Tag: Variants

With a non-sterilising vaccine like the Covid ones, high viral load in the vaccinated helps drive vaccine-escape variants – a fact that should have been factored into the vaccination programmes but wasn't.

There is now lots of evidence that COVID-19 was spreading globally by autumn 2019 at the latest. But why then were there no excess deaths until March 2020? New York City may point us to the answer.

Bill Gates (who has a book to promote) warns we may have seen the worst of the pandemic. What we need, according to the billionaire, is more state epidemiologists and computer modellers.

The latest UKHSA Technical Briefing reports that Omicron BA.2, which is now dominant in the UK, is even milder than Omicron BA.1, which was responsible for the very low death toll this winter.

An ex-WHO scientist has claimed Omicron BA.2 has an R0 of 12, making it as infectious as measles, the most infectious disease known. But what do the data show?

Why was the outbreak in Wuhan so much deadlier than any in the surrounding countries? Why two months later did far nastier outbreaks occur in Europe? Many questions about the start of the pandemic remain unanswered.

T-cells from common cold coronaviruses can provide protection against COVID-19, an Imperial College London study has found. But why has it taken 16 months for it to be published?

French scientists at the IHU Mediterranee Infection have announced the discovery of a new variant of SARS-CoV-2 which, they say has more mutations than Omicron and may be more resistant to vaccines.

Back in January, Sir Patrick Vallance said, "The more you vaccinate, the more you put evolutionary pressure on the virus." A recent paper argues that mass vaccination has selected for vaccine escape mutations.

The Daily Sceptic's in-house doctor discusses what we know so far about the Omicron Covid variant and sees little evidence of increased pressure on the NHS to date.