#coronavirus new strain

[rjmbaboonbooks]

Daily Comic Journal: December 2, 2021: "A Virus From Another Planet?"

For those of you who’ve never seen the animated show “Futurama” (and if you haven’t, why not? It’s great!) Lrrr is the bombastic villain who rules the planet Omicron Persei 8. Lrrr is voiced by the voice actor Maurice LaMarche and every time Lrrr appears on the show he announces who he is. “I am Lrrr! Ruler of the planet Omicron Persei 8!” I’ve heard that so many times it’s burned into my brain.…

[moomin279]

I HAVE COVID I THOUGHT THIS SHIT WAS GONE

[iakshaysrivastav]

India's COVID-19 Vaccination Success: A Global Leader

India’s COVID-19 vaccination journey is a testament to resilience and innovation, propelling it to the forefront of global healthcare. With over 2.2 billion doses administered as of 2024, India’s campaign stands among the largest and most complex vaccination efforts worldwide. Significant progress has been made. However, the road to achieving full immunization has been riddled with challenges.…

[reasonsforhope]

Article | Paywall Free

"The Food and Drug Administration approved new mRNA coronavirus vaccines Thursday [August 22, 2024], clearing the way for shots manufactured by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna to start hitting pharmacy shelves and doctor’s offices within a week.

Health officials encourage annual vaccination against the coronavirus, similar to yearly flu shots. Everyone 6 months and older should receive a new vaccine, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends.

The FDA has yet to approve an updated vaccine from Novavax, which uses a more conventional vaccine development method but has faced financial challenges.

Our scientific understanding of coronavirus vaccines has evolved since they debuted in late 2020. Here’s what to know about the new vaccines.

Why are there new vaccines?

The coronavirus keeps evolving to overcome our immune defenses, and the shield offered by vaccines weakens over time. That’s why federal health officials want people to get an annual updated coronavirus vaccine designed to target the latest variants. They approve them for release in late summer or early fall to coincide with flu shots that Americans are already used to getting.

The underlying vaccine technology and manufacturing process are the same, but components change to account for how the virus morphs. The new vaccines target the KP.2 variant because most recent covid cases are caused by that strain or closely related ones...

Do the vaccines prevent infection?

You probably know by now that vaccinated people can still get covid. But the shots do offer some protection against infection, just not the kind of protection you get from highly effective vaccines for other diseases such as measles.

The 2023-2024 vaccine provided 54 percent increased protection against symptomatic covid infections, according to a CDC study of people who tested for the coronavirus at pharmacies during the first four months after that year’s shot was released...

A nasal vaccine could be better at stopping infections outright by increasing immunity where they take hold, and one is being studied in a trial sponsored by the National Institutes of Health.

If you really want to dodge covid, don’t rely on the vaccine alone and take other precautions such as masking or avoiding crowds...

Do the vaccines help prevent transmission?

You may remember from early coverage of coronavirus vaccines that it was unclear whether shots would reduce transmission. Now, scientists say the answer is yes — even if you’re actively shedding virus.

That’s because the vaccine creates antibodies that reduce the amount of virus entering your cells, limiting how much the virus can replicate and make you even sicker. When vaccination prevents symptoms such as coughing and sneezing, people expel fewer respiratory droplets carrying the virus. When it reduces the viral load in an infected person, people become less contagious.

That’s why Peter Hotez, a physician and co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, said he feels more comfortable in a crowded medical conference, where attendees are probably up to date on their vaccines, than in a crowded airport.

“By having so many vaccinated people, it’s decreasing the number of days you are shedding virus if you get a breakthrough infection, and it decreases the amount of virus you are shedding,” Hotez said.

Do vaccines prevent long covid?

While the threat of acute serious respiratory covid disease has faded, developing the lingering symptoms of “long covid” remains a concern for people who have had even mild cases. The CDC says vaccination is the “best available tool” to reduce the risk of long covid in children and adults. The exact mechanism is unclear, but experts theorize that vaccines help by reducing the severity of illness, which is a major risk factor for long covid.

When is the best time to get a new coronavirus vaccine?

It depends on your circumstances, including risk factors for severe disease, when you were last infected or vaccinated, and plans for the months ahead. It’s best to talk these issues through with a doctor.

If you are at high risk and have not recently been vaccinated or infected, you may want to get a shot as soon as possible while cases remain high. The summer wave has shown signs of peaking, but cases can still be elevated and take weeks to return to low levels. It’s hard to predict when a winter wave will begin....

Where do I find vaccines?

CVS said its expects to start administering them within days, and Walgreens said that it would start scheduling appointments to receive shots after Sept. 6 and that customers can walk in before then.

Availability at doctor’s offices might take longer. Finding shots for infants and toddlers could be more difficult because many pharmacies do not administer them and not every pediatrician’s office will stock them given low demand and limited storage space.

This year’s updated coronavirus vaccines are supposed to have a longer shelf life, which eases the financial pressures of stocking them.

The CDC plans to relaunch its vaccine locator when the new vaccines are widely available, and similar services are offered by Moderna and Pfizer."

-via The Washington Post, August 22, 2024

[gumjrop]

You might be forgiven for thinking it’s been a very quiet few months for the Covid-19 pandemic. Besides the rollout of new boosters, the coronavirus has largely slipped out of the headlines. But the virus is on the move. Viral levels in wastewater are similar to what they were during the first two waves of the pandemic. Recent coverage of the so-called Pirola variant, which is acknowledged to have “an alarming number of mutations,” led with the headline “Yes, There’s a New Covid Variant. No, You Shouldn’t Panic.”

Even if you haven’t heard much about the new strain of the coronavirus, being told not to panic might induce déjà vu. In late 2021, as the Omicron variant was making its way to the United States, Anthony Fauci told the public that it was “nothing to panic about” and that “we should not be freaking out.” Ashish Jha, the Biden administration’s former Covid czar, also cautioned against undue alarm over Omicron BA.1, claiming that there was “absolutely no reason to panic.” This is a telling claim, given what was to follow—the six weeks of the Omicron BA.1 wave led to hundreds of thousands of deaths in a matter of weeks, a mortality event unprecedented in the history of the republic.

Indeed, experts have been offering the public advice about how to feel about Covid-19 since January 2020, when New York Times columnist Farhad Manjoo opined, “Panic will hurt us far more than it’ll help.” That same week, Zeke Emanuel—a former health adviser to the Obama administration, latterly an adviser to the Biden administration—said Americans should “stop panicking and being hysterical.… We are having a little too much [sic] histrionics about this.”

This concern about public panic has been a leitmotif of the Covid-19 pandemic, even earning itself a name (“elite panic”) among some scholars. But if there’s one thing we’ve learned, three and a half years into the current crisis, it’s that—contrary to what the movies taught us—pandemics don’t automatically spawn terror-stricken stampedes in the streets. Media and public health coverage have a strong hand in shaping public response and can—under the wrong circumstances—promote indifference, incaution, and even apathy. A very visible example of this was the sharp drop in the number of people masking after the CDC revised its guidelines in 2021, recommending that masking was not necessary for the vaccinated (from 90 percent in May to 53 percent in September).

As that example suggests, emphasizing the message “don’t panic” puts the cart before the horse unless tangible measures are being taken to prevent panic-worthy outcomes. And indeed, these repeated assurances against panic have arguably also preempted a more vigorous and urgent public health response—as well as perversely increasing public acceptance of the risks posed by coronavirus infection and the unchecked transmission of the virus. This “moral calm”—a sort of manufactured consent—impedes risk mitigation by promoting the underestimation of a threat. Soothing public messaging during disasters can often lead to an increased death toll: Tragically, false reassurance contributed to mortality in both the attacks on the World Trade Center and the sinking of the Titanic.

But at a deeper level, this emphasis on public sentiment has contributed to confusion about the meaning of the term “pandemic.” A pandemic is an epidemiological term, and the meaning is quite specific—pandemics are global and unpredictable in their trajectory; endemic diseases are local and predictable. Despite the end of the Public Health Emergency in May, Covid-19 remains a pandemic, by definition. Yet some experts and public figures have uncritically advanced the idea that if the public appears to be tired, bored, or noncompliant with public health measures, then the pandemic must be over.

But pandemics are impervious to ratings; they cannot be canceled or publicly shamed. History is replete with examples of pandemics that blazed for decades, sometimes smoldering for years before flaring up again into catastrophe. The Black Death (1346–1353 AD), the Antonine Plague (165–180 AD), and the Plague of Justinian (541–549 AD), pandemics all, lacked the quick resolution of the 1918 influenza pandemic. A pandemic cannot tell when the news cycle has moved on.

Yet this misperception—that pandemics can be ended by human fiat—has had remarkable staying power during the current crisis. In November 2021, the former Obama administration official Juliette Kayyem claimed that the pandemic response needed to be ended politically, with Americans getting “nudged into the recovery phase” by officials. It is fortunate that Kayyem’s words were not heeded—the Omicron wave arrived in the US just weeks after her article ran—but her basic premise has informed Biden’s pandemic policy ever since.

Perhaps even less responsibly, the physician Steven Phillips has called for “new courageous ‘accept exposure’ policies”—asserting that incautious behavior by Americans would be the true signal of the end of the pandemic. In an essay for Time this January, Phillips wrote: “Here’s my proposed definition: the country will not fully emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic until most people in our diverse nation accept the risk and consequences of exposure to a ubiquitous SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19.”

This claim—that more disease risk and contagion means the end of a disease event—runs contrary to the science. Many have claimed that widespread SARS-CoV-2 infections will lead to increasingly mild disease that poses fewer concerns for an increasingly vaccinated (or previously infected) population. In fact, more disease spread means faster evolution for SARS-CoV-2, and greater risks for public health. As we (A.C. and collaborators) and others have pointed out, rapid evolution creates the risk of novel variants with unpredictable severity. It also threatens the means that we have to prevent and treat Covid-19: monoclonal antibody treatments no longer work, Paxlovid is showing signs of viral resistance, and booster strategy is complicated by viral evolution of resistance to vaccines.

But these efforts to manage and direct public feelings are not just more magical thinking; they are specifically intended to promote a return to pre-pandemic patterns of work and consumption. This motive was articulated explicitly in a McKinsey white paper from March 2022, which put forward the invented concept of “economic endemicity”—defined as occurring when “epidemiology substantially decouples from economic activity.” The “Urgency of Normal” movement similarly used an emotional message (that an “urgent return to fully normal life and schooling” is needed to “protect” children) to advocate for the near-total abandonment of disease containment measures. But in the absence of disease control measures, a rebound of economic activity can only lead to a rebound of disease. (This outcome was predicted by a team that was led by one of the authors [A.C.] in the spring of 2021.)

A pandemic is a public health crisis, not a public relations crisis. Conflating the spread of a disease with the way people feel about responding to that spread is deeply illogical—yet a great deal of the Biden administration’s management of Covid-19 has rested on this confusion. Joe Biden amplified this mistaken perspective last September when he noted that the pandemic was “over”—and then backed that claim by stating, “If you notice, no one’s wearing masks. Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape.” The presence or absence of health behaviors reveals little about a threat to health itself, of course—and a decline in mask use has been shaped, in part, by the Biden administration’s waning support for masking.

Separately, long Covid poses an ongoing threat both at an individual and a public health level. If our increasingly relaxed attitude toward public health measures and the relatively unchecked spread of the virus continue, most people will get Covid at least once a year; one in five infections leads to long Covid. Although it’s not talked about a lot, anyone can get long Covid; vaccines reduce this risk, but only modestly. This math gets really ugly.

The situation we are in today was predictable. It was predictable that the virus would rapidly evolve to evade the immune system, that natural immunity would wane quickly and unevenly in the population, that a vaccine-only strategy would not be sufficient to control widespread Covid-19 transmission through herd immunity, and that reopening too quickly would lead to a variant-driven rebound. All of these unfortunate outcomes were predicted in peer-reviewed literature in 2020–21 by a team led by one of the authors (A.C.), even though the soothing public messaging at the time called it very differently.

As should now be very clear, we cannot manifest our way to a good outcome. Concrete interventions are required—including improvements in air quality and other measures aimed at limiting spread in public buildings, more research into vaccine boosting strategy, and investments in next-generation prophylactics and treatments. Rather than damping down panic, public health messaging needs to discuss risks honestly and focus on reducing spread. Despite messages to the contrary, our situation remains unstable, because the virus continues to evolve rapidly, and vaccines alone cannot slow this evolution.

In the early months of the pandemic, many in the media drew parallels between the public’s response to Covid-19 and the well-known “stages of grief”: denial, bargaining, anger, depression, and acceptance. The current situation with Covid-19 calls for solutions, not a grieving process that should be hustled along to the final stage of acceptance.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Alarm bells ring in Japan as experts warn of fast-spreading new Covid variant KP. 3 - Published July 19, 2024

Paywalled at the South China Morning Post: Unpaywalled by Covidsafehotties.

The country reported a 39 per cent week-on-week surge in infections from July 1 to 7, with Okinawa the hardest hit

Japan is grappling with a new and highly contagious coronavirus variant that is fuelling the country’s 11th wave of Covid-19 infections, health experts warn. The KP. 3 variant is spreading rapidly, even among those who are vaccinated or have recovered from previous infections, according to Kazuhiro Tateda, president of the Japan Association of Infectious Diseases.

“It is, unfortunately, the nature of the virus to become more resilient and resistant each time it changes into a different form,” Tateda told This Week in Asia. “People lose their immunity quite quickly after being vaccinated, so they have little or no resistance.”

Tateda, who sits on Japan’s advisory panel formed at the start of the pandemic, said the coming weeks will be critical as authorities monitor the variant’s spread and impact.

While hospitals have reported a sharp uptick in Covid-19 admissions, Tateda said he is “relieved that not many of these cases are severe”. Typical symptoms of the KP. 3 variant include high fever, sore throat, loss of smell and taste, headaches, and fatigue.

According to the health ministry, medical facilities across Japan logged a 1.39-fold – or 39 per cent – increase in infections from July 1 to 7, compared to the previous week.

Okinawa prefecture has been the hardest hit by the new strain of the virus, with hospitals reporting an average of nearly 30 infections per days. The KP. 3 variant has accounted for more than 90 per cent of Covid-19 cases nationwide, the Fuji News Network reported, leading to renewed concerns about bed shortages at medical facilities.

Since Japan’s first detected Covid-19 case in early 2020 involving a man who returned from the Chinese city of Wuhan, East Asian nation has recorded a total of 34 million infections and around 75,000 related deaths. The country’s Covid-19 caseload peaked on August 5, 2022, when more than 253,000 people were receiving treatment.

Japan’s uptick in cases coincides with similar increases being observed globally. In the US, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention reported a 23.5 per cent week-over-week rise in the number of people visiting hospitals with Covid-19 symptoms during the week ending July 6.

High-profile US.figures such as President Joe Biden and Doug Emhoff, husband of Vice-President Kamala Harris, have recently tested positive and gone into isolation. Meanwhile, several riders in the ongoing Tour de France cycling race have also returned positive test results.

Experts say it is too early to determine the full impact of the new variant on Japanese businesses or cross-border activities like travel. Precautionary measures are already in place at the country’s air and seaports to monitor the health of incoming arrivals. However, the global spike in cases may deter some Japanese from venturing abroad this summer.

A recent survey by Nippon Life insurance found that just 3.2 per cent of Japanese plan to travel abroad in the coming months, which is likely to depress annual travel figures once again. In 2023, Japan saw 9.62 million outbound travellers, a recovery after three years of extremely low pandemic-era numbers, but still far below the 20.01 million outbound travellers recorded in 2019.

Despite the latest surge, infectious disease expert Tateda insists there is no need for panic in Japan. However, he emphasised the importance of following precautions implemented during the pandemic’s peak, such as mask-wearing in public, handwashing, and social distancing.

Tateda also stressed that anyone testing positive should immediately isolate themselves.

[murmiss]

Insane and brain-dead.

pairing-Simon 'Ghost' Riley/You. Very little John 'Soap' MacTavish/You

Chapter WARNING- Description of blood, cruelty, tin.swearing, partial description of decomposition, mention of suicide. My vision of the characters

Summary - 'There is no love'-that's what Simon thinks. BUT what if two traumatized and mentally wounded people meet in a hellish apocalypse and find solace in each other?Hundred what if what happens to them connects them?.

(the end will be good)

This is the first, introductory chapter.

Part one.

It is no secret that viruses and bacteria mutate at an amazing rate, either changing their genetic code and causing mutations, or changing so much that there is already a problem of a new strain. Today, viral mutation is a common phenomenon that does not scare people in the least. Many people do not even think that someday this microorganism can cause harm, ignoring all those stories of fatalities, great and terrible epidemics that have happened to mankind, naively believing that if it happened a thousand years ago, it certainly will not affect you.

How many people know about the Antonine Plague? Although, by the way, it was the most horrifying epidemic in history, which killed more than 5 million people, and according to records, killed 2 thousand Romans a day.And the bubonic plague? It's frightening when you think of the descriptions in books: fever, nausea, hallucinations, pus-filled buboes, death, and people in bird masks. So what? That's right, nothing. Remember when the coronavirus wasn't taken seriously? A lot of people thought it wouldn't reach the regions, states and cities, but it did.

Just like this time, no one took it seriously when dozens of reports were projected from a small town about a sudden outbreak of "rabies", forcing the sick to die in hellish agony within minutes, and then rising up like stereotypical zombies to bite everyone they came across, succumbing to the virus' natural call to multiply.

Really, who'd believe it? And for nothing. After the first newscasts, a wave of memes and jokes started among the schoolchildren, while the adults, lost in the cycle of work, family, and household chores, paid no attention as the small town of Corrins struggled to cope with the sudden and unknown threat. The town government was going crazy-people were refusing to work, refusing to go outside, and even the patrolmen were going on strike. But the infected were unstoppable. Even a hundred people were already tangible, and where there were a hundred, there were a thousand people, and where there were a thousand, there were two.The city was slowly dying until no one took it seriously. Why didn't anyone move out? The answer was simply that they couldn't. Corrins was quarantined, a total lockdown, no entry or exit. When did that ever work? There's not even a movie where a flimsy gate and guards stopped a horde of infected.

The infected huddled together, roaming the streets like mindless, attacking anyone they could catch.

The virus was spreading as fast as anyone could have imagined, and seemingly in ways never before recorded in history. In just a week, the city of Corrins had fallen into oblivion, along with three other towns in the vicinity, followed by the entire region.

Dim light shone through the thick navy-colored curtains, softly illuminating the room. Simon Riley, a former British mercenary who had just awakened from another night of nightmares, sat in the kitchen chair, leaning back casually, foot on foot and hand under his head, staring into the void. For the third time he was dreaming episodes from his past. Dreams about his goat father no longer frightened him, no longer made him nervous like the dreams about the team that Simon had grown accustomed to during his ten years on the job. Now, after the severe injuries, the difficult and sometimes deadly missions, the adrenaline that bubbled in his blood day and night, life in retirement seemed like hell. For the first few days he, like his guys, was in a depressed mood, not understanding why they were forced to retire so early, but none of the superiors explained anything, giving a completely stupid answer that was the same for everyone: "We changed priorities". That day was hard for everyone. but, nevertheless, the guys did not forget each other. Living in the same city, they often gathered in the bar "Ricky and Mickey", discussed personal matters, tried to rebuild their lives on a new way. And for Riley, worrying about what to cook, trying to build relationships, job hunting, and constantly changing activities were hated, so his thoughts often returned to the days when he and John and the guys worked together. When adrenaline was bubbling in his blood and his brain was working on emergency decisions and tactics. Being on the rope gave life an unrealistic drive, helping him forget the horrors of his childhood. Sometimes, however, he was afraid - those were the rare occasions when things didn't go according to plan and his companions could get hurt. Simon wasn't afraid for himself, he wasn't afraid of bleeding out on the battlefield, getting shot, or even losing a leg or an arm, but the image of a bleeding comrade made him shudder inwardly, still vivid in his mind's eye: He'd been shot in the head-unfortunate and nearly fatal, if it hadn't been for the plate in his skull-the miracle that had saved Johnny from certain death in this cold and filthy place.

That day Simon Riley almost died for the third time. The first time Riley had experienced such deep emotions was in his childhood, when his father, an alcoholic and deeply addicted to drugs, had mocked him. The image of his father with a viper in his hand and the devil-like image of his older brother would haunt Simon's dreams and visions for a long time. The second time it was the image of his mother. The fragile woman who was pulling the whole family on her own back, tolerating her abuser of a husband day after day, humbly going to hard work, trying to earn at least some pennies, couldn't stand it and put a bullet in her temple. She lay on the old and creaky couch for almost twenty-four hours before her husband paid attention. Simon remembers like yesterday her small, thin body lying stiff and stiff on the couch, with a humble face like a painting of The Death of the Virgin Mary by the artist Caravaggio. She was dressed in her pale pink robe, and her thin hand rested on her breast. Mrs. Riley tried her best to hold on for little Simon's sake, but she could not endure her eldest son's abuse and her husband's hatred, killing herself and finally achieving the peace and quiet she so desired. Little Simon sat with her all day, trying his best to wake the lying woman, covering her face with a damp cloth, gently stroking her icy hands. He was only six years old then, when he stood over the pit where the old wooden coffin containing the body of his beloved mother lay.

And then, when Johnny had been injured, Simon felt again like he did then at six years old, next to his mother. He, lost in emotion, grabbed Johnny's head, his hands trying to cover the bullet wound, roughly grasping like a child trying to help as best he could. The ghost doesn't remember Price dragging him away from Johnny's unconscious body, giving room for the paramedics to arrive.

John 'Soap' MacTavish was taken to the medical unit and underwent emergency surgery, Sitting in the dark and empty corridor, Ghost was out of breath as Gaz and Price tried to support him. "John's a tough guy, he'll get over it." And the this jerk turned out to be fucking resilient. And lucky too.

After that the band didn't last long-quite a couple months later they were dismissed, without reason or much explanation, taking them out of their positions. Of course no one expected it, but what was to be done?

Simon picked up his phone, checking messages, secretly hoping for another invitation to a bar, just to avoid the domestic routine, but instead of the pleasant words "let's go for a cognac," he came across a sweet and sweet message from Amanda, the girl Ghost had tried to meet at his leisure, when Soap was once again blowing his mind about the need for a relationship.Amanda was undeniably beautiful-blonde curls, blue eyes, and charmingly pouty lips, but the problem was that as soon as she opened her mouth, everyone wanted to shut her up. Amanda Hess was a meticulous Shopping Fanatic, and "miss fucking amazing ideas." In places, undoubtedly, the idea of going to fuck in the park at one o'clock in the morning excited Simon, but frankly, he lacked enthusiasm, and for the fifth time, hearing an unusual idea, his eyes involuntarily rolled with stupidity.

Simon and Amanda had been talking for about three months now, and he didn't know if he liked her or if he liked her ass, or if he even needed these dates.

"Honey, can you pick me up at eight pm?" -said the message, and attached to it was a nude photo of a girl sitting on the edge of a bed with her feet up and taking a picture of herself through a mirror, wearing only black lace lingerie. Beautiful, but unimpressive. When you see the same tits and hear the same things, you get used to it and the panties photo is no longer arousing. Inwardly Simon wished for soulfulness and some kind of domestic affection, maybe a cozy lady dressed in his huge warm sweater and striped socks, making hot chocolate.

"I'm busy," Simon answered rudely but habitually, but no sooner had he sent a message back than someone slammed the front door, forcing him to look up and away from the phone.

"Fuck," Soap said, panting and trying to catch his breath, leaning his hands on the walls. His eyes darted around the room, searching for the scowling lieutenant and finally seeing his comrade, Johnny rushed over to him, speaking quickly and nervously. "Hey L.T., did you see what the fuck is going on? We're fucked, we're fucked up a bloody fucking ass that can't be compared to Makarov's ugly face."

Simon grinned wryly as he listened to MacTavish and sat just as casually in the kitchen chair, watching Mr. Mohawk walk around his kitchen, looking for the TV remote and finally finding it, turning it on as he continued to mutter-"Fucking lunatics flooding the streets! I thought I'd never bloody get to you-the police are shutting down the city, ambulances everywhere!"

And as John spoke, Simon lowered his gaze to the phone again, wistfully noting that Amanda's message was from yesterday and apparently he hadn't noticed it. Soap snatched the phone out of Simon's hands, carelessly tucking it away on the table, speaking seriously, frowning his bushy eyebrows. "Buddy, can you hear me? I'm dead serious right now."

"You can't be serious about piles of zombies roaming the street," Riley replied, looking up at his friend again. Behind him, while no one was paying attention, the coffee was frothing, running off and dirtying the stove, leaving a bitter burnt odor that Simon sensed and immediately moved the coffee pot. "Bloody hell, John."

"Leave your fucking coffee, this isn't a joke, Lieutenant," John shrieked, finally turning his attention back to Simon.

On TV, a slender girl in a business suit with a serious face and a monotonous voice was giving an interview; in the background, behind her were several police cars, ambulances, and even a SWAT team flashed in the frame. Somewhere very far away there were shouts of people, special forces, passing information to each other. The girl's voice was steady and didn't even shake as she broadcast almost robot-like.

"Today, around six o'clock this morning, a group of unknown assailants attacked the locals. It's probably an outbreak of rabies. The patients have pale skin, cloudy eyes with red spots and gritted teeth, some cases of hemoptysis, poor coordination and slurred speech. If you find such symptoms in yourself or your relatives, call the number 'xxx-xx-xx-xxx'. We urge all citizens to stay in their homes until the next announcement. You are also reminded to lock your windows and doors and do not let anyone suspicious in."

"You heard her, it's just an outbreak of rage," Simon waved his hand nonchalantly, to which John, eyes wide, shouted again, trying to reason with his colleague.

"You don't fucking understand." -MacTavish clutched the remote tighter, rewinding the videotape of the interview to the very end.

"I don't understand what?" -Ghost raised his eyebrows skeevily.

"She's dead"-John said sharply, including the very end of the video, where a man in an ambulance corpsman's uniform comes at the journalist from behind. He sinks his teeth into her neck, biting off a large chunk almost immediately, his bloody hands grasping her shoulders as the girl screams frantically. Simon's eyes slowly open as his brain's mechanisms process the information. It's as if he believes it, but the other half of him screams "It's all a lie, a joke. April 1." Unconsciously he looks at his phone, checking the date and realizing to his horror that the first of April is long gone and it was June. The information and realization pressed on his brain, causing goosebumps to crawl across his skin. A slight fear bubbled in his stomach as he watched Soap's actions as if mesmerized. John frantically opened every drawer in the kitchen, looking for any canned goods and bars.

"Shit, LT, what are you eating? Don't you have any?!" exclaimed Soap, panic-rushing through the rooms while Simon came to his senses.

"Bottom drawer on the right"-as Riley answered mesmerized. John, opening the cabinet and seeing five cans of canned chicken and pork, exhaled, immediately pulling them out and placing them on the table.

"Don't delay, Ghost, get the damn things together. I was able to get a hold of Price, he and Gaz will be waiting for us on the outskirts of town at the cottage plots. Price is trying to contact Laswell and the department." Soap rummaged through the drawers, pulling out matches, knives, and anything else he thought might come in handy. Recovering and hearing shouts outside the door, Simon jumped up and immediately began grabbing his belongings and dumping them at speed into his hiking backpack. The screams were getting closer and it seemed like the entire apartment building was shaking with people running, panicking and screaming. Simon's apartment was right in the middle of the building, on the fifth floor, and it was damned inconvenient.

At last, Ghost jerked the curtains aside carelessly, peering out the window and watching in horror at the sheer chaos. He had never seen anything like this even in the army. From the neighboring apartment building, people were falling from the balconies, one was already infected, and the other, Simon's acquaintance, Edgar, a man with three loans and perpetually bawdy jokes, had thrown himself out of the window, not wanting to fight, nor to be infected and converted. Unwittingly, Simon remembered how they'd sat at the bar and the jerk with the black, curly beard would see any girl off with a meow, stretching out his catchphrase, "Your pussy's in danger next to me." Then, for Riley, it was a show, at the end of which Edgar was guaranteed to get slapped by some extravagant girl.Now he was dead. In the sky we could see helicopters crashing one after another, one of them crashing right into the house, partially destroying the building. The wreckage flies down where the crowds are, and at first glance it's hard to see what the crush is all about: screams and heartbreaking cries from everywhere, and the special forces are trying to get everyone out of the way, but they, too, the men in uniform and ammunition, suffer the same fate as the civilians - to be bitten. Suddenly Simon is yanked away from the window. Jonny, hearing something going on outside the apartment, realizes it's time to run. - "Damn! We're all going to die in here!"

The ghost followed Soap, and as the other opened the door, the growling grew louder. At the end of the corridor was a small flock of zombies - apparently residents of neighboring apartments that were infected.Without thinking long, the Comrades rushed to the stairs-an escape route. Suddenly, the door swings open in their faces and an older woman falls out into the hallway with a loud hiss. John reflexively shoves the old woman away from him, and Ghost reflexively hits her with the bat he'd brought just in case. "Oh bloody hell, I'm sorry Mrs. Ruzzet," Simon says nervously as he hurries forward, almost flying down the stairs, missing the steps. The zombie old lady lets out another clanking of teeth as she tries to crawl after them, but they've already broken away. Floor after floor flies by at speed, with only a door ahead. John pushes that one open, but it's like it turns out to be locked. "The fucking lock's jammed, Simon, help!" The sounds of zombies are coming closer, and Riley could swear she can hear them dragging their feet on the floor. Strike one. Nothing happens. Second strike. The smell of stinking zombies is getting closer and old Ruzzie is already sliding down the stairs with broken legs, dragging herself with her arms. Third strike. Simon stands behind Soap with bat in hand, the wooden handle cracking from his grip. Four. The door opens and John reflexively grabs Simon by the collar of his shirt, pulling him outside.

It's fucked.The smell of burning, blood and decomposition was everywhere, the dead trying to get to the last survivors who dared to go outside. A girl ran past Simon, clacking her high heels with a loud squeal while three well-fed zombies with bloody mouths with blood dripping from them, staining their clothes, almost ran after her. John rushed towards the cars, picking his way through them with a slight ducking, while Ghost followed behind him, looking back and keeping an eye out for single zombies. The path through the yard was relatively clear, if it weren't for a pack of zombies in suits crouching over a corpse and ripping apart their once office colleague. "That's what 'eating the boss's brains out' means," John grinned grimly, and Simon only chuckled.

"We can walk along the edge and hope the bastards are too focused on their coworker," Simon suggested, and John nodded, slouching, hunching over and almost pressing himself against the wall. The zombies, too focused on their food, wouldn't have noticed him if it hadn't been for John's sudden cry of, "Fuck!" With a snarl, they turned their heads toward the living humans, slowly rising, moving their hollow-headed bodies forward. Simon turned to John, who was swearing to himself as he tried to kill the crawling zombie: it was half a body, the upper half, and from the stomach on up, there was nothing, just part of the spine, but it was tough. Hurriedly, Simon grabbed his friend by the wrist and swiftly dragged him away from the alley.

They made their way to the outskirts of the city, but they couldn't stop there because all the neighborhoods were crawling with zombies.

"I'm damn glad your attraction to life on the outskirts cut us a hell of a lot of slack. It wasn't as shitty when I got to you as it is now," John tried to catch his breath. How many kilometers had they run? It wasn't clear, but it was a lot, though they were used to long runs, and their goal was to get to Price's country house as fast as possible, even if it was a hell of a long way.

[thoughtportal]

COVID-19 makes a worrying comeback, WHO warns amid summertime surge

COVID-19 infections are surging globally, including at the Paris Olympics, and are unlikely to decline anytime soon, the World Health Organization (WHO) says. The UN health agency is also warning that more severe variants of the coronavirus may soon be on the horizon.

“COVID-19 is still very much with us,” and circulating in all countries, Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove of WHO told journalists in Geneva.

“Data from our sentinel-based surveillance system across 84 countries reports that the percent of positive tests for SARS-CoV-2 has been rising over several weeks,” she said. “Overall, test positivity is above 10 per cent, but this fluctuates per region. In Europe, percent positivity is above 20 per cent,” Dr. Van Kerkhove added.

New waves of infection have been registered in the Americas, Europe and Western Pacific. Wastewater surveillance suggests that the circulation of SARS-CoV-2 is two to 20 times higher than what is currently being reported. Such high infection circulation rates in the northern hemisphere’s summer months are atypical for respiratory viruses, which tend to spread mostly in cold temperatures.

“In recent months, regardless of the season, many countries have experienced surges of COVID-19, including at the Olympics where at least 40 athletes have tested positive,” Dr. Van Kerkhove said.

As the virus continues to evolve and spread, there is a growing risk of a more severe strain of the virus that could potentially evade detection systems and be unresponsive to medical intervention. While COVID-19 hospital admissions, including for Intensive Care Units (ICUs), are still much lower than they were during the peak of the pandemic, WHO is urging governments to strengthen their vaccination campaigns, making sure that the highest risk groups get vaccinated once every 12 months.

“As individuals it is important to take measures to reduce risk of infection and severe disease, including ensuring that you have had a COVID-19 vaccination dose in the last 12 months, especially, if you are in an at-risk group,” stressed Dr. Van Kerkhove.

Vaccines availability has declined substantially over the last 12-18 months, WHO admits, because the number of producers of COVID-19 vaccines has recently decreased.“It is very difficult for them to maintain the pace,” Dr. Van Kerkhove explained. “And certainly, they don't need to maintain the pace that they had in 2021 and 2022. But let's be very clear, there is a market for COVID-19 vaccines that are out there.”

Nasal vaccines are still under development but could potentially address transmission, thereby reducing the risk of further variants, infection and severe disease.

“I am concerned, “ Dr. Van Kerkhove said. “With such low coverage and with such large circulation, if we were to have a variant that would be more severe, then the susceptibility of the at-risk populations to develop severe disease is huge,” Dr. Van Kerkhove warned.

[dailyanarchistposts]

A revolutionary “pessimistic” postscript in times of coronavirus

“The outbreak of the new strain of coronavirus (COVID-19), which has wrought havoc in China since the end of last year, has surged over borders and impacted the rest of the world, and with it, the imminent economic crisis has but further advanced. The world economy is in full-on crisis, the administrators of power are pending on immense financial relief, the bourgeoisie are beginning to close factories and lay off employees using the lucky pretext of the “quarantine” as excuse. The disaster is immanent. Nevertheless, it’s important to know that the monetary losses don’t signify the fall of the capitalist system. Capitalism will seek at every moment to restructure itself on the basis of austerity measures imposed on proletarians in order to palliate all the catastrophic consequences that it will bring along with it. And this is due to the fact that the “blows” that capitalism has been dealt due to these phenomena are simply losses in its rate of profit, but those losses don’t at all change its structure or its essence, meaning the social relations that allow it to remain standing: the commodity, value, the market, exploitation and wage labor. In fact, it’s in these structures that capitalism most reaffirms its necessities: sacrificing millions of human beings to the favor of economic interests, making the polarization between classes sharpen and revealing more forcefully in what position the dominant class is to be found, who will use all the efforts in their reach in order to preserve this state of things.

[…]

The ever-more contradictions heightened contradictions of this mode of production (crisis, war, pandemics, environmental destruction, pauperization, militarization), which exasperate our conditions of survival, won’t clear the way either mechanically or messianically for the end of capitalism. Or better said, such conditions, although they will be fundamental, won’t suffice. Because for capitalism to reach its end, it’s imperative for there to be a social force, antagonistic and revolutionary that manages to direct the destructive and subversive character towards something completely different from what we know and experience now.

If we want it or not, we can’t let a question as important as the revolution to drift aimlessly, to leave it to luck. It’s necessary to experience the resolution of this problem on the basis of the organization of tasks that can go on to present themselves, that’s to say, the grouping for the appropriation and defense of the most immediate necessities (not paying debts, rent, or taxes), but also, the rupture from all the dreams and mirages that carry us to manage the save miseries behind another facade.

[…]

It’s not necessary to wait for the dystopia or the hollywoodesque scenes of apocalypse, because these are already materially manifesting in different parts of the globe, and in fact they greatly surpass any attempt at representation by cinematic fiction.

The current pandemic of COVID-19 is one more stage in the degradation to which this society of commodity production brings us.

A stage before which it is reaffirmed that the true future only hangs from two strings:

Communist revolution or to perish in the twilight!”

Contra la Contra n.3 Collapse of the capitalist system? A few notes on current events. Mexico City March 2020

[animefeminist]

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou and Transgender Cyborgs’ Experience of the Apocalypse

Content Warning: Discussion of transphobia

Around the start of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, Chiaki Hirai published an article about Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou, comparing the post-apocalyptic manga to the threat posed to humanity by the novel coronavirus. It was a perspective piece—and a rumination—on societal collapse as it was happening around the author, when so little was still known about the nature of the virus, and what the extent of its impact on us was going to be. Now, at the start of 2023, our world has been forever changed. While the virus continues to mutate into new strains, governments have largely chosen to ignore the ongoing effects of the pandemic in exchange for a “return to normal,” moving on with or without us. Post-apocalyptic fiction has felt closer to home, especially for marginalized readers.

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou (hereafter YKK) focuses on Alpha Hatsuseno, an android girl entrusted with a café by an owner who abandoned it, and her, without clear reason, leaving her to run it in a mostly uninhabited post-apocalyptic world. While most stories that imagine a post-apocalyptic setting depict a world in ashes, strewn with death and danger, YKK’s world is mostly one of peace and solitude for those survivors who remain. Cities lie silent beneath a solemn ocean; wind sifts through the stalks of amaranth sprouting from old, cracked roads. Overlooking land, sea, and sky is Café Alpha, a humble building on a hill and a relic from before “The Age of Evening Calm”—otherwise known as the end of the old world. And, for us, 2020 was our own Age of Evening Calm.

Read it at Anime Feminist!

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Starting Tuesday, the Newfoundland and Labrador Health Authority is taking appointments for COVID and flu vaccines, with clinics starting next week.

Starting Oct. 16, the province will be distributing a COVID-19 vaccine targeted to the Omicron XBB.1.5 variant to more closely match recent circulating strains of the coronavirus.

Dr. Janice Fitzgerald, the province's chief medical officer of health, is encouraging people in high-risk groups to get the updated shot, including people 65 years and older, people with underlying medical conditions, and people who identify as Indigenous.

The clinics, run by the health authority, can be booked online, or by calling a toll-free number. Each area of the province has a separate booking system.

The COVID-19 shot is recommended to anyone who hasn't had a coronavirus vaccination or an infection in the last six months. [...]

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

[permalockdown]

long post containing a lockdown infodump so LOCK IN. there will be stim gifs!

tl;drs will be included

so i’ve been doing a lot of research on covid, especially on why we went into lockdown in the first place?

covid was so unknown at the time, having ONE viral relative: SARS (the epidemic in 2003/04, no cases since). so i researched SARS. (scroll

checkpoint one: SARS

tl;dr, SARS didnt burn itself out, it was still contained due to human intervention, but it had very little asymptomatic cases and was not known to spread until symptom onset.

tl;dr two, covid was most transmissible before its symptom onset, and had LOTS of transmittable asymptomatic cases.

SARS-CoV-1 is an abbreviation for severe acute respiratory syndrome, coronavirus one. it caused a global epidemic in 2003-04, and a case hasnt been reported since then. covid is SARS-CoV-2. the two were about 80% similar, but those differences are key in covids boom.

im not gonna go in-detail about the specific mutations that cause these things (but i do know them, i think u guys might get bored) but covid had a much higher asymptomatic case rate (as high as 40%, estimated by wastewater) and still remained contagious. SARS on the otherhand had very little asymptomatic cases, and it did not remain contagious.

this is really important to consider, as 50-70% of SARS victims needed oxygen supplementation, and 20-30% were in the ICU. 13% of cases died. this is a lot compared to the 15-20% of hospitalizations due to covid, and 3-5% needing critical care.

quarantining and isolation was a lot easier when the virus wasnt spread until symptom onset, and most of the time caused severe enough illness to warrant hospitalization.

there was no cure or vaccine for SARS, you just had to wait it out and treat its symptoms.

checkpoint two: COVID

tl;dr, covid was a more severe illness with an extremely contagious nature. nobody knew what to do, and the american leadership added more strain due to the fact that trump tried to downplay the virus.

now that we know that covid was very unknown at the time, its parent virus had no cure and no vaccine, and covid bumped the transmission into gear, we can actually understand why lockdowns happened.

covid wasn’t mild like the flu or the common cold, but was still extremely contagious. shelter-in-place orders were placed so that the virus didn’t spread as quickly and mutate to become either more contagious, more deadly, or both, as more cases means more mutations.

i live in the united states, so im going to focus a little bit on that. right-wing ideology had gotten much more severe since 2003, and former president donald trump is, well, an idiot. he made false claims about the virus and his administration was focused on downplaying the situation rather than ramping up on medical supplies and telling the people what to do.

the election year had a lot to do with the pandemic, especially with america as a large world leader, and most right-wingers would die for their beloved trump. they refused to listen to anyone on the left-leaning.

we went into lockdown due to global unpreparedness, world leader unpreparedness, and general lack of knowledge.

checkpoint three: what would another lockdown need?

another lockdown would still need relevant political interference, which, hooray! is still happening in the united states. if you research the social aspects of any new diseases, right-wing folk tend to say they’re not falling for a “ploy to get biden back in office”. this includes not wearing masks, not quarantining, not getting vaccines, etc.

for a known virus to cause a pandemic, it would need to mutate so fast that it becomes extremely different from its parent. it would need to transmit human-to-human, have many asymptomatic cases, and still manage to cause severe infection in previously healthy people.

i’m not really counting on monkeypox 1b to cause a pandemic, but idk! things always happen :3 i am however counting on bird flu, as it clearly has less of a watchful eye over it, has never transmitted h2h before, and causes severe illness.

like and subscribe

[sataniccapitalist]

#thewaronyou

Another winter of death is now unfolding in the United States and across the Northern Hemisphere as the JN.1 variant of the coronavirus continues to surge globally. Wastewater data from the United States released Tuesday indicate that upwards of 2 million people are now being infected with COVID-19 each day, amid the second-biggest wave of mass infection since the pandemic began, eclipsed only by the initial wave of the Omicron variant during the winter of 2021-22.

There are now reports on social media of hospitals being slammed with COVID patients across the US, Canada and Europe. At a growing number of hospitals, waiting rooms are overflowing, emergency rooms and ICUs are at or near capacity, and ambulances are being turned away or forced to wait for hours to drop off their patients.

According to official figures, COVID-19 hospitalizations in Charlotte, North Carolina are now at their highest levels of the entire pandemic. In Toronto, Dr. Michael Howlett, president of the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians, told City News, “I’ve worked in emergency departments since 1987, and it’s by far the worst it’s ever been. It’s not even close.” He added, “We’ve got people dying in waiting rooms because we don’t have a place to put them. People being resuscitated on an ambulance stretcher or a floor.”

Dr. Joseph Khabbaza, a pulmonary and critical care specialist at the Cleveland Clinic, told the Today Show website: “The current strain right now seems to be packing a meaner punch than the prior strains. Some features of the current circulating strain probably (make it) a little bit more virulent and pathogenic, making people sicker than prior (variants).”

Indeed, two recent studies indicate that JN.1 more efficiently infects cells in the lower lung, a trait that existed in pre-Omicron strains which were considered more deadly. One study from researchers in Germany and France noted that BA.2.86, the variant nicknamed “Pirola” from which JN.1 evolved, “has regained a trait characteristic of early SARS-CoV-2 lineages: robust lung cell entry. The variant might constitute an elevated health threat as compared to previous Omicron sublineages.”https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/1MGIQxPf0Ig?rel=0An appeal from David North: Donate to the WSWS todayWatch the video message from WSWS International Editorial Board Chairman David North.DONATE TODAY

The toll on human life from the ongoing wave of mass infection is enormous. It is estimated that one-third of the American population, or over 100 million human beings, will contract COVID-19 during just the current wave. This will likely result in tens of thousands of deaths, many of which will not be properly logged due to the dismantling of COVID-19 testing and data reporting systems in the US. When The Economist last updated its tracker of excess deaths on November 18—before the JN.1 wave began—the cumulative death toll stood at 27.4 million, and nearly 5,000 people were continuing to die each day worldwide.

The current wave will also induce further mass suffering from Long COVID, which has been well known since 2020 to cause a multitude of lingering and often debilitating effects. Just last week, a pre-print study was published in Nature Portfolio showing that COVID-19 infection can cause brain damage akin to aging 20 years. The consequences are mental deficits that induce depression, reduced ability to handle intense emotions, lowered attention span, and impaired ability to retain information.

Other research indicates that the virus can attack the heart, the immune system, digestion and essentially every other critical bodily function. The initial symptoms of COVID-19 might resemble those of the flu, but the reality is that the virus can affect nearly every organ in the body and can do so for years after the initial infection. While vaccination slightly reduces the risks of Long COVID, the full impact of the virus will be felt for generations.

The latest winter wave of infections and hospitalizations takes place just eight months after the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Biden administration ended their COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE) declarations without any scientific justification. This initiated the wholesale scrapping of all official response to the pandemic, giving the virus free rein to infect the entire global population ad infinitum.

A virtual blackout of any mention of the coronavirus in the corporate media accompanied the swan song of official reporting. From then on, if illnesses at hospitals or among public figures were referenced at all, it was always with the euphemism “respiratory illness.” The words COVID, coronavirus and pandemic have been all but blacklisted, and the facts about the dangers of the disease have been actively suppressed.

Summarizing the cumulative results of this global assault on public health, the WSWS International Editorial Board wrote in its New Year 2024 statement:

All facts and data surrounding the present state of the pandemic are concealed from the global population, which has instead been subjected to unending lies, gaslighting and propaganda, now shrouded in a veil of silence. There is a systematic cover-up of the real gravity of the crisis, enforced by the government, the corporations, the media and the trade union bureaucracies. Official policy has devolved into simply ignoring, denying and falsifying the reality of the pandemic, no matter what the consequences, as millions are sickened and thousands die globally every day.

In response to the latest wastewater data, there have only been a handful of news articles, most of which have sought to downplay the severity of the current wave and largely ignored the deepening crisis in hospitals.

The official blackout has given rise to an extraordinary contradiction in social life. The reality of mass infection means that everyone knows a friend, neighbor, family member or coworker who is currently or was recently sick, or even hospitalized or killed, by COVID-19. Yet the unrelenting pressure to dismiss the danger of the pandemic means that shopping centers, supermarkets, workplaces and even doctor’s offices and hospitals are full of people not taking the basic and simple precaution of masking to protect themselves. Every visit outside one’s home carries the risk of being infected, with unknown long-term consequences.

As the pandemic enters its fifth year, it is critical to draw the lessons of this world historical experience. The past four years have demonstrated unequivocally that capitalist governments are both unwilling and incapable of fighting this disease. Their primary concern has always been to ensure the unabated accumulation of profits by corporations, no matter the cost in human lives and health.

The real solution to the coronavirus is not to ignore it, but to develop a campaign of elimination and eradication of the virus worldwide. To do so requires the implementation of mask mandates, mass testing and contact tracing, as well as the installation of updated ventilation systems and the safe deployment of Far-UVC technology to halt the spread of the virus. The resources for this global public health program must be expropriated from the banks and financial institutions, which are responsible for the mass suffering wrought by the pandemic.

All of these measures cut directly across the profit motive and the real disease of society: capitalism. As such, the struggle against the coronavirus is not primarily medical or scientific, but political and social. The international working class must be educated on the real dangers of the pandemic and mobilized to simultaneously stop the spread of the disease and put an end to the underlying social order that propagates mass death. This must be developed as a revolutionary struggle to establish world socialism.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved in our archive

The answer is "by the skin of their teeth," but this article is too polite to say it.

By Joshua Boscaini

COVID-19 is evolving and with it the need for new vaccines to protect people against serious illness and death.

Australia has detected its first cases of the highly transmissible XEC "recombinant" variant — a mix of two previous Omicron variants called KS 1.1 and KP 3.3.

Researchers have been working to ensure immunisations that provide an adequate level of protection against new COVID-19 variants are widely available to the community.

So if there are always new variants, how do scientists keep up with mutations and update the vaccines?

How are mRNA COVID-19 vaccines made? When reports of coronavirus first emerged, researchers quickly obtained a genomic sequence of SARS-CoV-2 — the virus that causes COVID-19.

This helped researchers work out the genetic make-up of the virus and how it causes disease in people, according to the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI).

Once scientists analysed the genetic sequence, they identified the spike protein as the most effective target for the immune system and created a copy or code for it.

Unlike traditional vaccines that contain an inactivated or weakened version of the virus, mRNA COVID-19 vaccines contain a message or code that is delivered to someone's cells.

Doherty Institute professor of virology Damian Purcell said that spike protein code — or RNA message — was "packaged" into lipids to keep it protected for distribution in syringes.

Professor Purcell said once the mRNA vaccine — or message — was injected into a person's muscle, it instructed their cells to reproduce the spike protein.

"These are little bubbles of fat, four different lipids, that together encase the RNA [and] enable it to be protected as it is packaged into syringes and injected into your muscle," Professor Purcell said.

"Those lipids facilitate the uptake and delivery of the essential messenger RNA — the message to be coded within your own cells so your own cells start making the … spike protein."

The process triggers an immune response which creates spike protein antibodies.

The NHGRI said those antibodies remained in the body and recognised the virus if someone became infected, attacking the antigen before it reached healthy cells.

How are vaccines modified to keep up with new strains? Westmead Institute for Medical Research Centre for Virus Research director Tony Cunningham said new strains emerged when the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein changed, making the virus more transmissible.

Professor Cunningham said the mRNA vaccines allowed scientists to change the spike protein code and update the vaccine with the new message.

"If you actually think about RNA like DNA is coloured beads on a string — four coloured beads and they vary along the string — then it's in essence changing that sequence," he said.

"You can just simply change the middle bit of the RNA and that can be done very quickly.

"That spike protein is the one that actually allows the virus to attach to the cell and what we want to do is produce antibodies that stop viruses attaching to the cell."

Professor Purcell agreed, saying one of the advantages of mRNA vaccines was they could be changed and produced usually within a month.

"It's actually one of the really powerful aspects of the mRNA technology, is that many, many steps … can remain the same," he said.

Professor Cunningham said the key to responding quickly to new variants was maintaining good surveillance.

He said it was up to the World Health Organization to recommend what strains should be included in updated vaccines.

Professor Cunningham said the vaccines then needed to be approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) in Australia to make sure they were safe and effective, a process which could take about two months.

Why do vaccines need to be updated? COVID-19 vaccines need to be updated because they cannot protect against newer strains of the virus as effectively, according to Professor Cunningham.

He said that was because the immune system did not have the same antibodies to recognise and fight off the mutated virus.

"Variants can change so they're no longer completely protected against the antibodies that are circulating," Professor Cunningham said.

"That's why we need to keep changing our vaccines, and … particularly in aging people, we need to be immunised every six months to keep the antibodies up."

Professor Purcell said the first Omicron strain was an "escape" variant that required an updated vaccine.

"When the first Omicron came, it had many, many, many changes — more than we'd ever seen before and that was a very significant escape variant," he said.

"People vaccinated with the ancestral strain of vaccine were not protected from transmission with that COVID variant."

He said while people still had some immunity from the original vaccine, it was not enough.

"We do have some underpinning immunity that's capable of still preventing severe disease from those infections but it is still relevant enough to develop a new strain of vaccine," he said.

What vaccines have been approved for use in Australia? Australian Department of Health statistics showed 72.3 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine had been administered as of October 9.

Pfizer's Omicron XBB. 1.5 and original vaccines were approved for use in children aged five to 11 years old, while Pfizer's original vaccine was also available for children aged six months to four years.

Pfizer's Omicron XBB. 1.5, Original/Omicron BA.4/5 and Moderna's Omicron XBB. 1.5 were available for people aged 12 years and older, according to Healthdirect.

The TGA said it was evaluating Pfizer and Moderna's JN.1 strain vaccine for use in Australia.

[de-temple]

3 Things to Know About FLiRT and LB.1, the New Coronavirus Strains > News > Yale Medicine