^ nonsense. few are going to die, but many are going to require medical care of various levels that drives up costs for everyone else.

and then there are the lasting long covid issues:

https://nypost.com/2021/12/27/covid-...ve-for-months/

Illinois' governor is recommending people to have "toned down" NYE parties.

I recommend the opposite. Have a HUGE party. Get vaccinated, boosted, and have a ball. It's time to wake up from this garbage.

If you're deathly scared of Omicron then you can stay home and stay scared for the rest of your life, because you are just fighting inner demons at this point.

^^^^

Its going to be hard to stop. The "Cold" variant, and asymptomatic nature with a high as hell R-naught... folks are going to get it. Most asymptomatic given how mild it is!

Have they determined a R-naught for Omicron yet? I recall reading something that estimated Delta as 6-7, which is not that bad compared to Measles which was 15 or so. Which is insane when you think about it, 15. It means 1 person will infect 15 people, just bonkers!

I suppose the challenge with the R-naught is due to the asymptomatic folks. Might skew the true number. Omnicron must be high if viral replication occurs in the nasal area and in high numbers.... folks breathing/exhaling, sneezing, ect.

A doctor who works next to me just tested positive for COVID. She and her fully vaccinated and boosted family had a long planned trip to Costa Rica planned. Now she will have to cancel it.

Despite vaccination, boosting, and having mild symptoms. She is really disappointed.

All of this for no good reason, thanks to the knuckleheads at the CDC. Long lines of healthy, vaccinated people testing. One of the dumbest, most worthless things I have witnessed in my life time.

This is not necessary. This is a choice being made, by people who have no sense.

A cardiologist next to me and I were discussing this, and she totally agrees. She has planned an international trip and has to leave in 10 days, and now SHE is worried that she won't be able to go on her own trip because of the positive COVID test. Once again, she is not worried about she or her family becoming sick. She is worried about the unnecessary bureaucratic overreaction and excess testing that will impact her life.

I'm not traveling internationally until our society has regained its collective sense.

They threw in a lot of mitigatory measures, the mask wearing. But a lot of this is user dependent. If anything, will help to get us to herd immunity, which is key and the track we are on.

^ There is no "herd immunity" for this. You know that, right?

I'm sure she is disappointed, but is the only reason she's canceling because she "has" to, or because she thinks it's the right thing to do? Costa Rica doesn't have a negative test requirements for entry and airlines don't require negative tests either unless flying to the US as far as I know. So I think she's canceling because it's the right thing to do, not because it's being forced on her in any way (I suppose she would run the risk of being stranded in Costa Rica if still positive at the end of her trip?)

I just finished up 18 days of PCR and antigen testing and am ready for a rest. Had to test before we left for London, then test upon arrival in London, then test before returning to US. Then, because we were having three consecutive smallish (15-20 people) parties and I was subsequently visiting my 89 year old mother, I kept testing. Last test was on Christmas day. Done for now. Really only kept testing because of concern for her. I am fully vaxxed and boosted and if I get it, likely to be just an annoyance.

Meanwhile I caught a vicious cold that I passed to my husband. Still kept my distance from my Mom!

The testing was expensive, both for home tests and the cost for expedited PCR's for London. We are going to a NYE party and the hosts are encouraging antigen but not requiring it.

Mmm I love broccoli, I even loved it as a child.

I like it steamed, with some chopped garlic.

Or you can get broccoli, toss it in a bowl with olive oil and chopped garlic, and then roast it. Mmm...

I think she's just annoyed that she had to get tested for this stupid virus to begin with.

This is the most overanalyzed virus in history. I applaud people who are refusing to test for COVID. They have brains. The people who refuse vaccination are a different story.

I don't see why anyone would cancel a trip like that unless they actually feel like crap. Very few of the Caribbean or South American beach destinations have testing requirements.

The US requires a test before returning.

You also have to declare that you did not test positive for COVID within 14 days before boarding any commercial flight in the U.S. That could be a large federal fine if you get caught.

You can find Google questions for the sheeple out there still worried about Covid, but I found this one particularly informative:

Can I still have sex during the coronavirus pandemic?

If both of you are healthy and feeling well, are practicing social distancing and have had no known exposure to anyone with COVID-19, touching, hugging, kissing, and sex are more likely to be safe.

:tup:

Alright! The CDC hasn't banned sex yet!!!!

I actually sprinkle some pork rub on it and it is pretty palatable.

That's why I'm flying in and out of Tijuana on Presidents' Day weekend. I don't want to test positive and be forced to quarantine in a Mexican hotel for 5-10 days. If I were to require medical care, I would not want to receive it in Mexico, I'd rather return to the US for that. I won't have to take a test because after I land in TJ, I'll cross the border on foot, which does not have any testing requirements that I know of.

This is amusing since there was so much pushback on here recently around dialing back isolation protocols, which in many settings are very likely now causing more harm than the virus itself. A lot of the harms of isolation are being mitigated by a lack of testing capacity and people not bothering to get tested. I'd guess that around here if we could test everybody somehow, and followed the official protocols, the economy would pretty much shut down (and I think the federal sick pay may still be on the books so we'd accumulate even more debt).

It's perfectly reasonable that maybe in some setting you want to be 99% relative reduction of transmission but in another setting, 90% relative reduction might be OK, and imposing another 5-9 days of isolation might not be worth that last 10%. And we have to accept that a lot of cases aren't caught so imposing long isolation periods might take us from say 20% mitigation of spread to 21%. It could have virtually no impact on the eventual course of the pandemic. A lot of pandemic measures have this flavour, where there is some point of leverage for public officials so they max out the pain in that group for marginal gain while ignoring the other 80% and achieving mediocre to poor outcomes overall.

....Or you can just stop testing people altogether who are having no or mild symptoms.

Just a thought. Perpetuating utter stupidity doesn't make the utter stupidity any less foolish. Any real leaders right now would step in and say "enough is enough"

In our office half the doctors are out due to COVID (they'll be just fine). I'm the only one here. Patients left and right who are healthy and feeling fine went and got COVID tested and are now calling our manager saying "I'm positive, what do I do?" We are all baffled by this nonsense.

There is now a 4 hour wait in our urgent care center, and an 11 hour wait in the ED, all because of this.

This is just plain dumb.

One take on this will be "wow, looks like covid is really hurting healthcare.. we should double down on our measures to bring this under control". :)

I agree about testing. Aside from the excessive isolation that makes people miserable and causes problems with staffing it is causing problems with travel because some governments require tests for entry and they never set up dedicated testing capacity. I knew a few Americans planning to come to BC during the holidays and they just gave up (one paid for a test but getting the result took so long it expired; I'm not sure what the point of these 3 day old PCR results for asymptomatic vaccinated people is).

I'd guess that a lot of people around here believe we are in a permanent emergency and the economy doesn't really matter anymore because it is trumped by health concerns. Perhaps that can be true sometimes in the short term but economic productivity is what gives us the capacity to provide healthcare to people in the first place. We keep trashing our economy and quality of life over and over for smaller and smaller gains (our covid deaths are currently around 0.4 per million per day and 87% of eligible are vaccinated). It's unclear what the health gain for omicron is supposed to be or what we are waiting for to go back to normal. Are we trying to flatten the curve? Just do what we can, because any action is good? Maybe booster 4 will make everybody immune?

Or you can listen to an actual infections disease specialist: https://www.chicagotribune.com/coron...tqy-story.html