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It’s raging through Britain, so, how could this be good news?

The Rapid Spread of Delta’s New, Even More Infectious Cousin Could Actually Be Good News

On Thursday, British scientists released the kind of news everyone’s been dreading as we head into winter—a new, more infectious offshoot of the Delta variant appears to be spreading quickly across Britain.

A study from Imperial College found that the Delta subvariant—known to virologists as AY.4.2—accounted for around 12 percent of thousands of samples gathered in a recent British government survey, which is around 2.8 percent higher when compared to the figures from last month.

It’s previously been suggested that AY.4.2 could be as much as 15 percent more transmissible than the dominant Delta variant, which would make it the most infectious coronavirus strain since the pandemic began.

However, the Imperial scientists say they believe the variant’s spread might not be bad news for one crucial reason—it appears to cause significantly less symptomatic disease. Of the AY.4.2 samples gathered in government survey, only a third had the classic COVID symptoms, whereas half of patients with the original Delta experience those symptoms.

“It is preferentially appearing to be more transmissible,” Imperial epidemiologist Paul Elliott told reporters. “Why it is more transmissible we don’t know. It does seem to be less symptomatic, which is a good thing.”

So, more transmittable but way less symptoms. Some are suggesting that the power of the Chinese coronavirus is waning as it changes

(Reuters) AY.4.2 is thought to be slightly more transmissible, but it has not been shown to cause more severe disease or evade vaccines more easily than Delta.

The researchers said that asymptomatic people might self-isolate less, but also that people with fewer symptoms might spread it less easily through coughing and also may be unlikely to get severely ill.

Of course, the Powers That Be want to keep this going as long as possible

(Yahoo News) When will it all end?

That was the question posed to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top medical adviser to President Biden, during a Wednesday briefing by the White House pandemic response team. It is a question that Americans have been asking, with variation, for months: How much longer will we have to wear masks? When will the sound of a stranger’s cough no longer incite fear of death?

Most broadly of all, when will the pandemic state of emergency finally come to a close, to be replaced by something resembling a pre-pandemic normal?

The answer Fauci offered on Wednesday is unlikely to offer much comfort to the impatient or the exhausted, in a reflection of the perilous period the nation is about to enter. According to an internal pandemic update circulated within the Biden administration on Wednesday, new infections rose by 14.1 percent between Nov. 8 and 15, while test positivity — the portion of diagnostic tests coming back positive — inched up 1.4 points, to 6.5 percent. During the same time period, hospitalizations rose by 5.4 percent. (Deaths fell by 4 percent, an encouraging development possibly reflecting high vaccination rates and the increasing reliance of therapeutic treatments.)

Keep you in fear, keep you under the thumb of Government. Here in Raleigh and Wake County we were told that the mask mandates would be removed once in the infection rate went under 5% (and for Wake, when it was under 50 per 100K). Yet, it is around 3.1, and way under 50 per 100K, and they still refuse to remove the mask mandates. Nor will they answer questions. Of course, our slack, leftist media outlets won’t ask questions, either. Why? Control. In Europe many nations are fearmongering and implementing drastic lockdowns and such, especially on the unvaccinated. And Dr. Doom?

“We want control,” Fauci said. “And I think the confusion is, at what level of control are you going to accept it in its endemicity?”

Yes. Yes you do want control. Those goalposts will always be moved. Oh, and here’s Doctor Doom via Politico (since it’s a daily playbook, if it disappears you can check this from Hot Air)

Mask on, mask off. That as the name of the game for ANTHONY FAUCI at JONATHAN KARL’s book party Tuesday night at Café Milano. As gawkers tried to snap pictures of him indoors not wearing a mask, America’s doc would put it on and take it off depending on whom he was around. SALLY QUINN — who’s known Fauci since his days as a young NIH doctor, when he inspired a love interest in one of her erotic novels — asked him why he was at a party with a mask in hand, not on face. “I said, ‘You seem pretty ambivalent about your mask’ because no one else was wearing one,” Quinn told Playbook. “He said, ‘I just decided that if anyone came up that I didn’t know, I would put my mask on.’”

Quinn added that “paparazzi” were surrounding Fauci trying to get that “gotcha moment” of the Covid czar without a mask on. Guests had to show proof of vaccination to enter the party. “He was being safe,” Quinn said in his defense. “He knew everyone was vaccinated. If it was someone we knew, he would trust them, and if it was somebody else, he didn’t.” Another guest observed Fauci’s mask on/mask off dance, but said that the mask was firmly on when he came to the rescue of a guest who had collapsed. We reached out to Fauci via NIH but didn’t hear back Thursday night.

Well, that’s interesting, because we’re told to wear a mask indoors at all times, even around vaccinated people. In some cases, we are forced to wear it even when we are sitting alone, with no one near us. Even if you’ve had the booster.

Read: Could The New, Even More Infectious, Delta Subvariant Be Good News? »