If you feel unwell with a bad throat and a temperature you may well have caught one of the new strains of Covid circulating this autumn.
XFG, called Stratus by some, and NB.1.8.1, known as Nimbus, are now the most common variants being passed around in the UK, according to officials, external.
Experts say these do not appear to pose any bigger threat than previous types of Covid or make people feel more ill.
But recent genetic changes the virus has acquired may make infections more likely.
Have you got a razor blade sore throat?
It is usual for viruses to evolve as they spread between people over time. When the changes become significantly different, the new virus types are known as variants.
Covid can still cause a wide range of symptoms, including headache, coughing, a blocked or running nose and exhaustion, making it difficult to distinguish from a cold or flu.
If you think you have Covid you should avoid contact with vulnerable people and stay at home if possible.
If you have symptoms and need to leave the house, advice remains that you should wear a face covering. Washing hands regularly and using and disposing tissues in bins can reduce the spread of this and other respiratory illnesses.
For a sore throat, drinking plenty of fluids and having a teaspoon of honey, externalmay help, the NHS says.
According to the Royal College of GPs, rates of Covid are now increasing across the UK, external, especially in the very young and elderly.
Surely Covid has just replaced the Spanish, Asian and Hong Kong flu as the annual flu (as variants of those did in their turn)? Pandemics turn into normality for years to come.
Likely not. Corona viruses have been around for a very long time - centuries to millennia. The extraordinarily novel and way in which they evolve through “drift and shift,” particularly the latter with more sophisticated changes in the proteins, means that it’s too impractical and likely ineffective to chase variants with new vaccines.
Better to at least address any new variants than to shrug and say “Oh well” and let nature kill us off.
Were it not for vaccines, most of us who are still living would have polio, scars from chicken pox, measles, mumps, and carrying HIV!
Of course there will always be new variants of viruses, but to roll over, listen to the likes RFK, Jr and his fools, it will be one more disaster waiting to happen.
Good catch, and in a rush typing, my intention was to say, “methodology variants” which is very different. Investment in virus drift is practical, but big shifts related to changing mechanisms will make the justification for starting-from-scratch vaccines for an increasingly evolving virus much harder.
The current mRNA and spike protein vaccines are presently the most effective mechanisms and will not require the billion dollar investment, but major shifts would. It’s predicted that the speed of mutation have researchers saying new mechanisms for addressing the virus will not be able to outrun that virus evolution (such as immunity boosting, antibody innovation like the monoclonals) making the old technology ineffective and therefore not economically feasible.
Whether underwritten by the government or not, mutational shifts and the cost/benefits of prioritizing research dollars elsewhere (such as focus on cancer research) have the research community and government increasingly hesitant to put further money behind significant shift variants. It’s a difficult and painful choice. Rhino viruses, for example, behind the common cold, are attributed to the concomitant respiratory deaths of a million children (inarguably important than we older people) in developing countries every year, but the research dollars and the incredibly fast evolution of variants have research at a standstill.
These viruses are incredible in their success, and they aren’t even technically living things. We just have to hold our breaths that variants are more of the drift sort than shift.
I know a few people who’ve had this new strain, at least the one that gives a hoarse throat. It can last a good 9 days and one or two do seem to have a rough time of it.
Or, we can just read it for ourselves when Googled… The premise that new viral evolution will outpace and render current mRNA and spike protein vaccines completely ineffective is not supported by current scientific evidence. While viral mutations do reduce vaccine effectiveness against infection over time, especially with newer variants like Omicron, mRNA technology offers a flexible and cost-effective platform that has successfully adapted to these changes. This continuous innovation capability makes developing new vaccine mechanisms, not replacing them, a more economically feasible strategy.
Current vaccine adaptability vs. viral evolution
** Waning protection against infection, but not severe disease: Studies on newer SARS-CoV-2 subvariants have found that vaccine efficacy against mild infections decreases over time and with new variants. However, first-generation and updated vaccines have continued to provide substantial protection against severe disease, hospitalization, and death. This suggests that the existing vaccine strategy remains effective against the most dangerous outcomes of the virus.emphasised text*
Perhaps you could have simply posted the link? I find so many of your posts are copied/edited from Google.
Are you doing this again Respectfully, have you forgotten? To spark your memory, the last time it was in regard to absorption of mitochondria as a leading theory in the origins of life.
These are nothing like the same as the present round of Covid and associated viruses RN, and neither are the vaccines… They do not work the same as the old type vaccines.
They stimulate your Immune system to make the vaccine work more efficiently on Covid or related viruses, but by stimulating your immune system they will make you prone to other infections.
They are not harmless pathogens, and it isn’t temporary…
But as RN states, the old type vaccines prevented polio - chicken pox - measles - mumps - and carrying HIV…
These were good vaccines and were vigorously tested over a couple of years…Not cobbled together in three months before they could understand the long term implications…
Respectfully, have you forgotten? To spark your memory, the last time it was in regard to absorption of mitochondria as a leading theory in the origins of life.
They do not work the same as the old type vaccines.
.