LISTEN TO WARNINGS FROM UK ON B.1.1.7 VARIANT, PLEASE

 This is from USA Today dated February 21, 2021. Please, please take heed.

The headline:

COVID-19 variant found in UK spreads 'like wildfire.' British experts fear what will happen if US won't lock down

LONDON – On Jan. 4, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson made yet another somber coronavirus-related address to the nation: A variant first identified in Kent, England, was thought to be 50%-70% more infectious. In little more than a week, hospital admissions had increased by nearly a third. Deaths had risen by 20%. Johnson ordered the country's third full lockdown since the start of the pandemic.

"That means," Johnson said, "the government is once again instructing you to stay at home. You may only leave home for limited reasons permitted in law, such as to shop for essentials, to work if you absolutely cannot work from home, to exercise, to seek medical assistance such as getting a COVID test or to escape domestic abuse."

Monday, amid a dramatic drop in coronavirus infections, Britain's leader will unveil his plan for unwinding one of the world's strictest COVID-19 lockdowns. Only Cuba has tougher restrictions in place, according to an index of government measures compiled by Our World in Data, a research unit attached to Oxford University.

Further down:

Simon Clarke, a professor in cellular microbiology at the University of Reading, said there is an emerging body of evidence suggesting that the B.1.1.7 variant is not only more contagious but also more lethal, a possibility initially raised by British scientists. He said there is anecdotal evidence from hospitals, not confirmed by studies, that the B.1.1.7 variant could harm more younger people. He cautioned it was too early to drawn firm conclusions.

He expressed concern about how the United States would deal with B.1.1.7 if, as expected, it becomes entrenched as the dominant variant by the spring.

"U.S. coronavirus waves have been based on slower-moving variants," Clarke said.

And more:

The USA has seen peaks and declines of COVID-19 cases since the first infections were reported in North America in January 2020, but there are concerns that the B.1.1.7 variation is among a number of different variants that could help precipitate a so-called fourth wave of American coronavirus infections.

'It's like we're trying our best to help the virus': A fourth coronavirus wave is looming if the US fails to contain variants, experts say.

Trevor Bedford, an epidemiologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, said in a Twitter thread Thursday that a steady decline in U.S. coronavirus cases that has brought levels back to where they were in late October could be threatened by the "rapid take-off of B.1.1.7." He said there is evidence that the B.1.1.7 variant "will reach 50% frequency in the U.S. perhaps by late March."

In the USA, there were 1,523 cases of B.1.1.7 reported across 42 states as of Feb. 18, according to CDC data. To put that in perspective, though new coronavirus infections in the USA have been falling broadly for about a month, the daily new case count for February still averages about 95,000, according to a USA TODAY analysis of Johns Hopkins University data. In February, U.S. coronavirus deaths have averaged about 2,520 per day.

In Britain, new daily coronavirus case counts have hovered around 12,000 for the past week. Christina Pagel, who leads a team of researchers at University College London who apply mathematics to problems in health care, said the B.1.1.7 variant makes up about 90% of new cases in Britain.

Variants also emerged from Brazil, South Africa and California. Researchers said the United States is almost certainly undercounting cases of the B.1.1.7 variant. The case count has more than quadrupled since Jan. 27.

"It (B.1.1.7) spreads so easily, like wildfire. It's really caught us by surprise," Carl Waldmann, the director of an intensive care unit at a hospital in Reading in southeast England, told German state broadcaster Deutsche Welle.

As the more contagious variant tore through Britain in January, the government warned that hospitals were on the verge of being overwhelmed. There was a steady stream of pleas from doctors, nurses and other health care workers for the public to abide by Johnson's lockdown.

Johnson is no lefty. Back to the article:

Britain has administered more vaccines per 100 people than any other advanced economy except for Israel, according to Our World in Data. There is little data to show how well the vaccines affect new U.K. infections.

Simon Clarke, a professor in cellular microbiology at the University of Reading, said there is an emerging body of evidence suggesting that the B.1.1.7 variant is not only more contagious but also more lethal, a possibility initially raised by British scientists. He said there is anecdotal evidence from hospitals, not confirmed by studies, that the B.1.1.7 variant could harm more younger people. He cautioned it was too early to drawn firm conclusions.

He expressed concern about how the United States would deal with B.1.1.7 if, as expected, it becomes entrenched as the dominant variant by the spring.

"U.S. coronavirus waves have been based on slower-moving variants," Clarke said.

"If a faster-moving one such as B.1.1.7 starts to take off, then you are going to have yourself a problem if you're not prepared to do a strict, broad-based national lockdown," Clarke said, noting that the United States doesn't seem willing to do this.

Unlike Britain's nationwide orders, not all U.S. states have restrictions on travel for leisure, many states offer exemptions that allow restaurants to stay open and many have resisted calls for entertainment venues, gyms and personal care businesses such as hair salons and tattoo parlors to be closed. It is largely up to local officials to decide whether and how to impose U.S. coronavirus restrictions.

Other countries in Europe that have not imposed lockdowns as strict as Britain's have struggled to keep rising cases of the B.1.1.7 variant in check.

"If you want to get B.1.1.7 under control, lockdowns just have to be that much tougher," said Kit Yates, a professor of mathematical biology at the University of Bath, England.

Yates said he believes that when schools in Britain reopen, coronavirus cases are likely to rise again despite new evidence that the B.1.1.7 variant's transmissibility may not be as high as originally thought. It may be closer to 30% to 40%, he said, more contagious than that of the more commonly found variants in the USA.

[Christina] Pagel, [a] University College London researcher, said Britain's latest lockdown has reduced new cases of coronavirus by about 60%. "That's the good news," she said. "The bad news is that we can't control this thing with half-measures."

She said that if the United States can't or won't order a national lockdown similar to Britain's to deal with the B.1.1.7 variant, its best hope may be to "vaccinate its way out.

Pagel cautioned that if the variant first detected in Britain is allowed to circulate too freely in the USA, it could lead to an even more aggressive variation that could evade vaccines or better target younger people.

She said that cases of an older variant could fall rapidly enough that it might look like everything was OK even while a new variant spread.

"Effectively, you have two epidemics going on at the same time where one is shrinking, and one is growing," she said. "That's exactly what happened in the U.K. and seems likely for the U.S."

Watch our federal, state,  and local officials, both Democrat and Republican, as well as union leaders, f**k this up again so more people will needlessly die. Now is the time to prepare to be ready to lock down, not open up everything as if the pandemic is over. I hope to God I am wrong and that the scientists who are saying we could be reaching herd immunity in the US by April are right, not the UK experts.