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The fact that this has been discovered in Africa doesn’t mean that it originated there in the first place. > Several scientists said they suspected that the va

The fact that this has been discovered in Africa doesn’t mean that it originated there in the first place. > Several scientists said they suspected that the variant had been spreading undetected in countries with lackluster sequencing efforts before it surfaced in Botswana and South Africa, giving it more time to scatter globally. Nevertheless, European nations did not find the variant until after South Africa alerted them to it, demonstrating the gaps in their own surveillance efforts. [0] More on this can also be found here [1]. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/27/world/africa/coronavirus-omicron-africa.html?referringSource=articleShare https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/27/world/africa/coronavirus-... [1] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/graemecodrington_interesting-update-from-the-botswana-government-activity-6870630515469238272-Kw8q https://www.linkedin.com/posts/graemecodrington_interesting-...

pedalpete 5y ago
This is correct, but I don't believe it devalues the original comment any less. Any part of the world where vaccination rates are lower allows (I assume) any variant to grow in that region, and then makes it easier to export to other parts of the world.
- mattrighetti 5y ago
  That seems to be disputed too, this is an interesting read: Increases in COVID-19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries and 2947 counties in the United States.[0] > At the country-level, there appears to be no discernable relationship between percentage of population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases in the last 7 days > Notably, Israel with over 60% of their population fully vaccinated had the highest COVID-19 cases per 1 million people in the last 7 days. The lack of a meaningful association between percentage population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases is further exemplified, for instance, by comparison of Iceland and Portugal. Both countries have over 75% of their population fully vaccinated and have more COVID-19 cases per 1 million people than countries such as Vietnam and South Africa that have around 10% of their population fully vaccinated. > There also appears to be no significant signaling of COVID-19 cases decreasing with higher percentages of population fully vaccinated Of course that could be different for third world countries. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8481107/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8481107/
  - ant6n 5y ago
    That article is garbage, full of randomly picked data points, not accounting for other variables, blatant misinterpretations and convenient omissions. Anti-vaxxers love posting it.
    - mattrighetti 5y ago
      Can you elaborate more on that? Legitimate question, I came across this a couple days ago on some other thread here on HN.
      - YZF 5y ago
        Can you think of some issues with this study? legitimate question. Looking at one data point here. Israel. The data point pretty much represents the peak of the wave caused by the Delta variant. The story in Israel goes that the vaccines worked so well against the previous variants that the entire country went back to normal. But with 60% of the population vaccinated and Delta the effective R number is easily over 1 when there's no other measures in place. Once Israel introduced some new measures (and booster shots), most of the measures are around limits to not-vaccinated people btw, their case rate went down by a factor of 20! So what does this tell us about vaccines, covid, and this "study"?
        nradov 5y ago
        "Experts: Vaccine Immunity Waning, Signs Israel Facing Fifth COVID Wave" https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/experts-vaccine-immunity-waning-signs-israel-facing-fifth-covid-wave-1.10410409 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/experts-vaccine-immunity...
        YZF 5y ago
        Right (also "in part because the vaccination of children takes time to come into effect"). They are hovering around R=1 with very minimal restrictions and still a significant amount of people that won't take the vaccine ("citing the fact that a third of the population remains unprotected. This refers to 670,000 unvaccinated Israelis, more than a million people who haven’t received the booster, and children under 12"). They're making up for the vaccine coverage to some extent by: 1. Lots of people got sick. Israel has a young population and a very strong healthcare system so they were able to manage a very high daily case rate per capita. 2. Booster shots. 3. And now, vaccinating children. I don't think anyone knows yet exactly what sort of waning effect you have after the third booster. It's also hard to say what portion of the change is behavioral changes vs. the vaccine's wane. Now the new variant completely changes the calculus yet again.
- brokenmachine 5y ago
  I read somewhere that the new strains are probably created inside people whose immune system is not able to clear the virus, thus allowing it to mutate and create new strains. I guess those people would be more likely to be exposed at all in countries with less vaccination though.
- missingcolours 5y ago
  Given the apparently low efficacy of the current batch of vaccines in preventing infection and transmission, I'm not sure that it's any harder for variants to occur in, say, New Mexico than South Africa. If the case rates are higher, the odds of variants is higher.
  - londons_explore 5y ago
    I'm not sure this is true. Mutation happens with approximately fixed probability with each copy made. "peak viral load did not differ by vaccination status or variant type"[1] [1]: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(21)00648-4/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...
JamesBarney 5y ago
It doesn't prove it originated there but all of the evidence points that it doing so. Also [1] doesn't mention what countries the diplomats were coming from my guess would be an African country.
Aperocky 5y ago
Given the large amount of mutation in this variant, theory point to high likelihood of this being evolved from a single individual with compromised immune system, likely a person in advanced stages of HIV infection. Source: https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/new-concerning-variant-b11529 https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/new-concernin... Globally speaking, most of the HIV positives live in sub-saharan Africa, with South Africa having 17.30% of adults carrying HIV, and countries around it in similar ballpark. This points to the variant being evolved in South Africa or its neighbors Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_HIV/AIDS_adult_prevalence_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_HIV/AIDS_...

pedalpete 5y ago

This is correct, but I don't believe it devalues the original comment any less. Any part of the world where vaccination rates are lower allows (I assume) any variant to grow in that region, and then makes it easier to export to other parts of the world.

mattrighetti 5y ago
That seems to be disputed too, this is an interesting read: Increases in COVID-19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries and 2947 counties in the United States.[0] > At the country-level, there appears to be no discernable relationship between percentage of population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases in the last 7 days > Notably, Israel with over 60% of their population fully vaccinated had the highest COVID-19 cases per 1 million people in the last 7 days. The lack of a meaningful association between percentage population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases is further exemplified, for instance, by comparison of Iceland and Portugal. Both countries have over 75% of their population fully vaccinated and have more COVID-19 cases per 1 million people than countries such as Vietnam and South Africa that have around 10% of their population fully vaccinated. > There also appears to be no significant signaling of COVID-19 cases decreasing with higher percentages of population fully vaccinated Of course that could be different for third world countries. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8481107/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8481107/
- ant6n 5y ago
  That article is garbage, full of randomly picked data points, not accounting for other variables, blatant misinterpretations and convenient omissions. Anti-vaxxers love posting it.
  - mattrighetti 5y ago
    Can you elaborate more on that? Legitimate question, I came across this a couple days ago on some other thread here on HN.
    - YZF 5y ago
      Can you think of some issues with this study? legitimate question. Looking at one data point here. Israel. The data point pretty much represents the peak of the wave caused by the Delta variant. The story in Israel goes that the vaccines worked so well against the previous variants that the entire country went back to normal. But with 60% of the population vaccinated and Delta the effective R number is easily over 1 when there's no other measures in place. Once Israel introduced some new measures (and booster shots), most of the measures are around limits to not-vaccinated people btw, their case rate went down by a factor of 20! So what does this tell us about vaccines, covid, and this "study"?
      - nradov 5y ago
        "Experts: Vaccine Immunity Waning, Signs Israel Facing Fifth COVID Wave" https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/experts-vaccine-immunity-waning-signs-israel-facing-fifth-covid-wave-1.10410409 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/experts-vaccine-immunity...
        YZF 5y ago
        Right (also "in part because the vaccination of children takes time to come into effect"). They are hovering around R=1 with very minimal restrictions and still a significant amount of people that won't take the vaccine ("citing the fact that a third of the population remains unprotected. This refers to 670,000 unvaccinated Israelis, more than a million people who haven’t received the booster, and children under 12"). They're making up for the vaccine coverage to some extent by: 1. Lots of people got sick. Israel has a young population and a very strong healthcare system so they were able to manage a very high daily case rate per capita. 2. Booster shots. 3. And now, vaccinating children. I don't think anyone knows yet exactly what sort of waning effect you have after the third booster. It's also hard to say what portion of the change is behavioral changes vs. the vaccine's wane. Now the new variant completely changes the calculus yet again.
brokenmachine 5y ago
I read somewhere that the new strains are probably created inside people whose immune system is not able to clear the virus, thus allowing it to mutate and create new strains. I guess those people would be more likely to be exposed at all in countries with less vaccination though.
missingcolours 5y ago
Given the apparently low efficacy of the current batch of vaccines in preventing infection and transmission, I'm not sure that it's any harder for variants to occur in, say, New Mexico than South Africa. If the case rates are higher, the odds of variants is higher.
- londons_explore 5y ago
  I'm not sure this is true. Mutation happens with approximately fixed probability with each copy made. "peak viral load did not differ by vaccination status or variant type"[1] [1]: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(21)00648-4/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...

JamesBarney 5y ago

It doesn't prove it originated there but all of the evidence points that it doing so. Also [1] doesn't mention what countries the diplomats were coming from my guess would be an African country.

Aperocky 5y ago

Given the large amount of mutation in this variant, theory point to high likelihood of this being evolved from a single individual with compromised immune system, likely a person in advanced stages of HIV infection. Source: https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/new-concerning-variant-b11529 https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/new-concernin... Globally speaking, most of the HIV positives live in sub-saharan Africa, with South Africa having 17.30% of adults carrying HIV, and countries around it in similar ballpark. This points to the variant being evolved in South Africa or its neighbors Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_HIV/AIDS_adult_prevalence_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_HIV/AIDS_...