well come to the alec salmon. sure. were we examined the covert resurgence with the armor convenient, sweeping through country after country in the u. k. in france. new cases are running at 1000000 a week and in the usa by over 3000000. despite the fact that armor con seems substantially less potent had been previous streams, particularly for the fully vaccinated, the sheer volume of cases has health services buckling under the pressure. today we turned to the top expertise across the world and in the u. k. to tell us the progress of the vaccination program internationally, and at what stage, the vidas is likely to move it from pandemic to the endemic feeds. first, doc digital kemp said she general of the sole faith international vaccination institute has consistently warned on the dangers of a corona vidas vacant, emerging 8 of africa that could threaten all of the progress meet. then the autopay

smith of cambridge university examines the development of dividers and speculates on the likelihood of human kind, learning to live with this crone of ideas. but 1st you teach e mails i missed is, are now shows over the holiday period. let's see a couple of quits. tell you what alex a chevy palace. i think you would be fantastic. you've got the composure. you've got the structure. you've got the top and trousers. i think you've got the dangly legs up. won't be perfect. i would love you to do it. i think you would be fantastic. now past you've got the next. you got the shoot. you've got the body, you're just perfection. you would we fantastic. strictly speaking louis, you be rubbish as well. one of my favorite actors and a voice i use often when i get those phone calls from this call centers that want to sell you something, i don't think you are on the name's john. i don't know what you want. i just need to know how long you've been registered at your current address. if you're looking

for rumps of i don't have money, i do have a very particular set of skills skills i've acquired over a long period of time skills nightmare for people like you can call that right at the very talented kit. robbins and louis nicholas and further, hamid says, fantastic. so couldn't stop laughing. amber love it says last week she was excellent and had us instead chess kim robinson luther quite a hilarious and just what we need right now. thank you to all at the alex salmon show and a happy and safe new year from amber and, and you were here nicholas hes, absolutely brilliant. all over the best edge is couple of days later by bit tonight i got a breath of fresh air sanky. and finally, craig jackson said cheerfully, fanny watched it twice 32nd time funny than the 1st nor date we'll watch again and again. and i'm glad we could have some late relief over the festive season, but now back to the serious business of croon,

a virus which faces us all. now even in countries heavily vaccinated on the con has broken suit and fet millions, although the vaccines have been successful and limiting the impact of devices. however, what will be the position and the many countries who have as yet hardly begun mass vaccinations, doctor's drawn, came guest, his assessment to alex daughter cam. welcome back to the i'll examine, shall my pleasure. hello, what you happy new year? happy year of 2 years. well no, it's little currently in section me what'll wade and conscious highly vaccinated come to light? the yuki france, america, the number of people in faith is running a millions per week from the on the convenient. but in korea, it's just a few 1000. i to explain the differences between some come to switch or are heavily infected by the new variant and others which seemed to be as yet escaping. so i

think, you know, the, if we think about lines of defense, and really if we think about cobra as a war, i mean, the 1st line of defense of the things that we can all do that we know prevent infection itself that would be distancing masks, avoiding crowds, good hygiene, hand washing and things. the 2nd line of defense is vaccination. and you know, korea is up into the 80 percent range now and for full vaccination as well. and you know, many of the countries are struggling to get above 70 percent. i mean, the united states are still in the 60 percent range. imagine the united states has 350000000 people. that's 40 percent of 350000000. that's 120000000 and backs. and each one of them, a potential target for the virus. the 3rd line of defense of the things that we do medically, you know, we can treat people, now we have good drugs, we get better oral, we have a solution which keeps people from interacting other people. and the final thing

are the things that governments can do, and they are things that we really hate, you know, things like that same passes and passports and all these things. but the governments have to do that. and when you look at asia or australia, the government were very effective in mobilizing people to support the idea behind isolation, behind masks, behind distancing. and so that's actually still working as a 1st line of defense. adding on to that now the layer vaccination and good treatment. you know, you really are able to impact cobra. 119 a lot better than, than places where you don't have that 1st line of defense. i think the other thing about oma crime is, you know, and again, you know, and, and unfortunately omicron is not the end of the greek alphabet. it's not the omega . so we're going to have very conditional variance develop. but micron has the ability to accept people who've been vaccinated and to people who've been naturally impacted. now of course vaccination does what it's supposed to do,

even with we know it reduces hot ation. we know it reduces death. so we have to vaccinate unvaccinated populations, and that means you know, special inducements, getting people and getting children vaccinated really important, you know, we started to see here in korea, a number of outbreaks in child care settings. and then the government has really made a push to get parents to vaccinate their kids. and in countries, you know, like the u. k or, or in korea where 95 percent of children are vaccinated against measles. it seems almost inconceivable that we couldn't get parents to be concerned enough to vaccinate their children against coding. so are you saying that level to seems to show the school a been a key vector of the, of the infection in this latest, really? as it has been a vaccinated who are the and vaccinated now are the people who didn't get vaccinated during the initial rounds during the initial push and then children. so

in the united states, we're seeing record numbers, numbers of children being hospitalized. we're seeing increasing numbers of children all over the world, getting sick now, you know, they don't get as sick as adults, but it doesn't take much. i mean, we don't have as many pediatric beds in hospitals so that it isn't going to take as much to fill them up. and that would be a horrible thing. looking at the statistics into lustily, totally explain the whole, the france and the u. k. of america, millions of cases a week with us. many countries nafrica, relatively unvaccinated, still recording cases in the law. so since i was shot to the spot to split, that's a great question. and it actually raises the the issue that there are actually 3 gaps. the 1st gap is, you know, been, we've been talking about this for the past year is the supply of vaccine. so high

income countries preferentially got vaccine 1st loan can countries got it and, and are still receiving it. 91 percent of those people living in low income countries have not seen the 1st dose of actually the 2nd gap and this is becoming clear now as faxing supply is becoming less of an issue. is the vaccination? yeah. so again, just because you have that doesn't mean the country is going to deployed effectively and is that that magical threshold of her protection going to be at 70 percent? probably not. 80 percent. again, we're looking like it may not be, you know, 9095 percent or will we ever get there? there are some people are saying, you know, we're going to have to get through this the old fashioned way. yes. we can keep people out of the hospital with vaccination, but you know, kobe will develop and mutants will arise and eventually people become exposed and, and you know, will be relatively protected. and i guess the final gap, and this is when we haven't talked much about, it's a $2000000000.00 gap and diagnostics. so when you look at the high income countries,

they're doing hundreds of coping tests per $100000.00 people in the population. when you look in africa, it's almost 0. so they're not going, you know, you only find an infection, you look for the other part of it is the sequencing get, you know, where the mutants arising mutants are arising and outbreaks. there were outbreaks in africa that we weren't aware of and mutants or have arisen out of, of them like the they did the door now the credit for the delta mutant in india. so these gaps are the source of problems there, prolonging coping and they're generating variance. and the variance have the potential to undermine the progress that we've made in the development of vaccines . and your assessment for adults lead to almost want to mabe's from unvaccinated country somewhere africa. all was a close spacious interaction between humans and animals when we have it all

mcclellan come from another great question. so remember, breaks generate variance and variance generate outbreaks and it's a vicious cycle. and it's thought that all micron road, somewhere in southern africa, possibly as a result of an infection of a person with an immuno compromising condition. and you can imagine several, but a common one would be, you know, h i, v infection which suppresses the body's ability to respond to infection. so unlike host not infect that h, i'd be an h, i. v infected person is immune system doesn't jump on the virus and suppress it and kick it out of the body in 2 weeks. what happens is the infection is prolonged every time the body. it's kind of like the immune system. the defensive system is moving in slow motion. so as it throws a punch, the virus dodges as it throws another punch the virus started. so instead of being something where the immune system knocks the virus out,

the virus is able to adapt and evolve against the mean system. and so it's thought that maybe on the credit arose in a situation like that because it has so many mutations in it. i mean, many of them we've seen before, but never in this particular combination and never so many and number as we see with suddenly standpoint of the intellectual box. they solicitude, if you were to have a rolling call of this new year of us 2022 to the leaders. what would that be? so 2021 was the year vaccines 2022 should be the year of vaccination. so all those people in the world who are invested in and that would be about, well, just under 40 percent, now i've not received the single dose and 90 percent of the people and low income countries have not been vaccinated at all. we need to vaccinate everybody, and now, you know, as i'm a kind of spreading, we recognize that we may need booster doses as well. so, vaccination,

complete vaccination, maybe the original series, the 2, the 2 jobs got originally plus a booster. and you know, we need to get boosters every 6 months. i hope not. that may be unrealistic. but it's going to be very important to make sure that people are fully vaccinated in order to gain the benefit of vaccination, reducing hospitalizations and dr. kim, increasingly, in policy makers, we hear the, the phrase we're going to have to learn to live with us. it's not possible you've been kind of going to have to adapt to the presence of this virus. this condition isn't going to be ever with us. yes. so in particular among the current versus co 19, you know, as it's evolved, as it's infected, more and more people. as we've rolled out back scenes, we're going to have to start thinking about this. probably the same way we think about influenza or the flu. that there may be additional or changes in the virus

that require additional vaccinations. we hope that at some point the research that that many groups are doing to develop what we call a pan cobra. 1900 vaccine vaccine works against potentially the current and future maintenance or a pan corona virus. that's the one that works against. not only this current of ours that causes coping. but the corona virus that causes the middle east respiratory syndrome where the original sars current of ours that up that up pan corona virus actually may actually protect us even better against potential upgrade in the future. but that's actually work, it's years away. and so for now, i think the idea that we're going to have to adjust to this, the countries are going to have to back, that we have to do everything possible to preserve life, to preserve human rights and the bill you people to, to make informed choices and then finally, to preserve livelihood. so you know, the old life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness comes back in

a different way. we look at a pandemic, you know, we've been living with influenza for millennia. we're going to have to, to adjust and do what we can now tempered and given an additional weapons to protect life by medical science. but this is something the countries are going to have to deal with out of policy will go to job kim. thank you. so much for joining us once again. on the alex, i'm sure. thank you again. coming up after the break, alex turns to cambridge universities dr. chris smith, for an explanation as to why fi this is not yet under control. join us in ah, ah, is your media a reflection of reality?

in the world transformed what will make you feel safer? isolation for community. are you going the right way or are you being led somewhere? direct. what is true? what is great? in the world corrupted, you need to descend. ah, so join us in the depths will remain in the shallows. price fixing is the problem. if you want a free market, you've got all, let the market be free. you can have half of the market free. and then half the market fixed the you end up with the problem that we have today.

welcome back dr. chris message throughout the crisis has been one of the most effective communicators on the development of the virus. he now speaks to alex donica smith. welcome back to the alex simon's show and happy new year. yes, indeed, happy new year. of course, chris's new year, new valiant. because it was different as this strain of the virus from the other streams like like delta. well, they're all part of the same family. and they all there for related because they are all corona viruses and they're corona viruses which are part of this coded 19 family. but when i'm a chrome was 1st detected in southern africa, it was actually quite see who is the g p. and in south africa who 1st noticed the a slew of patients coming to her surgery with similar symptoms. but quite remote from the holy truancy that we've been using to diagnose covey. prior to that time

of loss of sense of smell and taste, new coff high fever. these patients were presenting a bit differently. they had a sort of scratch, she saw throat that of a fever. a bit of a coffin felt very, very tired, but otherwise they were pretty trivially on well. and it was thanks to her spotting that. there was some pattern and testing these people that actually own the kron came to light. otherwise it probably wouldn't do. but when she tested these patients, that's when really the alarm bells began to ring because the genetic code said no, oh may chrome, but oh my god. and what they showed is a very big group of mutations or changes 50 or so genetic spelling mistakes in this particular virus compared to the previous strains. we've seen some of those genetic changes we had seen before, someone knew, but we've never seen so many of them all in one place at the same time with a big concentration of them in the part of the virus code that it used to make the

outer co to the virus, and specifically the spike that it uses to get into our cells. and that's the thing that was in all the vaccines, which is why people were concerned. we might have a very transmissible bearing on our hands. that transpired to be absolutely the, but because of ours is also changed so dramatically. it's altered, it's modus operandi. it's changed tactics. it gets into our cells in a different way. and the consequence of that is, it seems to be producing a less of a illness. when it does, in fact, people, despite being able to infect many more people than previous variance. but can we tell if, if alma, on developed some point in the late last year when dr. c. a dental fight it or has it been sleeping somewhere for, for the last year or so and only as no detective because to manifest the system like so for africa health system, we'll do test. we don't know, the likelihood is this is what we call a de novo mutation in the sense that it hasn't circulated broadly. and

the profile of changes, it has strongly suggests that this has been developing or growing soon. a single individual actually for a long period of time, we saw a similar thing with the so called kent or alpha variance about a year ago. and this was suggested to have arisen in the u. k. in an individual who was immunosuppressed. and if you are immunosuppressed, you don't fight the virus off quite as well as someone who's not immunosuppressed. and this gives the virus lots of time to adapt change and evolve within an individual. seeing a partially mean response and therefore learning something about and adapting to our immune responses. it's possible that in that part of southern africa where this omicron baron evolved and emerged from because it is very high prevalence, that immune disabling diseases. chiefly h i v. where in some parts of south africa you looking at the prevalence of 50 percent or more of the population treated thankfully most of them,

but many not. this means you're, you've got virus infecting people with an impaired immune response on top of malnutrition, poor living conditions. and so, and all of which can conspire to make the situation worse. that could have led to the elaboration of all these changes in this virus. and the production of only chromos, one theory, we don't know for sure at the moment if that's the right one way back in the 890 s, there was what we thought was a flu pandemic. in fact, it was called the russian flu. and this was a pandemic. it led to very wide scale mortality, and including members of queen victoria household actually died of the so called flu pandemic. but in recent years, scientists have done some molecular forensics, and what they think actually was happening was that was a corona virus. in fact, it was a bo vinyl cow corona virus. that because we were keeping large numbers of cows jump, the species barrier got into humans, became a human pandemic, corona virus,

which we had never seen before. so it made people very ill to start with spread very broadly because no one was immune to it. but quite quickly, effectively immunized the entire world population and then retreated into the background accruing along the way some genetic changes in the virus that made it a better bedfellow. humans and that virus persists to this day. as of ours, exciting the cold o. c. 43, but it's a common human karone of ours. the causes the common code. so we speculate the karone of ours cause encoded will go the same way alternately. it's just the path we take to get there. hopefully, we don't suffer the death toll. but previous pandemic strains would have had 2 calls in order to get that we can short circuit the equation with drugs and vaccines. like even one of the 1st scientists to right, let's going to look at some point, but living along said the corona virus will excite please. do you mean by that? and isn't that a danger when death told the u. k?

well, this is a mild, a strain of the illness is still 300 or so a day, which is like a plane crash every single day. so the idea that some mild illness is relative to the other variance. it's worth highlighting that actually a jumbo jet crash every day is roughly the number of people who die because it's smoking cigarettes. and this is a tiny number of people who will be killed ultimately by the pandemic. which reset walked into, which is overweight. obesity of malnutrition, which is affecting half the world population right now. but that's one side. yes, i think we are now seeing pretty much across the board. even countries that had pursued a very, very strong, very powerful 0 co approach to start with, excepting, but we are seeing an endemic disease. we're seeing something which is not going to go away in the foreseeable future. and therefore, we have to make a plan for how we work alongside it. we tolerate, we control it, but we can't eradicate it. the right thing to do when you 1st see an emerging

infection or a new disease, is to respond to a very vigorously, very strongly. and you expect that you are going to be out of control it. basically, you're planning for the fact that you can stop this thing, but then you have to accept to some point, you might not be able to know. that's what new zealand did this one strange did. they use that geography and other tactics to control the virus and keep it to really low levels, but they have had to accept. but unless they want to keep their countries completely isolated for ever, then they're gonna have to at some point accept the, the virus into their country and end up with cases which is what's now happening. australia has got very, very high levels of cases, for example. so really it's a question of migrating from a state with as really high levels of virus activity, to controlled, tolerated levels of ours activity, but ones which are with few consequences. and there's a difference between cases that cause consequences and cases that don't cause consequences. we accept at the same time, this is an infection that is not going to go away in the foreseeable future.

finally, not chris smith, a. the vaccines came to science, came to a rescue. a on the con, partially evades some of the vaccines we have, that they still ameliorate the condition. it is little hope that there'll be a more traditional vaccine imagine taking longer to, to, to produce a which will populate much against all video. so a whole virus, a vaccine is that on the horizon or in the near future. this is what scientists, the dubbing covey vaccine to point north. and there's a number of avenues to consider here this week just on we've seen some quite exciting data actually from the u. k. where they've compared people who live with people who corcoran of ours and got it. and people who live with people who caught kind of ours and didn't get it. and i also question, why does some people despite very close contact with current of ours case is not catch? the infection looks like those people who are immune to infection from their housemates

. actually have various immune functions given to them by prior exposure to other corona viruses. and so this leads us to, to speculate the because of this family viruses, there are some parts of the virus that never change. it doesn't matter what they're talking about. the virus has the linchpin components which can never vary. if we make an immune response against those, it seems to protect us broadly against many members of the same family viruses. so, one very tempting tantalizing and hopefully real reasonable realistic prospect is that we make vaccines. that incorporate some of those crucial lynch in bits of the virus that never change from one baron to the next. if we do that, we will have cobit vaccine to point not, which will protect us, not just against the variance. we do know, but those that don't even exist yet, scientists working on at the moment, and there's some evidence about likely to be possible in the near term though,

the current focus is on updating the current vaccines. we do have to better reflect the variance of the circulating so that we get protection against those using tried and trusted and tested technology in the near term while continuing to develop these other more ambitious strategies. longer term which, which is going to take a while. and that type of thing, trying to lising an optimistic note, dr. chris smith. thank you so much for joining the question again. on the all in silence. you'll this christmas came as an unwelcome shock to the governments of the us, france and britain. 3 of the most vaccinated countries on the planet with armor conveyed an surgeon of control, but merged with the fort administrations of the u. k and within the governing conservative party. but how to do with the research and vidas in america present biden placed the emphasis on the individual states for bias control, which significantly was not the she took as a candidate when president trump was facing runaway infection rates. meanwhile,

in france, peasant macro tried to turn up the heat on and vaccinated, but also succeeded in dividing french opinion. the facts in 5th, substantially weakened the link between the infection, hospitalization, and death. worldwide up to 50000 deaths are still being recorded each and every week, and even highly vaccinated countries have clearly failed to crack the epidemic. meanwhile, the pace of the rule lights of the vaccine to the developing world still looks at responsibly slew. do most of all mc one has been a humbling lesson for policymakers. they can't say they went well warned about the likelihood of a hyper infectious obedient indeed human kind may have towards the on the coin bullet, given that generally less grieved nature of the disease. it presents more substantial progress has come in the range of new treatments once people are infected. however, the sheer weight of numbers has placed health provision even in the most advanced

countries under enormous pressure. now, increasingly, commentators are looking forward to a world where human kind learns to live alongside with the virus or pandemic, smooth at some stage, fernandez fees. but given the vast numbers of people unprotected worldwide, the certainty of a yet more variance and accumulated pressure. when health provision for far far too many people will not be a question of living with the virus but of dying from it. that's a nice malik myself and all that the show is good bye, stacy. i'm hope to see you all again. next week, lou with

waller officers are facing an increasingly dangerous environment. we are seeing a growing debate about so called warrior cops, a term that i've heard in the militarization of police. this is an app vehicle we acquired through the 1033 program, very free program with the government program that funnels military property that is no longer use to local law enforcement with building an army over here. and i can't believe people. i see those thing an agency article here. yeah. they had terrorism here because it began appealing that ahead. you have to deal with our practice, who you putting in uniform cover beds is a powerful thing from tab has like money in play tricks and people mind they think they go bad. know is what was out the door. very bad trying to work on the good news. you have job security because the world desperately needs that you have to

get a headline stories this hour, the queen of england, 2nd song, prince. andrew is stripped off his military title over our high profile sexual abuse case. also had the program and allied peacekeeping mission and catholics done comes to an end. does that situation in the country stabilizes thus, despite much speculation in the west of the russian section of contingent leave ah, and have the job or pickup, good job of those queued back province is planning to publish the on vaccinated with a special tax locals tell us how they feel about that. i think it's unfair to just suggest it's the responsibility or the fall to the.