From: karmabum@anashram.com

Yet more unnerving research is linking a fast-spreading variant of the
virus that causes COVID-19 with a higher likelihood of dying.

https://nationalpost.com/news/study-finds-further-evidence-covid-u-k-variant-more-lethal-as-icu-admissions-in-ontario-creep-up

The latest findings come from a paper published Monday by the journal
Nature, in which researchers estimate the variant technically know as
B.1.1.7, the so-called U.K. strain, is, on average, 55 per cent deadlier
than earlier versions of the virus.

The findings are based on an analysis of more than one million people who tested positive for COVID-19 in England between September 2020 and
February 2021. Researchers compared death rates between those who had
B.1.1.7 infections and those infected with earlier strains, adjusting for
age, ethnicity, sex and other factors. They only compared death rates
among people who were tested on the same day and lived in the same city or town, to control for changes in testing rates and hospital pressures.

People infected with the variant were between 39 and 72 per cent more
likely to die.

The absolute risk of death remained low, increasing, for example, from 0.6
to 0.9 per cent, for 55- to 69-year-old males.

“We don’t want this 55 per cent number to scare people into thinking ‘this
is a big risk for me,’” unless people are elderly or otherwise very sick, said lead author Nicholas Davies, an epidemiologist with the London School
of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

But there was already evidence the variant is more contagious — between
43 and 90 per cent more transmissible, depending how it’s measured,
earlier work by Davies and his colleagues found.

Add in that it is seemingly deadlier, “and that really does add up over an entire population,” said Davies.

Davies is a native of Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. For the past 10 years, he’s lived in the U.K., where the B.1.1.7 variant spread swiftly, from the
county of Kent, in southeast England in early October, to London, and to
the rest of the U.K. by December’s end.

It now accounts for more than 99 per cent of COVID-19 infections in the
U.K., which saw as many COVID-related deaths — some 42,000 — in the first two months of this year as were experienced in the first eight months of
the pandemic. “Over the course of 2020, treatments for COVID-19 had
improved so much — the survival rate by the end of summer was twice as
good as the beginning of the pandemic,” Davies said.

“And yet we’ve had this huge burden of death since B.1.1.7 arose.”

The same variant, scientists warned last week, is poised to drive a third
surge of infections in Ontario, where hospitalizations and ICU admissions
have begun to creep up. As of Monday, the new “variants of concern” accounted for 49 per cent of confirmed COVID infections in Ontario. The reproductive number — the number of people each infected person goes on to infect — was 1.41. It needs to be below one to slow the spread of the
virus.

The Nature paper comes days after another British study, using the same
data over a slightly different time period, and using a different
statistical method, estimated the B.1.1.7 strain could be 32 per cent — to
an alarming 104 per cent — more deadly than previously circulating
variants (the increased death risk in the “largely unvaccinated
population” averaged out to 64 per cent.)

The emergence of the variant, and others identified in Brazil and South
Africa, “highlights the capacity of SARS-CoV-2 to rapidly evolve new phenotypic variants, with mutants that evade vaccines being a real possibility,” the authors of that study wrote in the British Medical
Journal.

So far, all the vaccines that have been tested against B.1.1.7 have shown
good protection against it.

Taken together, the data are rattling some scientists, who are warning the variants could spark a third surge of COVID-19 within days in Ontario.

Across Canada, a total of 3,302 people have tested positive for “variants
of concern,” the vast majority — 3,031 — the U.K. strain. Some say the reported number of cases is almost immaterial because there is so little genomic sequencing of the viruses. The variant is also spreading quickly
in the U.S., in Florida, California and Texas.

While Davies is sympathetic to people who say individual risk is low,
“it’s still very high for an infectious disease, and we’re talking about millions of people getting infected. It’s not just something you can ignore.”

It’s not clear why those infections are more severe. People tend to have higher viral loads— “the virus replicates to larger numbers within the person,” Davies said — and there’s some evidence that people shed virus for longer periods. It could be that treatments don’t work as well against the variants. “But it’s still not really super clear,” he said. It also appears more infectious across all age groups.

### - nada's ever "super-clear" to these bozos hah, something which more
often than not suits their purposes when it then comes to misleading the
public by conveniently revising these numbers either up or down depending
on whatever governments are seeking to achieve at the time?

from global warming to pandemics, it's always the same shit whereby no one
can then say with any real degree of accuracy what's actually happening or
why until it's too late, the above being a second study that, rather conveniently, revises/tweaks the previous alarming numbers down, the only
thing one can thus genuinely take from them being that these variants are indeed more infectious AND more deadly although no one can really say by
how much only that they are, this being in stark contrast to when these variants first began to emerge and we were gently told that they probably weren't more deadly but which now - months later! - that they in fact are
by anything up to double??

the feared 'third wave' being comprised of mainly these new variants
pushing the original strain out of the way by dint of being that much more infectious than the original...

we might just get through it, however, provided the current vaccines still afford some protection against them, a worst case scenario only arising if
some newer strain is then able to get around the current vaccines
altogether and then everyone's back to where it all started over a year
ago apart from the now 3+ million people worldwide who've already died
from it! (official figures say lower but yeah right, right? damn right! professional LIARS the lot of 'em!)

as for the vaccinations themselves: well ya pays yer money and ya takes
yer chance, because between having it and not having it ya takes a chance either way!

the 'choice' is up to you!

it's a 2-horse race...

do something!
or do nothing!

and we can't get out of it either! so place yer bets peeps :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tm4BrZjY_Sg

(desert thus sounds/feels rather appropriate?)

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)