It has been reported that 12 people in France have been infected by a new variant from the B. 1.640.2 lineage, according to a study yet to be peer-reviewed by the French Government.
It has 46 mutations and 37 deletions, and the fact that it is showing up almost exactly at the same time that pundits are wondering whether the Omicron variant is actually going to stop the pandemic is no real surprise.
French President Emmanuel Macron told one of the nation’s leading newspapers that he no longer considers the unvaccinated to be French citizens, and that his primary COVID-19 strategy is to continue to “piss them off” until they submit to his COVID-19 mandates.
The remark from Macron, delivered during an interview with French newspaper Le Parisien, has divided French politicians, and even has the country’s Communist Party candidate questioning Macron’s motives.
“I am not about pissing off the French people,” Macron told the readers of Le Parisien on Tuesday. “But as for the non-vaccinated, I really want to piss them off. And we will continue to do this, to the end. This is the strategy. They are the worst enemies” of “democracy” are “lies and stupidity,” then he declared that his government is “putting pressure on the unvaccinated by limiting, as much as possible, their access to activities in social life.”
Macron’s government claims that 90% of its citizens are vaccinated, with him promising to “reduce” this minority with further restrictions.
Observation: at no time in history has a group forcing “compliance” on a populace EVER been the good guys.
And some honest reporting for a change: according to the developer of a microchip linked to a COVID vaccination passport, the mass chipping of humans as a means of verifying compliance is happening “whether we like it or not.“
Disruptive Subdermals developed a scannable implant about the size of a grain of rice, which displays information about COVID-19 vaccine compliance when it is scanned.
The managing director of the tech startup dismissed concerns about a dystopian shift toward a Big Brother society during an interview with the Express.
“This technology exists and is used whether we like it or not,” said Hannes Sjobald.
“I am happy that it is brought into the public conversation,” he added. “New technologies must be broadly debated and understood.”
On Twitter (For now, anyway):
Yep. That is the headline….
It’s a joke how we were ridiculed for saying it would happen!! They can f*** themselves https://t.co/qHXCJGvnIi pic.twitter.com/oIXxxFXmN8— leilani dowding 🌸🚜 ☮️ (@LeilaniDowding) January 3, 2022
Sjoblad asserted in an ambiguous manner that the chip cannot track a person’s location, stating, “They can never tell your location, they’re only activated when you touch them with your smartphone, so this means they cannot be used for tracking anyone’s location.”
(Side note: isn’t this what they said about traffic cameras??)
The company revealed its goal was to work with governments to “transform healthcare on a global scale.”
At the same time, the new IHU variation was raising its head: “For twelve SARS-CoV-positive patients living in the same geographical area of southeastern France, qPCR testing that screen for variant-associated mutations showed an atypical combination,” said Philippe Colson, from IHU Mediterranee Infection, Marseille, France.
However, “it is too early to speculate on virological, epidemiological or clinical features of this IHU variant based on these 12 cases,” Colson said.
In the study, the index patient (the first patient) was a vaccinated adult who had just returned from Cameroon in central Africa.
This just as India reports its first death linked to the Omicron coronavirus; the country now has 2,135 Omicron cases
The health ministry reported India’s first death from COVID-19 caused by the fast-spread Omicron variant on Wednesday. A small group of reporters in New Delhi was told that the number of Omicron cases in the country has now risen to 2135.
The police have been instructed to follow instructions from Covid, according to police commissioner Dr Sukhchain Singh Gill. During the first two-three days, people will be informed of Covid’s instructions. Following that, those in violation will be dealt with. Residents in the district were urged to get vaccinated to prevent the third wave.
In the case of the French variant, mild respiratory symptoms developed three days after he returned. His nasopharyngeal sample collected mid-November 2021, “revealed an atypical combination that did not correspond to the pattern of the Delta variant involved in almost all SARS-CoV-2 infections at that time,” and later to Omicron as well, Colson said.
QPCR screening showed the same combination of mutations in respiratory samples collected from seven other SARS-CoV-2-positive patients in the same geographic area. Two of them were adults, and five were children (under the age of 15).
As recommended by French public health authorities, respiratory samples from these eight patients were sent to the Mediterranee’ Infection Institute at Mediterranee’ Hospital.
“This genotype pattern led to create a new Pangolin lineage named B. 1.640.2, which is a phylogenetic sister group to the old B. 1.640 lineage renamed B. 1.640.1. Both lineages differ by 25 nucleotide substitutions and 33 deletions,” the study said.
“The mutation set and phylogenetic position of the genomes obtained here indicate, based on our previous definition, a new variant we named ‘IHU’,” Colson said.
He added that the data is “another example of the unpredictability of the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants.”
“Overall, these observations show once again the unpredictability of the emergence of new SARS-CoV-2 variants and their introduction from abroad, and they exemplify the difficulty to control such introduction and subsequent spread,” Colson said.
“SARS-CoV-2 variants have become a major virologic, epidemiological and clinical concern, particularly with regard to the risk of escape from vaccine-induced immunity. The emergence of the new variant warrants the increase of genomic surveillance of SARS-CoV-2,” he said.
Does anyone think this is ever going to end?
