https://www.theage.com.au/world/euro...28-p59cu0.html

In a statement, the WHO said it skipped Nu for clarity and Xi to avoid causing offence generally.

“‘Nu’ is too easily confounded with ‘new,’ and ‘Xi’ was not used because it is a common last name,” the WHO said, adding that the agency’s “best practices for naming disease suggest avoiding ‘causing offence to any cultural, social, national, regional, professional or ethnic groups.‘”

Those best practices were outlined in a May 2015 document issued by the agency. The organisation said at the time that it wanted to “minimise unnecessary negative effects on nations, economies and people” when naming infectious diseases.

FFS SA doing 14 day quarantine stints again for international arrivals. NSW and Vic 3 days. What’s the bloody point of getting vaccinated, there will always be new variants is this how the reaction is going to be moving forward.

Just like the beginning of this year PoppaJo. Had just gone back to 100% pay and then Delta. We wont be able to keep the house this time. We have only just managed to hold onto it this year. I am tired. The stress of not knowing if we are going to keep getting paid is taking its toll. Meanwhile the executive team and managers still get 100% and couldnt give a flying f%^k whether staff lose their house, marriage or in some cases minds.

Yet another great screw up by government and NSW health. Lets restrict movement to the country AFTER it has arrived in Australia. They dont care, they still continue getting paid, in fact it has secured them more time in their roles/positions.

I feel for you Servo, I genuinely do, but given this thing was only announced by SA on 24/11, nominated as a VOC on 26/11, and the Omicron positive cases in NSW arrived on 23rd November, I'm not sure how much quicker you realistically think any authorities could have acted.

As someone said yesterday, the only damage from this thing so far has been indirect - the knee jerk reactions of governments in attempting to buy some time. Anecdotal evidence is emerging from both SA and Israel that illness is mild in the vaccinated. Anti-virals in the pipeline will still work. There is some good news out there.

I know it's tough but try not to get sucked in by the doom merchants. Even Brett Sutton said yesterday that in no way are we back to square one. Hopefully governments will listen and borders will remain open.

All the best to you Servo. Take care of yourself.

Hopefully with the statement from Sutton in Victoria that its impossible to keep out the strategy to 'live' with it will be the primary direction of at least Victoria. That has little comfort for particularly international aviation as its quite apparent already the borders are slamming shut and travel will stop. All this will do is really dent any comeback to travel overseas as people come to realise Covid ain't going away anytime soon. Travel plans are best to be shelved until something significant happens that says you won't have your plans and money lost to the ether time and again.

The cycle of new variant is getting faster , Pfizer saying 100 days to make booster , oil has gained %50 of its losses , futures back up in states . Borders will be closed just in time to reopen . Whiplash will be only concern .

100 days to CREATE the new vaccine. Another 9 months to manufacture sufficient quantities and then actually get them into people. Or in short, a year to get back to where we are now with around 90% fully vaccinated.

however I heard an interview this morning with the South African doctor who was the first to find this new strain. She seemed not to be overly concerned as it appears that while it is more infectious, the symptoms are mild with no hospitalisations. So far of course and we will need another two or three weeks to confirm. But the sharemarkets are bouncing off their days low quite convincingly. I have bought in. So fingers crossed this will be a storm in a Petri dish.

No they are not, no it won’t.
Israel has gone hard but they always do.

Australia’s international border is OPEN.

“We can start SHIPPING in one hundred days” is what he actually said.

dr dre, thanks but that’s a study of those who had the jab, 43 and I were on about those that hadn’t

I watched the same interview in the UK, closely followed by another specialist warning that the SA age and comorbidity demographics are markedly different from those of many Western populations, so no conclusions can be drawn yet. As you say, another two of three weeks of data gathering required, during which politicians and their advisors across the Western world will (hopefully) prepare for the worst, while we all hope for the best.

This may or may not be relevant

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/hea...he-delta-beast

"Xi" is the name of the president of China so naming a virus variant after him wouldn't have gone down well. Most of the cases of the new variant were in unvaccinated people, so the present vaccine seems to offer some level of protection and most of the cases only had mild symptoms. With the start of the vaccination campaign being nearly a year ago, most people would be looking at another jab next year anyway. We're in a much better position to deal with the new variant now compared to being totally unprepared for the initial outbreak. Defences are up and we're learning how to live with COVID.

As predicted, all borders never to open , still can’t go to many places in Australia. Will not get to WA until the masses form a civil war at the border .
we’re mostly 90% vaxed and there is really no concessions.

Foxxster, the people in "little" Australia couldn't give a stuff about the NHS, so he lost me in the first ten seconds and went downhill from there. A mocking tone of voice when talking dangerous nonsense really isn't the way to change anyone's opinions.

Australian border is open.

We can travel overseas without an exemption.

Australians can return with a 72 hour isolation.

Only WA and QLD are holding up the border freedoms.

Strange that some people always single out WA and QLD and ignore SA, TAS and NT, all of which have restrictions on international arrivals in excess of 72 hours. I wonder why that is?

Because WA and QLD have the most obnoxious premiers.

I think you proved the point StudentinDebt was alluding to.

Reports on the radio just now that Jetstar have cancelled all flights to WA until the end of January. Looking at the Jetstar web site, it appears to be true.