COVID - Criminal Operation Violating Individual Democracy

[useapen]

Individual rights in democracy

freedom of conscience or belief. free exercise of religion. privacy in
one's home or place of work from unwarranted or unreasonable intrusions by
the government. ownership and use of private property for personal
benefit.

How American Democrats use COVID.

Influence and alter political elections, destroy businesses, foment
criminal opportunities.

Health authorities and scientists say they are now racing to study
BA.2.86, a new strain of the virus that causes COVID-19, after the highly
mutated variant was spotted spreading in multiple countries around the
world and at least three different U.S. states.

For now, officials say they remain well-equipped to deal with the strain
if it continues to spread. Early assessments suggest current treatments
and tests, as well as upcoming vaccines to be rolled out next month, will
not be rendered useless by BA.2.86.

But a number of questions remain about the variant, nicknamed "Pirola" on
social media, whose mutations could amount to an evolutionary jump on par
with the emergence of the Omicron variant in 2021.

Here's the latest on what we know about the strain.

Is there a new COVID variant?
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and World Health
Organization say they have been closely tracking the emergence of a new,
highly mutated COVID-19 variant that scientists have labeled BA.2.86.

The new variant first raised concerns earlier this month after variant
trackers noticed a handful of new sequences showing up in global virus
databases with a large number of genetic changes different from
circulating strains.

When compared to the XBB.1.5 variant, which drove a wave earlier this year
and was picked out to be targeted by the upcoming fall booster shots,
BA.2.86 has 36 mutations.

Sequences of early Omicron variants in 2021 also had a similar number of
mutations, when compared relative to the original strain of the virus.

BA.2.86's mutations include changes at key parts of the virus that could
help the variant dodge the body's immune defenses from prior infections or
vaccinations.

Authorities still consider BA.2.86 technically a part of the Omicron
variant family, though the WHO told reporters that this could change if
the strain spreads more widely.

"We will use a Greek letter when we have a variant of concern and we won't
hesitate to use those Greek letters should they be needed," Maria Van
Kerkhove, the WHO's COVID-19 technical lead, said Aug. 25.

More could be known soon about the impacts of the strain, from experiments
done by scientists testing the strain's mutations against antibodies for
the virus.

Among them is Peking University Professor Yunglong Cao, whose rapid
assessments of variant abilities to dodge antibodies have played a key
role in helping global authorities judge the threats posed by past
strains.

Cao told CBS News on Aug. 24 he expected to have some data on BA.2.86 by
"early next week."

Where has the new COVID variant BA.2.86 been detected?
At least 13 infections have been reported to the global virus database
GISAID, as of Aug. 28. Four are in Denmark, three are in the U.S., two are
in South Africa, two are in Portugal, one is in Israel and another is in
the United Kingdom. No deaths have been reported, according to a Aug. 24
WHO report.

None of the initial cases had a known "epidemiological link" with each
other, an official for the U.N. agency said Aug. 25, or had compromised
immune systems. Experts have speculated that previous highly mutated
variants arose in immunocompromised patients battling lingering
infections.

The first reported U.S. case was reported from a sample collected on Aug.
3, according to metadata reported to GISAID by a lab at the University of
Michigan. A spokesperson for Michigan's health department said that sample
was collected from an adult who lived in the state's Washtenaw County.

The second U.S. case of BA.2.86 was reported to GISAID from a sample
collected on Aug. 10 at Dulles International Airport in Virginia.
Contractors for CDC's airport testing program had detected the case, in a
woman who had traveled from Japan to the Washington, D.C. area airport.

A third U.S. case of BA.2.86 has been confirmed in Ohio, a spokesperson
for the state's health department told CBS News. Records reported to
GISAID show the sequence was from a sample collected by the Cleveland
Clinic on July 29, from a 26-year-old patient in Ohio's Cuyahoga County.

Ohio had previously confirmed it was investigating a "preliminary
detection" of BA.2.86's distinctive mutations in a wastewater sample with
the CDC. Scientists in several other countries have also announced
spotting at least preliminary signs of the strain in their sewers,
according to Sorin Sion of the EU Sewage Sentinel System for SARS-CoV-2,
including Denmark, Germany, Spain, Switzerland and Thailand.

Marc Johnson, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University
of Missouri, said on social media the Ohio detection was based on results
published from the CDC's sewer testing program. Those were first released
on Aug. 17, from a sample collected in late July from the Ohio city of
Elyria.

A CDC official said the agency expects to be able to determine whether or
not they can formally confirm the detection within two weeks.

Do COVID tests pick up the new COVID variant BA.2.86?
Current COVID-19 tests are expected to still work for BA.2.86, early
analyses suggest.

"Based upon available information at this time, the FDA believes that most
existing tests used to detect COVID-19 appear to be effective with this
variant," FDA spokesperson James McKinney said in an Aug. 28 email.

McKinney said the FDA is continuing to study the performance of current
COVID-19 tests, including through an ongoing relationship with a National
Institutes of Health program that manually rechecks tests against new
samples of the virus. Health authorities also do detailed computer
modeling that can predict when variants might evade current tests.

Tests found to have reduced performance for BA.2.86 will be listed on the
FDA's website, McKinney said.

"The agency will update this page when significant new information becomes
available, including when the FDA's analyses identify tests for which
performance may be impacted for known SARS-CoV-2 variants," McKinney said.

In 2021, the NIH's effort had flagged early signs that the real-world
performance of tests was slipping for new Omicron variants. The FDA
ultimately began to urge Americans to do repeat testing with at-home
COVID-19 rapid antigen tests, after NIH-backed scientists confirmed an
increase in false negative results.

Do the symptoms of the new COVID variant BA.2.86 differ from previous
strains?
There are some promising early anecdotes, but for now it is too early to
know for sure whether BA.2.86 will cause new or worse symptoms.

Michigan's health department said their case was in "an older adult with
mild symptoms and has not been hospitalized." The traveler in Virginia was
asymptomatic, according to the metadata submitted by the CDC's
contractors.

Ohio's health department declined to comment on whether their case was
hospitalized. A Cleveland Clinic spokesperson said they forward to the
state "a random subset of our COVID-positives which includes both
inpatients and outpatients" for sequencing.

In Denmark, the country's Statens Serum Institut said their first three
cases did not have symptoms "other than those normally seen in the course
of COVID-19."

"What we would need to make sure we understand is the full spectrum of
disease that is caused by BA.2.86. My reservation in giving a lot of
detail around this is I don't want to draw any conclusions coming from
eight or nine patients," the WHO's Van Kerkhove said.

The strain's emergence comes as COVID-19 hospitalizations had already been
rising around the country driven by less-mutated variants. So far, those
trends do not appear to be worsening more around early sightings of the
strain.

"At this time, locations where this variant have been detected have not
experienced increases in transmission indicators (e.g., cases, emergency
department visits) or hospitalizations out of proportion to those seen in
neighboring locations," the CDC said the CDC said in a risk assessment
published Aug. 23.

Will vaccines work for the new COVID variant BA.2.86?
Upcoming vaccines are expected to help for BA.2.86, though more needs to
be known.

The variant's emergence comes as health authorities are preparing for the
rollout of new COVID-19 vaccines next month, which are expected to be
available soon after a meeting of the CDC's outside vaccine advisers on
Sept. 12.

Those shots were designed to target the XBB.1.5 variant, which at the time
of the Food and Drug Administration's pick in June was seen as the option
best suited to further broaden immunity for the virus.

If BA.2.86 becomes dominant, Bloom thinks the strain's mutations could be
enough to make those shots a poor match to fend off infections from the
virus.

However, Bloom says the body's other immune defenses could still work to
blunt the strain's danger. The CDC says it currently assesses that the
updated vaccine "will be effective at reducing severe disease and
hospitalization."

"I would note that while strain specific neutralizing antibodies (which
can be escaped by new variants) provide the best protection against
infection, there are also broader mechanisms of immunity elicited by
vaccination and infection that provide some protection against severe
disease," Bloom said in an Aug. 17 email to CBS News.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-covid-variant-ba286-2023-what-to-know-
experts/