in black women, still lags.

Covid-19: Vaccine uptake during pregnancy has increased but deprived areas lag behind, data show

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

Exclusive: Greatest risk for pregnant women with Covid is premature birth and ‘it’s not recognised or talked about’

Revealed: Over 600 babies born premature and needing critical care to mothers hospitalised by Covid-19

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.

Almost 60% of targeted group yet to be vaccinated as Labour analysis suggests rollout will take until February

Covid jab wait for 12- to 15-year-olds in England could be up to five months

Doctors tested positive or developed symptoms ‘within days’ of conference at which alternative treatments were discussed

Seven doctors contract Covid after attending Florida anti-vaccine summit

The struggle to educate people about COVID-19 vaccines continues, and what happened in Scarborough shows it can be won. Home to people who would otherwise be less likely to get the shot than most Torontonians, the former borough has VaxFacts, which is not just a made-in-Scarborough success at beating vaccine hesitancy but “actually a movement,” says its founder Dr. Latif Murji.

Scarborough-born VaxFacts 'movement' battles COVID-19 vaccine misinformation with trust and 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

What was claimed Pfizer has changed the formulation of its Covid-19 vaccine for children aged five to 11 to include an ingredient used to stabilise heart attack patients. Our verdict The FDA recently approved the inclusion of tromethamine in paediatric doses of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine. It was included to extend the vaccine’s shelf life, and is not currently used in the UK. It is used to treat a condition which may result from illness following a heart attack.

Claims about changes to Pfizer vaccine for children miss important details

10.1103/PhysRevE.104.054308

Sender-receiver games are simple models of information transmission that provide a formalism to study the evolution of honest signaling and deception between a sender and a receiver. In many practical scenarios, lies often affect groups of receivers, which inevitably entangles the payoffs of individuals to the payoffs of other agents in their group, and this makes the formalism of pairwise sender-receiver games inapt for where it might be useful the most. We therefore introduce group interactions among receivers and study how their interconnectedness in higher-order social networks affects the evolution of lying. We observe a number of counterintuitive results that are rooted in the complexity of the underlying evolutionary dynamics, which has thus far remained hidden in the realm of pairwise interactions. We find conditions for honesty to persist even when there is a temptation to lie, and we observe the prevalence of moral strategy profiles even when lies favor the receiver at a cost to the sender. We confirm the robustness of our results by further performing simulations on hypergraphs created from real-world data using the SocioPatterns database. Altogether, our results provide persuasive evidence that moral behavior may evolve on higher-order social networks, at least as long as individuals interact in groups that are small compared to the size of the network.

Evolution of honesty in higher-order social networks

"NHS staff have run off adrenalin for the past year and that adrenalin is running out. We're all coming to the point where we're all just crashing and burning out."

Nurses' mental health: 'Most people in the NHS, they are sad'

Neil Ferguson, a leading epidemiologist, said the country had almost reached a state of herd immunity as it settled into a new normal of about 40,000 cases a day. Other experts disagreed.

A Claim of Herd Immunity Reignites Debate Over U.K. Covid Policy

If you’re wondering what difference a booster makes.

America 2021 in one image.

Back in July 2020, Vanity Fair reporter Katherine Eban wrote a shocking expose which exposed the depths of callousness and cold-hearted political calculation which the Trump Administration used to guide their horrific response to the COVID-19 pandemic when it reached U.S. shores: