Work from Home Ye Covid Slaves! By Brian Simpson
Slowly, but steadily, the Covid mandates are being put back in place, with the BA.4 and BA. 5 variants. Masks are recommended but are likely to become mandatory, and work from home “suggestions” are being made. Then it is just a heartbeat to lockdowns and all we have experienced with Covid in the past. Never mind that the journal Nature reports that “Catching an earlier version of SARS-CoV-2 — particularly Omicron — provides some immunity against the two fast-spreading lineages.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01950-2
“The Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants of SARS-CoV-2 have proven to be stealthier at evading people’s immune defences than all of their predecessors.
But recent research shows that previous infection with an older variant (such as Alpha, Beta or Delta) offers some protection against reinfection with BA.4 or BA.5, and that a prior Omicron infection is substantially more effective. That was the conclusion of a study that evaluated all of Qatar’s COVID-19 cases since the wave of BA.4 and BA.5 infections began1.
The work, which was posted on the medRxiv preprint server on 12 July and has not yet been peer reviewed, feeds into broader research on “how different immunities combine with each other”, says study co-author Laith Abu-Raddad, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar in Doha.
Everyone has a different immune history, because people have received different combinations of COVID-19 vaccines and been infected with assorted variants during the course of the pandemic. “Different histories equip people with different immunity against upcoming infection,” says Abu-Raddad. Knowing how these diverse immune responses interact inside a person will be “very important for the future of the pandemic”, he adds.
Natural immunity
To see how much protection previous infection offers against the two Omicron subvariants, Abu-Raddad and colleagues analysed COVID-19 cases recorded in Qatar between 7 May this year — when BA.4 and BA.5 first entered the country — and 4 July. They looked at the number of people known to have been infected previously who tested positive or negative for COVID-19, and identified which infections were caused by BA.4 or BA.5 by examining positive test samples to see whether they contained a protein that these subvariants lack.
The researchers found that infection with a pre-Omicron variant prevented reinfection with BA.4 or BA.5 with an effectiveness of 28.3%, and prevented symptomatic reinfection with either subvariant with an effectiveness of 15.1%. Prior infection with Omicron granted stronger protection: it was 79.7% effective at preventing BA.4 and BA.5 reinfection and 76.1% effective at preventing symptomatic reinfection.
Although it seems counterintuitive to see stronger protection against any reinfection than symptomatic reinfection, the researchers say this effect is in line with previous studies and is probably caused by the estimates having wide confidence intervals.”
“Australians admitted to hospitals from COVID-19 neared record levels on Wednesday as authorities urged businesses to let staff work from home and recommended people wear masks indoors and get booster shots urgently amid a major coronavirus outbreak.
Australia is in the grip of a third Omicron wave driven by the highly transmissible new subvariants, BA.4 and BA.5, with more than 300,000 cases recorded over the past seven days. Authorities say the actual numbers could be double that total, and Wednesday's 53,850 new cases was the highest daily tally in two months.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is resisting pressure to reinstate tough curbs to halt the spread of the virus, including making masks mandatory indoors, though he encouraged people to wear it.
"The truth is that if you have mandates, you've got to enforce them," Albanese told reporters on Wednesday. "Whilst there are mandates on public transport ... not everyone is wearing a mask."
Albanese said businesses and employees must decide together on any work-from-home arrangement, as unions called for employers to do more for their staff.
Employers must go beyond the government's pandemic leave payments and provide paid leave at full pay for workers who need to isolate, and offer free rapid antigen tests, Australian Council of Trade Unions President Michele O'Neil said.
"No worker should have to decide between putting food on the table or isolating with COVID," O'Neil said.
Last week, Australia reinstated support payments for casual workers who have to quarantine.”
The Covid mandates 2.0 are just around the corner, and this time the technocrats will be even more brutal than in round one.
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