‘ BA-BA BLACK SHEEP ‘ - A REMOTE VIEWING HIT ‘ THAT I WROTE ABOUT, POSTED, AND WAS SUBSEQUENTLY ’ HACKED ‘ BY A “ MONKEY FISH FROG ( South Park- ‘ evolution episode ‘ ), “ OR FEMALE (?) “ RETARD FISH SQUIRREL (https://southpark.cc.com/video-clips/uhwgkf/south-park-retard-babies-butt-sex).“
CNN NEWS:
“ As BA.2 subvariant of Omicron rises, lab studies point to signs of severity
By Brenda Goodman, CNN
Updated 2:30 PM ET, Thu February 17, 2022 “
“ CNN)The BA.2 virus -- a subvariant of the Omicron coronavirus variant -- isn't just spreading faster than its distant cousin, it may also cause more severe disease and appears capable of thwarting some of the key weapons we have against Covid-19, new research suggests.
New lab experiments from Japan show that BA.2 may have features that make it as capable of causing serious illness as older variants of Covid-19, including Delta.
And like Omicron, it appears to largely escape the immunity created by vaccines. A booster shot restores protection, making illness after infection about 74% less likely.
BA.2 is also resistant to some treatments, including sotrovimab, the monoclonal antibody that's currently being used against Omicron.
The findings were posted Wednesday as a preprint study on the bioRxiv server, before peer review. Normally, before a study is published in medical journal, it is scrutinized by independent experts. Preprints allow research to be shared more quickly, but they are posted before that additional layer of review.
"It might be, from a human's perspective, a worse virus than BA.1 and might be able to transmit better and cause worse disease," says Dr. Daniel Rhoads, section head of microbiology at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. Rhoads reviewed the study but was not involved in the research.
BA.2 is highly mutated compared with the original Covid-causing virus that emerged in Wuhan, China. It also has dozens of gene changes that are different from the original Omicron strain, making it as distinct from the most recent pandemic virus as the Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta variants were from each other.
Kei Sato, a researcher at the University of Tokyo who conducted the study, argues that these findings prove that BA.2 should not be considered a type of Omicron and that it needs to be more closely monitored.
"As you may know, BA.2 is called 'stealth Omicron,' " Sato told CNN. That's because it doesn't show up on PCR tests as an S-gene target failure, the way Omicron does. Labs therefore have to take an extra step and sequence the virus to find this variant.
"Establishing a method to detect BA.2 specifically would be the first thing" many countries need to do, he says.
"It looks like we might be looking at a new Greek letter here," agreed Deborah Fuller, a virologist at the University of Washington School of Medicine, who reviewed the study but was not part of the research.
Mixed real-world data on subvariant's severity
BA.2 is about 30% to 50% more contagious than Omicron. It has been detected in 74 countries and 47 US states. “
https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/17/health/ba-2-covid-severity/index.html
THE JAPAN TIMES:
“
The 'stealth' subvariant of omicron is spreading in Japan. What impact could it have? “
“ The WHO says BA.1, including lineage BA.1.1, is now present in almost every country and accounted for 96.4% of sequences submitted to the international virus database known as GISAID by the end of January.
But recent data from India, South Africa, the U.K. and Denmark suggest that BA.2 is spreading rapidly around the world. So far, BA.2, which has become the dominant subvariant in Denmark, has been reported in 69 countries, the WHO said in its weekly update on Tuesday.
BA.2 is called the “stealth” version of omicron as it lacks the genetic deletion found on the spike protein of BA.1, making it difficult to detect it via PCR tests conducted in some countries that use the marker as a proxy for detecting omicron cases. But Japan uses another criteria for detecting both BA.1 and BA.2, so Japanese authorities have had an easier time detecting BA.2 cases.
The WHO says omicron is less severe than previous variants but still represents a very high risk globally because more infections means more severe cases and deaths.
In Japan, quarantine checks at airports and seaports have identified 318 cases of BA.2, according to data from the health ministry. Genome surveillance by the National Institute of Infectious Diseases had identified 47 domestic cases by Jan. 30.”
“ Data so far has shown that BA.2 is even more transmissible than the BA.1 subvariant.
The effective reproduction number, or the average number of people infected by a single carrier, for BA.2 is 18% higher than that of BA.1, according to an analysis by Kyoto University professor Hiroshi Nishiura and other experts. A study by Danish scientists, published on the medRxiv preprint server for health sciences, has also shown the secondary attack rate, or the chances of secondary infections in a household, was 39% in BA.2 infected households compared with 29% for BA.1. “
SO, KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN. IT’S NOT OVER YET !
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