its all falling away anyway, let it happen. of course its going to be at a different rate in different situations and regions. meh.

This is actually what people in East Asian countries have done for some time. It was never a universal, prophylactic precaution (maybe some hypochondriacs). And it partly stems from the workaholic Japanese just not being able to stay home and take a sick day, so putting on a surgical mask and crowding into a train was the next best option.

That might make perfect sense in Western cities as well, although the pandemic has also made it more possible to just, you know, stay at home as well.

But then his mask fogs up and he can’t see what’s in front of him well enough to do your job properly.

A word of advice - if you’re really uncomfortable with someone else’s fingers touching your food, don’t eat at restaurants.

Ahhh, my favorite meme of this thread:

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cYNhmqmtF...0/paranoid.jpg

Get out, you snerks!

I think we can safely say that the "snerks" are gone.......or are they?

As if we don't have a problem with employee retention in the service sector. Let's make their working conditions even worse.

I for one won't eat at any establishment that doesn't require its workers to wear fully-respirated hazmat suits.

can't be too safe!

https://i.imgflip.com/68mrsy.jpg

Should we stop requiring them to wash their hands after dropping a deuce to improve retention? Raise their wages if that's really an issue.

^^What an absurd false equivalency.

But by all means, if you want to pay more for food served by the masked underclass you’re proposing, tip them 50% instead of 20%. You could even requested masked only waiters. You might be laughed out of the restaurant, but I’m assuming you’ll be able to find a few restaurants in New York that are still in their covid fever dreams and love them some masks.

Please explain what is so burdensome about asking someone to put on a face mask while they are being paid to cook food for others. Many of them have been doing this exact thing for the past two years anyway.

Plain and simple: you have no right to ask anyone to do that anymore. Level of difficulty on their part is not your place to judge, call, or evaluate.

You clearly look down on food service workers, but I am not surprised by that. Also, if you’re at this level of germ paranoia you’re living in the wrong city. Cue some crazy comment about how “well in New York the trash is actually a lot cleaner than in other cities” or whatever.

Please spare me. I am not personally asking. I am stating that this should be official protocol. I live in the city that has sanitation grades plastered on every restaurant in the city, so I'm not sure what type of city you think New York is, lol. It doesn't sound like you know it very well.

If you take the subway, you are breathing in human and rat excrement. If you don’t, you’re not a New Yorker.

What does this have to do with asking someone to cover the nose and mouth while cooking food?

Relates back to your clear paranoia of human food workers breathing on you. It’s very classist. Yes, restaurants have grades for good reason. But if you’re that paranoid of a person in a restaurant breathing on you, you don’t belong in New York, which is filthy. Example includes the feces subway air, bubonic plague, roaches, rats. All disease carrying. This is a well known fact and anyone who is too germ phobic shouldn’t be living in New York.

There’s a huge difference between taking a crap and rubbing it on someone’s food and breathing. Lol

Not on me. On my food. Stay on target. This debate tactic of shifting the meaning of people's words is really annoying.

Wear a mask if you want, don't wear one if you don't want to. I'm ok with people prepping food to wear a mask and hair net. I'd rather get Covid again than pull a hair from out of my mouth, that is like nails on a chalk board for me.

2 years later, where almost everyone in this country has either been vaccinated or has had Covid once, twice or 3 times, or fully vaccinated and infected and we are beating a dead horse at this point in regards to masks.

You, an infected person with Covid, "kept track of" all people you came in contact with? That's a relief and I feel better knowing this. The easy thing you could've done is to isolate, like we've all been instructed and mandated to do and is still advised by the CDC to do so.

According to the Worldometers, the US will reach 1,000,000 deaths by the end of this week.

Wearing a mask for an entire shift is no where comparable to taking 30 seconds washing hands...which isn't easily enforced anyway. Paying them more isn't going to solve retention, not if the Target next door pays the same but doesn't require masks, smelling like grease or working late to close.

I feel for retail/ restaurant employees who are still have to wear a shitty mask when it's largely for show seeing that the public isn't required to. The kid without a mask next table over coughing and sneezing all over the place isn't the issue but maskless wait staff are.

Well we don't have reliable data out of most of Africa and Asia

well have to wait for years for an accurate count. It will be done by studies on pollution levels and consumption patters probably.

There is actuall a legitimate problem in US covid deaths of people dying with covid and being counted as a covid death. Don't think its an enormous % of it but that does exist. But really the biggest thing is Obesity which is highly correlated with death and hospitalization from covid.

The US has lots of old fat former smokers which makes up the VAST majority of the deaths.

They would just need to wear it while handling food. It's the same concept as wearing disposable gloves.

Clearly it was a short list of people if I was able to keep track of that. Not sure why this needed to be spelled out. I thought this was pretty obvious.

Anyway, the bottom line is that masks work when used properly.

umm, more than a few.

why not just let the private establishments come around to whatever they want to come around to on their own time.

i mean since its up to them now who are you to say. :shrug:

In fact, the excess of deaths in the US (2020-2021) indicates a slightly bigger number of Covid victims, around 1.1 million. The US and Brazil managed to track their Covid deaths quite well.

Countries like Mexico, Russia and most of Latin America and Eastern Europe showed a massive difference on the official number of Covid deaths and the excess deaths.

With China doing one of its severe lockdowns again I imagine we will take a couple steps back regarding supply chain issues.

A few pages I mentioned that LOTS of people in New York are still wearing masks. LOTS, if guess upwards of 30-40% of people, outside, on the street.

I was then met by a bunch of New York reality deniers who said that hardly anyone in New York are wearing masks. That no runner or jogger is still wearing masks.

Now you’re saying “more than a few restaurants” are still requiring masks and living their covid fever dreams.

Funny, a few days ago nobody in New York was wearing masks according to the NY supremacists, now there are lots of restaurants still requiring masks. Funny how the narrative shifts and ultimately proves my point.

New York is still holding on to their covid fantasy.

So because SOME restaurants require staff to wear masks, which is definitely true, that must mean everybody is also jogging around NYC while wearing masks (which is definitely false)? You really don't see an in-between there, huh?

not to mention -- muh "New York reality deniers" and "the NY supremacists" and a personal favorite, muh "nobody in New York was wearing masks."

i think he only drives on one way streets. :haha:

What’s amazing is that some in the US (or at least the NYT comment sections) think they are doing a “better job” with Covid. Words fail…

One model is that you have to "pay the cost" of letting covid infections spread through the population in order for it to acquire immunity. In this regime, China's strategy is delaying the inevitable and raising the long-term cost.

I don't think that model is anywhere near 100% accurate but it's much closer to being true than a lot of people think (certainly the #zerocovid crowd), particularly in countries with no prospect of further vaccination and/or low efficacy vaccines.

A lot of people seem to overrate the impact of vaccination on spread (they think it makes a huge difference) and underrate the impact of recovery from infection (they think it does little or nothing and is much worse than vaccination).

Literally if you're breathing in anything and notice ANY smell, you're technically taking in outside particles (even if you don't smell it but for sure if you do). So if you can still smell someone's perfume or BO through the mask then the mask aint workin at all.

I am kind of paranoid now that i am going to Australia April 1st and have to take a covid test. I wish vaccinated people didn't have to test. I am not afraid of getting sick but i am afraid of testing positive and having it ruin my vacation.

The only impact Covid continues to have here is staff absences, which are still creating problems in hospitality and travel in particular.

As of April 1st you no longer have to self-isolate after a positive test. But obviously people want the days off, and employers are hesitant to say “if you feel fine, get your ass to work”, so people in hourly jobs (not professionals) are taking their week off and hanging out.

Yeah, this is subtle, not often talked about impacts of governmental actions. This isn't sustainable. I have not been on a plane since Covid started and I certainly will not be booking an overseas trip until all the insanity is stopped 100%. I am not that wealthy and my off-time is precious, a canceled trip would be devastating.

Overall, NYC is making progress, but is nowhere near pre-pandemic economic activity, based on my own following experiences.

- Chinese restaurants in Flushing and Chinatown used to regularly stay open until 1-2 AM. Nowadays, you would get lucky to find more than a handful who stay open that late. Most close by 9-11 pm, even on weekends.
- Subways still aren't anywhere near as full as they used to be during the weekday rush. Before, you wouldn't be able to even squeeze into the Q train on the UES sometimes.
- After my basketball coaching on Saturdays in Kew Garden Hills, I drive to the UES around 6-7 PM to drop off some moving stuff & pick up my parents to eat and go back to Fresh Meadows. Nowadays, that trip takes me about 30 minutes. Before the pandemic, I dreaded driving into the city during that hour. Due to the hordes of cars & cabs bringing people into the city to have fun on Saturday night, it used to take around 1 hour. It would probably be slightly faster nowadays if the Queensboro Bridge wasn't undergoing upper level construction (which has knocked out 1 out of 2 lanes going into the city).

The U.S. seems like it may avoid a second wave entirely? Cases are increasing somewhat in parts of the Northeast (New England, New York, and New Jersey) but this is being essentially canceled out by drops elsewhere, and even the case rise isn't that rapid (maybe doubling every month from a low base).

It seems like in Europe the BA.2 "wave" was over in like three weeks anyway, with cases falling again. I still don't understand how Western Europe has sustained such elevated COVID numbers for so goddamned long though. It can't all be due to testing.

Hasn’t the US already had a second and third “wave”?

The only reason it has come in so-called waves is that countries kept reimposing restrictions. Otherwise everyone would have just gotten it.

But then, you can and will get this repeatedly. Like 5 million people in the UK had Covid last week according to the testing data. Nobody cares.

I had a positive test in December (which was probably omicron), but got another test the next day so that I could fly. I’ve probably had whatever this new variant is too by now, but wouldn’t know because I don’t test.

Of Omicron? Nope. The case decline seems to have bottomed out, or slowed a lot. We're down to 27,000 cases a day, which isn't that different from the 30,000 or so two weeks ago.

Yeah, I don't think a variant as infectious as Omicron even will protect against further waves for longer than say six months max, since antibodies from prior infections do wane.

2021 DOB Report. Not as high as previous years but 2021 wasn't to bad overall. Still lagging compared to before covid.

====



https://newyorkyimby.com/wp-content/...orough-VDO.png

https://newyorkyimby.com/wp-content/...orough-VDO.png

https://newyorkyimby.com/wp-content/...orough-VDO.png

https://newyorkyimby.com/wp-content/...ize-VDO-v2.png

https://newyorkyimby.com/wp-content/...ory-VDO-v2.png

https://newyorkyimby.com/wp-content/...ing-VDO-v3.png

https://newyorkyimby.com/wp-content/...ing-VDO-v3.png

https://newyorkyimby.com/wp-content/...-month-VDO.png
Credit: NYY

Last night I was in the Theater District, just north of Times Square, and it looked like 2019 -- absolutely packed. The last time I was in the Theater District was on a Friday night early last summer, and it was almost a ghost town then.

I have no frame of reference for pre-pandemic, but from my experiences last week (vacation trip), Times Square was packed, even at 9pm on a rainy Wednesday night.

Houston: What is this 'Covid' you speak of...

Haha

My wife is from Texas and last year around this time her mother went on a weekend trip with friends to DC and somewhere in Maryland (I think). She kept getting messages like “They say the bar in our hotel is closed! And so many restaurants we wanted to try are closed! What’s going on!”

She was like uhh, mom, there’s been a pandemic, maybe you’ve heard about it on the news…

San Diego County has faired well throughout the pandemic compared to the rest of California.

– New cases per 100k in the past week: 63 (2,096 new cases, -13% change from previous week)
– Cumulative cases per 100k: 24,078 (803,799 total cases)
— 4.6% more cases per 100k residents than California
– Cumulative deaths per 100k: 155 (5,178 total deaths)
— 30.5% less deaths per 100k residents than California
– Population that is fully vaccinated: 77.2% (2,577,749 fully vaccinated)

Omicron is covid so that was the confusion we have had 4 major waves, omicron BA1 being the last one.

Europe and UK have had 2 omicron waves and still in The midst of BA2, but it is peaked and now waning.

We have recently in certain areas of the northeast had small increases presumably BA2 which we did not see a high second wave as Europe did. That’s still a question as sewage testing has shown increased levels of virus detection, which in the past was a strong indicator.

I was in Seattle for a few weeks for work and just got back.

I noticed that even now most of the chain businesses in newer areas such as South Lake Union are still takeout only, delivery only, etc and probably intend to be forever. Or closed for good. Similarly, that whole area is an utter wasteland of see-thru glass buildings and empty offices. It's all very very fancy and nice, if only because the security probably chases the bums away. I know with such sparkly new utopian developments that the sunk cost fallacy is really strong, but honestly this area needs to reboot. Tear out the streetcar, all it does is make bikes crash. If those office buildings can't be repurposed as apartments, the clock is ticking before imploding them and putting up apartments/condos makes more sense. Urban redevelopment is allowed to fail after all, things younger than that went up and came down in the 50s and 60s.

In contrast, where my hotel was in Lower Queen Anne was 100% alive. All the local businesses were open. Had to stand on the RapidRide D line and routes 10 and 13 that I rode occasionally. That whole area, including Seattle Center and Belltown, is so fascinating. Mostly residential, not a lot of stuff except little food places tucked away in the corner, but I could see why that would be a desirable area to live. Likewise up the hill, I almost killed myself climbing that grade and made it to the top around Kerry Park and also ventured around where the TV tower is, the secret stairways midblock covered in moss, etc. I love the midcentury modern 6-8 story apartment buildings so much and wonder why they can't build shit like that anymore.

Also the Downtown tourism core around Pikes Place Market and the waterfront was thriving, and the vicinity of the Westlake station area seemed to be coming back. I did some shopping there and ate in the plaza and it was nice. Mariners had a home game, also they were having some kind of anime convention so there were a bunch of cat girls and dudes dressed as mario walking around.

But a few blocks inland at 3rd and Pine it was a shitshow. Whoever owns that old Kress building with the vacant TJ Maxx, Qdoba, etc that's all borded up and allowing homeless people to camp there needs to be tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail like the 1800s (who am I kidding, it's probably some douche in Miami). That McDonald's with the sidewalk walk-up window and everything else boarded up covered in graffiti looks like some shit from 1980s New York City. The fact this is apparently the central bus transfer point made my use of transit very stressful and is probably impacting ridership. I waited for my bus at dusk surrounded by crazies(some dude reaching into his pants and yelling at the sky to go fuck itself) once and decided next time to just walk all the way through Belltown. Which is pretty nice.

Definitely seems like a story of out-of-town landlords and chains maliciously complying with what they must have viewed as "nanny liberal covid rules" back in 2021 deciding they'd rather put their own places out of business while locals all took it in stride and have more or less gotten things back to how they used to be. Once you get off the beaten track everything seems to be fine.

Well i have been in Australia since April 1st and masks arent required anywhere. Probably about 10% of people wear them. I was supposed to go home on April 23rd but have caught covid a few days before so I am stuck here for now.

I'm in Florida and you would never know there was a Covid. And damn, it was nice not having to wear a mask on the plane.

^ Pretty much what needs to be standard everywhere. But idiots prevail....

Is there any Western country that is still living under Covid restrictions? Beyond maybe masking in specific circumstances? I haven't seen anything out of Australia in awhile, but I figured if life is completely back to normal in Ontario then everyone else must be as well.