~*Official #COVID-19 Thread of Doom*~ Revenge of Omicron Prime

[Ghost_MH]

20 minutes ago, Ricofoley said:

The amount of "you know, nuclear winter is only a theory which has never been conclusively proven" posts I've seen in the past week is uh... more than I would like

 

Make up your mind. I thought you all were serious about stopping global warming.

[thewhyteboar]

I think I need to get into this black market game. My wife ordered a box of masks and they didn’t just send her a box, they sent her a box of boxes. So instead of 50, we have 500. Lol.

[chakoo]

6 hours ago, thewhyteboar said:

I think I need to get into this black market game. My wife ordered a box of masks and they didn’t just send her a box, they sent her a box of boxes. So instead of 50, we have 500. Lol.

The simple answer is you have to buy what nobody wants. That’s how I ended up getting sent a publisher shipping box with 4 copies of Tony hawk ride when I ordered one on fire sell (I was curious to try). Even bestbuy felt like they didn’t want the 3 units back when I called them about it (I sure as hell didn’t want them). 

[Jason]

No more vaccine mandate for restaurants/etc in NYC. 

 

NYC’s strict COVID mandates end in new push for normalcy

PIX11.COM

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NEW YORK (PIX11) — After two grueling years of dealing with COVID-19 safety measures, New Yorkers on Sunday night were on the verge of taking a major step toward pre-pandemic normalcy. Mayor...

 

De Blasio: ‘Well, Well, Well, Not So Easy To Find A Mayor That Doesn’t Suck Shit, Huh?’

WWW.THEONION.COM

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NEW YORK—Clucking his tongue with mock disappointment, Bill De Blasio announced to New Yorkers that “It’s not so easy to find a mayor that doesn’t suck shit after all, huh?” during a press...

 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Death toll nears 6 million as pandemic enters its 3rd year

WWW.NBCNEWS.COM

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The U.S. has the biggest official death toll in the world, but the numbers have been trending downward over the last month.

 

Quote

 

The official global death toll from COVID-19 is on the verge of eclipsing 6 million — underscoring that the pandemic, now in its third year, is far from over.

 

The milestone is the latest tragic reminder of the unrelenting nature of the pandemic even as people are shedding masks, travel is resuming and businesses are reopening around the globe. The death toll, compiled by Johns Hopkins University, stood at 5,996,882 as of Sunday morning and was expected to pass the 6 million mark later in the day.

Remote Pacific islands, whose isolation had protected them for more than two years, are just now grappling with their first outbreaks and deaths, fueled by the highly contagious omicron variant.

 

Hong Kong, which is seeing deaths soar, is testing its entire population of 7.5 million three times this month as it clings to mainland China’s “zero-COVID” strategy.

 

As death rates remain high in Poland, Hungary, Romania and other Eastern European countries, the region has seen more than 1 million refugees arrive from war-torn Ukraine, a country with poor vaccination coverage and high rates of cases and deaths.

 

And despite its wealth and vaccine availability, the United States is nearing 1 million reported deaths on its own.

 

 

And that's probably/definitely a pretty decent undercount from places such as India, sub-Saharan Africa, and The Fascist State That Invaded Ukraine

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

It’s probably an undercount in the Us as well

[Nokra]

USA! USA!  USA! 

 

 

 

[Jason]

 

[silentbob]

2 minutes ago, Jason said:

 

Thats me and my main worries still. My brain seems mostly better but I forget simple things still. My spelling isn’t anything to brag about but I have brain farts on sometimes the simplest of words now. Sometimes the words I want to say to someone comes out almost Yoda like. Or I have problems just figuring out the thing I’m trying to remember to say. Still getting the nausea and has been real bad the pass 2 weeks. It’s not the usually nausea, but a sudden solid punch to the gut and I wanna ralph my cookies. Plus my appetite is pure shit and the weed tries it’s hardest and succeeds nicely every now and then, but it’s what I use to be able to eat without toking anything. Today I could barely finish a single jr. whooper and I’ve down 4-5 sometimes. The weight lose has been great though and think has resulted in me losing about 20lbs. (could lose another oh. . . . 50lbs or more)

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Huge study finds most COVID-19 vaccine side effects were mild for Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna

WWW.USATODAY.COM

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Headache, fatigue, fever, chills and pain were among the most common COVID-19 vaccine side effects for Pfizer and Moderna, according to the study.

 

Quote

 

A new study involving millions of participants has found most side effects from mRNA COVID-19 vaccines were mild and faded substantially after one day.

 

The findings, published Monday in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, should reassure Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna mRNA vaccine recipients that the shots, which were granted U.S. Food and Drug Administration emergency authorization in late 2020, are safe, experts said.

 

"These data are reassuring that reactions to both mRNA vaccines are generally mild and subside after one or two days – confirming reports from clinical trials and post-authorization monitoring," said the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's Tom Shimabukuro, one of the authors of the large-scale study.

 

 

[chakoo]

Goodbye to masks, symptom screening, self-isolation in most circumstances under new Ontario rules

WWW.CP24.COM

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Ontario will no longer mandate mask use, self-isolation for COVID-exposed people or symptom screening requirements in most situations as of March 21, with a wider effort to end all emergency pandemic requirements by the end of April.

 

Looking forward to getting harassed by assholes starting March 21 when I continue to wear a mask (I've got a 5 month old). 100% this will happen because I already got harassed by an asshole before Omicron hit. One of my coworkers who's triple vaxxed right now is sick with covid and it's had him out sick for the last 3 days. =/

[silentbob]

What are Ontarian's gonna protest about now that mask mandate to be drop (minus hospitals/long care setting) as of March 21st. Almost 2 years on the nose for when we started this whole fucking thing. 

[CitizenVectron]

Good luck to Ontario. Here's the situation in Saskatchewan after dropping all restrictions, including access to testing, masking, etc:

 

[Captain Pickle]

13 minutes ago, chakoo said:

Goodbye to masks, symptom screening, self-isolation in most circumstances under new Ontario rules

WWW.CP24.COM

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Ontario will no longer mandate mask use, self-isolation for COVID-exposed people or symptom screening requirements in most situations as of March 21, with a wider effort to end all emergency pandemic requirements by the end of April.

 

Looking forward to getting harassed by assholes starting March 21 when I continue to wear a mask (I've got a 5 month old). 100% this will happen because I already got harassed by an asshole before Omicron hit. One of my coworkers who's triple vaxxed right now is sick with covid and it's had him out sick for the last 3 days. =/

The only thing this has me looking forward to is getting to go live on antimaskers every other day!

[silentbob]

1 minute ago, CitizenVectron said:

Good luck to Ontario. Here's the situation in Saskatchewan after dropping all restrictions, including access to testing, masking, etc:

 

How is your province vaccination rate compare to Ontario’s nearly 90% rate? I’m just happy that Ontario at least waited it out until after March Break to drop the mask mandate. Plus traffic in my neck of woods (at least) is much quieter then say 2 weeks ago, before the gas rates took a huge jump. So I wonder if the penny pinching has started and people won’t be able to enjoy their new found freedom like they wanted too.

[CitizenVectron]

7 minutes ago, silentbob said:

How is your province vaccination rate compare to Ontario’s nearly 90% rate? I’m just happy that Ontario at least waited it out until after March Break to drop the mask mandate. Plus traffic in my neck of woods (at least) is much quieter then say 2 weeks ago, before the gas rates took a huge jump. So I wonder if the penny pinching has started and people won’t be able to enjoy their new found freedom like they wanted too.

 

The percentage of people in ON and SK (out of total population) with number of doses:

 

SK | ON:

• 1-dose: 80.66% | 84.24%
• 2-dose: 76.06% | 80.59%
• 3-dose: 40.43% | 47.00%

 

[AbsolutSurgen]

Dropping the mask mandates in some settings in Ontario.

 

Leaving them in place on public transit.

Leaving them in place until April 27th in long-term care homes.

Planning on removing them in long-term care homes (without implementing a hard vaccine mandate for residents).

 

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

Leaving them in place on transit is fine and good actually

[AbsolutSurgen]

5 minutes ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

Leaving them in place on transit is fine and good actually

Everyone should be free to make their own choices.  If people want to protect themselves beyond vaccination, its easy for them to put on an N95 mask.

Edit:

From what I can see, most people aren't.  They're ~50% cloth, 40% surgical, 10% N95/Kn95/etc.

[Jason]

2 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

Everyone should be free to make their own choices. 

 

Imagine still thinking that's how pandemics work.

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

1 minute ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

Everyone should be free to make their own choices.  If people want to protect themselves beyond vaccination, its easy for them to put on an N95 mask.

There’s a disproportionate number of higher risk people that take public transit. While on transit it isn’t asking a lot for people to wear a mask especially since busses and trains can often be very crowded with poor airflow

[Jason]

1 hour ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

There’s a disproportionate number of higher risk people that take public transit. While on transit it isn’t asking a lot for people to wear a mask especially since busses and trains can often be very crowded with poor airflow

 

Meanwhile the TSA mask mandate is apparently likely to lapse, and we're probably never getting a vaccination mandate for air travel.

[AbsolutSurgen]

2 hours ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

There’s a disproportionate number of higher risk people that take public transit. While on transit it isn’t asking a lot for people to wear a mask especially since busses and trains can often be very crowded with poor airflow

Are there?  I'd love to see that statistic.  [That sounds sarcastic, but I am actually interested.]

49 minutes ago, Jason said:

 

Meanwhile the TSA mask mandate is apparently likely to lapse, and we're probably never getting a vaccination mandate for air travel.

I think people are starting to realize that vaccine mandates aren't an effective way at slowing the transmission of the virus.

1)  Evidence is starting to grow that the vaccines ability to slow transmission starts to wane after 3-4 months, even if protection from more serious illness lasts for longer 

2)  Most epidemiologists don't believe that vaccinating everyone every 4 months is a viable strategy

[CitizenVectron]

8 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

Are there?  I'd love to see that statistic.  [That sounds sarcastic, but I am actually interested.]

I think people are starting to realize that vaccine mandates aren't an effective way at slowing the transmission of the virus.

1)  Evidence is starting to grow that the vaccines ability to slow transmission starts to wane after 3-4 months, even if protection from more serious illness lasts for longer 

2)  Most epidemiologists don't believe that vaccinating everyone every 4 months is a viable strategy

 

I think that there should still be the option of getting boosters every few months, especially for certain groups (60+, those with comorbidities/vulnerabilities, etc). More importantly, mandate paid sick days, preferably 20+ per year.

[AbsolutSurgen]

13 minutes ago, CitizenVectron said:

 

I think that there should still be the option of getting boosters every few months, especially for certain groups (60+, those with comorbidities/vulnerabilities, etc). More importantly, mandate paid sick days, preferably 20+ per year.

Canadians should have the opportunity to get boosters as often as the health officials recommend.  I will continue to get boosters at whatever rate that happens to be!

 

Sick days is a more nuanced conversation -- that I'm not sure I have the energy to delve into.

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

1 hour ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

Are there?  I'd love to see that statistic.  [That sounds sarcastic, but I am actually interested.]

I think people are starting to realize that vaccine mandates aren't an effective way at slowing the transmission of the virus.

1)  Evidence is starting to grow that the vaccines ability to slow transmission starts to wane after 3-4 months, even if protection from more serious illness lasts for longer 

2)  Most epidemiologists don't believe that vaccinating everyone every 4 months is a viable strategy

I’m not sure there’s an exact study to show this but it’s implied from a few disparate statistics in the U.S. 

 

generally poorer people use public transit at a disproportionate rate (and many transit systems are essentially designed to be shuttles for the poor rather than an effective overall transit system but that’s neither here nor there). Poverty is also associated with race, with Black people being the group most likely to both be obese and be poor in addition to using public transit disproportionately as a matter of time spent/distance traveling and as a % of riders. (Even though they are better vaccinated than the rest of the country!)

 

People in poverty are disproportionately obese and obesity is strongly associated with negative health outcomes due to covid 19. Obesity is also correlated with other conditions that associate with negative health outcomes due to covid. 
 

hell poverty itself lends itself to significantly worse (5x) covid outcomes and is “not explained by the prevalence of comorbidities or by a lack of access to healthcare among the low-income population.”

 

and finally, (and most importantly) the unvaccinated are disproportionately poorer, Less white(as a catch all term), and less educated than the population overall or population vaccinated. These are the same cohorts that are more likely and disproportionately to use public transport. The intersection of all these statistics may not bear out in a study but I think this is the best that can be done by some scrub on a message board. it’s not a perfect argument but it fits a model that makes sense in light of other issues. it’s easy to say personal responsibility when the people who suffer from this ethos are the same who society has continually and routinely let down at every step of the way even before the pandemic. 

[AbsolutSurgen]

2 minutes ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

I’m not sure there’s an exact study to show this but it’s implied from a few disparate statistics in the U.S. 

 

generally poorer people use public transit at a disproportionate rate (and many transit systems are essentially designed to be shuttles for the poor rather than an effective overall transit system but that’s neither here nor there). Poverty is also associated with race, with Black people being the group most likely to both be obese and be poor in addition to using public transit disproportionately as a matter of time spent/distance traveling and as a % of riders. (Even though they are better vaccinated than the rest of the country!)

 

People in poverty are disproportionately obese and obesity is strongly associated with negative health outcomes due to covid 19. Obesity is also correlated with other conditions that associate with negative health outcomes due to covid. 
 

hell poverty itself lends itself to significantly worse (5x) covid outcomes and is “not explained by the prevalence of comorbidities or by a lack of access to healthcare among the low-income population.”

 

and finally, (and most importantly) the unvaccinated are disproportionately poorer, Less white(as a catch all term), and less educated than the population overall or population vaccinated. These are the same cohorts that are more likely and disproportionately to use public transport. The intersection of all these statistics may not bear out in a stupid but I think this is the best that can be done by some scrub on a message board. it’s not a perfect argument but it fits a model that makes sense in light of other issues. it’s easy to say personal responsibility when the people who suffer from this ethos are the same who society has continually and routinely let down at every step of the way even before the pandemic. 

My concern is you're using US statistics on a Canadian population (and lets be fair, the vast majority of transit ridership in Ontario is in the city of Toronto).

Obesity does not have a strong correlation with income in Canada -- particularly among men.

The access to healthcare is a US issue, much less so a Canadian one with Universal Healthcare.  (There is a disparity, but much less than in the US.)

The vaccination rates are about 90% (2-doses) for those 18+ in the City of Toronto. 

I think you would be surprised at the amount of non-poor people on transit in Toronto -- most of my friends/acquaintances in the core don't have cars.  

 

The group that has the largest risk are the immuno-compromised and the elderly -- and I'm not sure they are overrepresented in transit ridership.

[Jason]

Canada isn't too different from the US in largely treating transit as a lifeline for the poor than something a sane person would actually choose to use if they could instead afford a car.

[CitizenVectron]

Yeah I'd say subway ridership might be more even in income, but people taking buses is not, in my experience.

[AbsolutSurgen]

TTC is about 50:50 Subway/Bus (or was pre-pandemic).

[Jason]

 

[Jason]

 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Global Covid-19 death toll ‘may be three times higher than official figures’ | World news | The Guardian

WWW.THEGUARDIAN.COM

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Researchers studying ‘excess deaths’ estimate that more than 18 million people died of disease by end of 2021

 

Quote

 

The Covid-19 pandemic may have claimed 18.2 million lives around the world, more than three times the official death toll, a new study suggests.

 

The higher figure is a better estimate of the true global casualty figure to the end of 2021, according to an analysis by a consortium of health researchers published in the Lancet.

They have based their calculation on the number of “excess deaths” which they believe were caused directly or indirectly by the pandemic. These are calculated by looking at the difference between the number of deaths recorded from all causes and the number of expected based on previous patterns.

 

“Our estimates of Covid-19 excess mortality suggest the mortality impact from the Covid-19 pandemic has been more devastating than the situation documented by official statistics,” say the co-authors, who were led by Dr Haidong Wang, an associate professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington.

 

“Official statistics on reported Covid-19 deaths provide only a partial picture of the true burden of mortality. While the official Covid-19 death toll was 5.9 million between 1 January 2020 and 31 December 2021, the new study estimates that 18.2 million excess deaths occurred over the same period, suggesting the full impact may have been greater.”

 

 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

My thoughts and prayers go out to COVID-19 during this difficult fight.

 

Michaloliakos intubated after contracting Covid | eKathimerini.com

WWW.EKATHIMERINI.COM

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Nikos Michaloliakos, the leader and founder of the neo-fascist Golden Dawn party, has landed in the ICU of the Larissa University Hospital in central Greece after contracting Covid-19.

 

[Jason]