Was this story in the media? It sounds familiar.

Wow. some of these comments. I live near downtown Atlanta. I've lost count of the number of people I know who have had COVID...hundreds? easily. Deaths, an Uncle. And then at least 20 or more in the "friend of a friend" category.

imo as for schools -- even with random testing at schools, no teachers should go back to in person unless they have had both their shots and its been two weeks or whatever since then.

those on remote because of other health issues should stay on the remote the rest of this school year at least. that hardly matters because remote teachers continue be needed anyway for parents who do not want to send their kids back to in person.

we'll see about september and next school year later. it's definitely still a logistical nightmare.

Covid has killed about 1 in 600 Americans, so by now everyone knows someone who has died from it, especially if you live in one of the hard hit areas. I personally don't know anyone in my immediate circle who has died from it, but in my extended circle of acquaintances, there are a few.

I only know of one person who has died from it (the father of a colleague in their mid 80s). Many people I know have had it, including colleagues, family and friends.

i've lost count of how many people i've heard of who've either had or died from covid, but i directly know two people here in chicago (ie. people i actually know and not "my brother-in-law's co-worker's grandmother in cleveland") who've died of covid - my wife's aunt (early 70s) and one of my parent's closest friends (mid 80s).

All Alaskans age 16+ are now eligible for vaccine.

February residential sales activity in Manhattan is the most since 2015 :

I don't think I know anyone personally that has died--closest are one step removed, like a good friend's aunt, who I believe was in her 50s but in poor health. I've known a lot of friends/acquaintances/coworkers that have tested positive with various levels of symptoms. The one that really shook me up was a close coworker (early 60s, diabetic, but very vital and energetic) that was hospitalized for a month and was apparently on the cusp of being put on a ventilator before he began to recover.

I don't. Like I said, I know a couple of people in their 40s and teens who have had it but no one who has died.

I wonder if the difference between my experience in San Francisco, which has strict business closures and a very low rate of infection (5.1/100,000) and a place like Atlanta which has been pretty laissez faire and has a higher infection rate (approx 25/100,000) isn't explained by the governmental approach.

I don't know anyone personally who has died of it. Several extended family members and a few of my coworkers have had COVID, but none experienced severe symptoms or were hospitalized.

I've known several friends that have had it and been relatively fine. Mostly flu like symptoms, some loss of taste/smell briefly (a week at most), but no long term complications. A few of my friends parents and grandparents have had COVID though and have passed away. Some with lengthy ICU stays. Very small sample size of course, but it does seem in line with the statistics that the elderly are overwhelmingly more severely affected.

Chicago is buzzing with life these last few days!


And the drivers are appearing to be getting extremely aggressive because they aren't used to this amount of traffic anymore?

i was just thinking about this as its the same here in ny. i saw tons of cars again and honking tunnel traffic after work today, just like the old normal. i think the good weather turn is playing a part, as is the firmer handle on steady vaccinations.

Live music starts up again in New Orleans this Friday! 75 person limit in the music clubs, and patrons must remain seated during the performance, but it's live music! The soul of the city is starting to come back to life slowly but surely.

oh my rocky concert poll results:


NYC SHOWLIST EMAIL NEWSLETTER
March 11, 2021
*SUPPORT OMR*

Last week, along with the news that music venues could reopen at reduced capacity in April, we asked you "Would You Go To A Show In April?" Almost 1,000 of you super chill show-goers responded to the email survey. We promised we'd publish the results this week and Oh My Rockness is a blob of its word. Ready?

35% of you responded "Yes, inside or outside."
34% of you responded "Yes, but only if outside."
31% of you responded "No, I would not go."

Our newsletter subscribers (you) are much more likely to go to a show next month than the respondents to our Twitter poll - you can see how the responses compare here.

So there you have it. Thanks for participating, everybody. Please love looking at the rest of this week's newsletter now. Also, it's been 364 days since the shows went away.

I feel more and more vindicated in my views from last year. After a couple of months’ lockdown (when we really didn’t understand under enough about this virus or have testing), by summer things should have been open and stayed open.

But when they did, the guidance should have remained for the elderly, the very obese or those with certain risk factors to continue to avoid indoor dining, crowds, and close contact with anyone who was not limiting social contact. Maybe you are right that you can’t legally make separate rules, but the messaging should have been very strong - if you’re over 70, don’t do these things; if you’re clinically obese, don’t do these things; if you have have heart disease, don’t do these things.

And that includes bringing multiple generations of family together at home, which Brits were basically encouraged to do and was the most risky and stupid thing possible. No amount of masked gym-going or indoor dining spread Covid as quickly as people taking the bloody kids to see grandma and grandpa at Christmas.

We could have gotten to 40% of the population being exposed, with very few deaths, really quickly if older people had stayed home and away from younger people and younger people mingled freely last summer.

https://eresearch.fidelity.com/erese...2B337K-OUSBS_1

So I guess not everybody will be working from home in the new post-COVID world.

Not that I know of... but I don't doubt that many people have had the same type of situation.

From the LA Times:

Why L.A. and Orange counties will reopen faster than Ventura, Riverside, San Diego counties


By LUKE MONEY, RONG-GONG LIN II, PAUL SISSON
MARCH 10, 2021 10:26 AM PT

Southern California is poised to reopen a wider swath of its economy in a matter of days. But, as often has been the case throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the pace will be uneven — with some counties moving forward more quickly than others.

In the long run, that probably won’t be a major issue, particularly if newly confirmed infections continue to fall and more Californians are vaccinated. But the near term could see a patchwork where three of the state’s large urban counties — Los Angeles, Orange and San Bernardino — are able to begin a wider reopening before neighboring Ventura, Riverside and San Diego counties.

The first phase

According to state data released Tuesday, Los Angeles, Orange and San Bernardino counties recorded coronavirus case rates low enough to position them to escape the strictest, or purple, tier of California’s four-tier reopening roadmap.

The timing of when they can officially progress to the less restrictive red category, however, hinges on how quickly providers give vaccines to those living in California’s most disadvantaged areas.

In a bid to address inequities in vaccine administration, California is now devoting 40% of its available supplies to residents in targeted communities — those in the lowest quartile of a socioeconomic measurement tool called the California Healthy Places index.

Once 2 million doses have been dispensed in those areas, the state will relax the criteria for counties to move from the purple to the red tier.

As it stands now, counties must have an adjusted rate at or below 7.0 new coronavirus cases per day per 100,000 people to move into the red tier. When the state hits its 2-million dose goal, counties with a case rate of up to 10 new cases per day per 100,000 people would become eligible to move forward.

California is about 73,000 doses short of 2 million, according to the latest available state data, meaning that goal is already within striking distance.

The state consistently receives more than 1 million total vaccine doses per week. And officials are hopeful supplies will continue to gradually increase as shipments of vaccines manufactured by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna increase and the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine arrives.

Under the existing reopening framework, L.A., Orange and San Bernardino counties would not be in position to advance from the purple tier this week. However, since all three have logged adjusted case rates of fewer than 10 new coronavirus cases per day per 100,000 people for the last two weeks, it appears they will be allowed to progress to the less restrictive category soon after the state clears its vaccination hurdle.

The latest state-released average coronavirus case rates, which are adjusted based on the number of tests performed in a particular county, were 5.2 in L.A., 6.0 in Orange County and 6.7 in San Bernardino.

Next steps

After the goal of 2-million doses is reached in low-income communities, the California Department of Public Health will move quickly on county tier reassignments. They’ll “be announced the next day and will then be effective the day following that announcement,” the agency said in an email Monday.

“Our understanding is that, within 48 hours of the state announcing the vaccine trigger has been met, L.A. County, along with other counties with qualifying case rates, would move into the red tier,” L.A. County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said Tuesday.

So by the time the state publishes its routine tier report next Tuesday — the day of the week tier assignments have typically been announced — the new, relaxed red-tier threshold should already be in place, enabling L.A., Orange, San Bernardino and some other counties to further reopen their economies.

Riverside, San Diego, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties, however, would need at least another week to move into the red tier. The latest state-tabulated adjusted case rates were 8.3 for Riverside County, 8.8 for San Diego County, 9.7 for Santa Barbara County and 9.1 for Ventura County. Two consecutive weeks of case rates below 10 are required to exit the purple tier.

What being in the red means

Counties in the red tier can allow indoor restaurant dining and movie theaters to reopen at 25% capacity or up to 100 people, whichever is less. In-person classes also would be allowed to resume for students in grades seven through 12.

Indoor gyms and dance and yoga studios can open at 10% capacity. Museums, zoos and aquariums can open indoor activities at 25% capacity, and nonessential stores and libraries can open at 50% capacity, up from 25%.

State officials also announced last week that amusement parks would be eligible to reopen, with restrictions, in red-tier counties starting April 1 — meaning long-closed attractions such as Disneyland, Universal Studios, Knott’s Berry Farm and Six Flags Magic Mountain in Southern California could be mere weeks away from once again welcoming visitors.

Capacity will be limited to 15% for parks in counties that are in the red tier, with the cap rising to 25% once a county progresses to orange, and 35% upon reaching the most lenient tier, yellow. Attendance will be limited to in-state visitors.

The state’s rules serve only as a benchmark, though. Counties have the power to impose additional restrictions — meaning it’s not a given that a region will immediately reopen fully after it meets state requirements.


Link: https://www.latimes.com/california/s...AdUT6-cHhSgesM

^^Most of the Bay Area (maybe all now) is already red.

Yeah. The story sounded familiar because it was similar to Dr. Fauci's:

Most people over here don’t seem aware of what’s going on in Europe:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/europe-...d=hp_lead_pos6

Their vaccine policy does seem curious. They have been slow to approve all the vaccines and I don’t believe have yet approved Moderna’s (could be wrong about that). And they are also slow to use one of the earliest they did approve, that of Astrazeneca, saying they don’t think it works well for older people and generally disparaging it. Part of the delay seems to have been that Pfizer cut production at its Belgian plant while trying to expand the plant’s capacity and soon the larger capacity should come online. But even so, vaccine hesitancy seems to be rising in Europe due to the bureaucratic stumbles while it’s falling in the US and UK due to government enthusiasm for getting everyone vaccinated.

My wife and I are looking forward to going back to New Orleans and this is encouraging.

What with “to go cups”, you can party outside in the streets and usually the weather’s warm enough for outdoor dining too (until it gets too warm), if hopefully they’ve adopted “parklets” from NY and SF.

It seems the fear may be overblown.

I looked at the numbers for France and Germany, both are slowly rising in cases over the last few days but deaths have gone down. As long as they have been vaccinating the elderly I see no reason why this should blow up into some reason to shut things down again.

Hospitalizations and death are what matter.

Tell it to the Italians. Maybe they need your insight.

Www.nytimes.com

Or perhaps you need to look east:

https://www.dw.com/en/covid-19-slova...aos/a-56740390

Italy, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Estonia . . . . It’s not about Germany and France.

IMHO the vaccination news in the US is very good--we are now giving 2.5 million shots per day.

https://uniim1.shutterfly.com/ng/ser...686729/enhance

https://uniim1.shutterfly.com/ng/ser...686734/enhance
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/c...-distribution/

Again, these percentages are of the total population. Multiply by 1.3 in the US to get percentage of those over 18.

A COVID outbreak at an Amazon warehouse along a busy bus route in Brampton, and another in a condo in Mississauga, all while prices while the prices of single-family homes are skyrocketing and condo prices are dropping in the Toronto area. Even suburbs like Brampton and Mississauga are showing that higher densities and transit may not be such good things after all, and more and more people here are realizing that.

For those not from Toronto who may not know, Brampton is a suburb of 600,000 with not even one public east-west freeway, leading to overcrowded east-west bus routes such as Steeles Ave. Mississauga is a suburb of 700,000 with over 300 high-rise buildings (according the SSP database) and an LRT line with no connection to Toronto being constructed. Over time, people will not look kindly at all these efforts to increase transit ridership and density, and the lack of investment in roads in favour of transit - heavy-handed but futile efforts to promote "urban living" that did little but put them at higher risk of infection.


Brampton suspending bus route, testing drivers after 9 COVID-19 cases linked to Amazon warehouse outbreak
https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/brampton-...reak-1.5339566


Variant outbreak at condo may be linked to common areas: Peel's top doc
Five separate cases of the variant B.1.351 variant were confirmed in one central Mississauga condo building, and the remaining residents were being tested Monday
https://torontosun.com/news/provinci...-peels-top-doc


Single-family home sales and prices way up in Toronto while condo sales remain tough
https://www.blogto.com/real-estate-t...sales-toronto/

Cases rising are going to mean less and less over the next month or so.

The most vulnerable have or are being vaccinated. So if a bunch of young adults get it from partying the case rate may go up but deaths will not.

I'm getting mine on Friday.

^ The owner of that restaurant sounds like a butthead.

Dropping the mask mandate doesn't mean "don't wear a mask". You can still wear a mask, and still require it for people to enter your business.

People need to stop being political. I was watching Joe Rogan the other day who was interviewing a gentleman (forgot his name), the guy was on an airplane heading to Dallas and the flight attendant warned him "Watch out for Texas, it's wild out there".

When get got off the plane, he says literally EVERYBODY was wearing masks.

People are still not getting the difference between a Government mandate versus people's behavior. You can still wear a mask without a mandate.

Or the governor could've kept the mandate in place according to federal guidelines.

^ An obvious response

But he didn't. Get over it. It's 2021, March, and the people who are going to wear masks are already wearing them. People who aren't, won't--regardless of (perhaps even in retaliation to) mandates.

Up is up, down is down. Grass is green, the sky is blue. Blah blah blah this is getting old. We really don't need any more lessons

And the governor should be criticized for ignoring guidelines. Why is that so hard to acknowledge?

Can I have a hug?

I don't know about y'all, but 1st warm day (having been vaccinated months ago, and after my parents get their second shots), I'm headed to a bar and I'm going to drink the biggest pint o swag you'll ever see

God bless beer and drinking at bars.

It was a serious question, and I'll ask another: why is the restaurant owner a "butthead" and not the governor? When it was the governor that made the restaurant owner's job harder by not continuing the mask mandate. Isn't the job of government to make citizens lives easier?

^ I'll also ask a serious question:

Ooops I forgot. I have COVID brain fog..... :(

So you're a troll?

Yes but no worries, I'm wearing my mask

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b8/af...d759757c9d.jpg

I posted this in the COVID thread yesterday:

Just went on a 3 min walk to my LBS (local boba shop) since I was craving some milk tea. On my way I encountered about 15 pedestrians, 3 cyclists, and 3 joggers. 10 out of the 15 pedestrians weren’t wearing masks. None of the cyclists or joggers were wearing masks. Saw a man with his daughter at the park playground and a guy shooting hoops and a woman chilling on the grass reading a book. No masks.

This is in one of the densest cities and the most liberal in the US.

So I find it very difficult to believe when people claim that in X city, people literally everywhere are wearing masks.

^ But that's outdoors. Outdoor masking is............................


Dumb

I am about as pro-mask as anyone you'll meet. And I will tell you: if you are outdoors going for a jog, and you are wearing a mask, then you're just being a fool. That, my friend is called:

Hygiene theatre

Or not.

We HOPE it's as you say and not the rise of some variant that can overcome the immunity of the vaccinated and recovered in the heretofore susceptible groups.

It takes further and continuing analysis to be sure.

13.4% of metro New Orleans is now fully vaccinated according the latest figures released by the Louisiana Dept. of Health today. https://ldh.la.gov/Coronavirus/

Some things in America may never be the same again and it makes me very, very sad.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/15/a...-pandemic.html

The San Francisco Opera is surviving by doing "drive-through" performances this spring, starting the "The Barber of Seville" across the Golden Gate Bridge in Marin County. They have promised to keep supporting their orchestra and other employees through the pandemic and are, I hope, in somewhat better shape than the Met due to some wealthy and enthusiastic Bay Area donors.