Jesus Christ you actually carry a taser with you everywhere you go? Sounds like a fearful existence.

I live in a "progressive" paradise where everything is tolerated from the protected class who live on the streets and don't work but can be dragooned to the polls every election day. I wish there were some way to cross-reference the site Nextdoor for central San Francisco so you could see the incessant posts about uncontrolled shoplifting, package thievery, car break-ins, even pet-stealing. Sitting in a fast food joint I've had bums just occupying tables (not buying anything) throw debris at me. I've had them plop down at my table and start harrassing me. You need to be prepared for anything (lately that includes a complete failure of "distancing" by unmasked/unwashed bums, just to touch on the topic here). And the size of the already inadequate, do-nothing police force was just reduced further by voter action at the polls.

In Victoria, we've just reached the WHO definition of elimination of community transmission of COVID-19 (28 days / 2 incubation periods of no unlinked cases). But perhaps more importantly, we have just had 28 days of zero cases whatsoever.

https://i.imgur.com/fkPGIEh.png

https://www.theage.com.au/national/v...27-p56iev.html

^ Excuse my French, but this is just a motherfucking feat. We don't know how you guys do that where I am in France. Are you guys totally shut down to the world or something?
For example, how does the youth act in your country? Over here, youngsters go depressed if you deprive them from their weekly parties, their college mates and so on. So a lot of them keep spreading the virus by their undisciplined attitude, but I personally can't even blame on them, because I would've done the same and possibly worse when I was 20.

Anyway, the so called 2nd wave is going under control here, while the government, their advisors, scientists were freaking out a couple of weeks ago.
So restrictions are about to be eased for Christmas and New Year's Eve. But then, I would expect a "3rd wave" for February and March. Lol.

Only a vaccine can effectively free us from that curse. But the French (including myself) are a bit skeptical about the latest announcements. We're like - how did the Pfizer/BioNThec consortium or Moderna manage to develop their vaccines so fast, while it normally takes at least 2 years to seriously make it? Sure, the latest tech can make their tests faster, but it's still a bit astonishing, if not uncertain. So approval to their products might take a little time here. No doubt the French bureaucracy will carefully watch them anyway.

the latest covid gift is tooth loss and dental issues:

https://www.nydailynews.com/coronavi...vpa-story.html

but hey its just like the flu.

Was checking the NYC cams, and 5th Avenue is poppin!

Glad to see the crowds, although not the madness that it was a year ago at this same time, but picking up.

Usually you can't move one centimeter without pulling a Harvey Weinstein during the month of December on any street north of 30th.

Once this pandemic is over, I'm sure the crowds will reach madness level, which is how I like it. Car gridlock and people gridlock, the way NYC should be from March to mid January, lowering down for February, and than back to the Madness.


https://aws1.discourse-cdn.com/busin...5fd4149dd.jpeg

https://aws1.discourse-cdn.com/busin...669505d86.jpeg

Je me rappelle plus. Géocoucou me dit vaguement quelque chose, mais je ne sais plus quoi.

Pour moi, c'était bip bip. L'espèce de volaille qui court à la vitesse de la lumière et qui échappe à tous les malheurs.
J'ai même jamais su quel genre d'oiseau c'était censé représenter dans la vraie vie. Tout ce que j'ai jamais su, c'est que quand il fait "bip bip", un truc désastreux et probablement hilarant va s'abattre sur le prédateur vicieux qui le poursuit.

Tu vois... C'est tout simple en vrai. J'ai toujours aimé ces slapstick cartoons. Il y a des studios d'animation qui perpétuent cette tradition complètement farfelue de nos jours. Par exemple en France, Xilam (Oggy et les Cafards, Zig et Sharko). C'est marrant pour les mômes (ainsi que pour les adultes, à l'occasion).

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curious, do they even mask at all up there?

i got a cousin and his family there and anyway i just want to visit someday. ive only made it as far as vancouver though.

[QUOTE=mousquet;9118890]Je me rappelle plus. Géocoucou me dit vaguement quelque chose, mais je ne sais plus quoi.

Pour moi, c'était bip bip. L'espèce de volaille qui court à la vitesse de la lumière et qui échappe à tous les malheurs.
J'ai même jamais su quel genre d'oiseau c'était censé représenter dans la vraie vie. Tout ce que j'ai jamais su, c'est que quand il fait "bip bip", un truc désastreux et probablement hilarant va s'abattre sur le prédateur vicieux qui le poursuit.

Tu vois... C'est tout simple en vrai. J'ai toujours aimé ces slapstick cartoons. Il y a des studios d'animation qui perpétuent cette tradition complètement farfelue de nos jours. Par exemple en France, Xilam (Oggy et les Cafards, Zig et Sharko). C'est marrant pour les mômes (ainsi que pour les adultes, à l'occasion).


https://youtu.be/Nx_UgwT9_u4

D'après moi, au Québec rares sont ceux qui disaient "Géocoucou". C'était soit "bip bip" ou "le roadrunner" (prononcé "roadrunneux").

New York City public schools will begin reopening in-person learning in early December, mayor says

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https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/...20103774f57f15

Some interesting data from around the world here on how they've fared in terms of case loads, fatalities, lockdown severity, economic damage, and access to vaccines: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/c...=pocket-newtab

It’s the same as everywhere else. Masks are required, but there’s still the ones that don’t believe in doing so. Also, now communities can completely ban intrastate travel if they wish. I’m not sure if any have done so though.

Apart from obvious geographic differences (i.e island country versus a country with land borders), I dunno what it is, really. Even then using an island as an excuse is a load of shite anyhow - Victoria's second wave was a breach in hotel quarantine and a super-spreader event from security guards working there. South Australia had one of these events 3 weeks ago - the virus can still get into island countries and it can be rapid once it's in the community.

Broadly speaking, Australians generally want their governments to fix fuck ups / lead during crises and we just give them lee-way to do it. For the past year, I've seen a lot of libertarians crow about all sorts of crap - and that just doesn't work here. The Murdoch media tried, and failed.

The second wave had 3 months worth of lockdown - 6 weeks of very very little contact with other people, then we were allowed in "single buddy bubbles" (if you were living alone, you could nominate one other person and visit them once a day) and then restrictions were eased gradually.

Also, the state's public health system was completely and utterly unprepared and they used the time during lockdown to bolster everything. The contact tracing system saw a major upgrade, they started using different quarantining strategies (mainly for every case, their close contacts and the close contacts of the close contacts - 2 ring fences - are quarantined). We also learned that if you're having more than a couple of hundred cases a day, no contact tracing system is going to be effective (hence hard lockdown is the only way to smash case loads down).

Broadly - once again - libertarian arguments don't really work here in Australia. We get that you need a little bit of authoritarianism (on the lighter scale) every now and again and you need to work together as a society to get a collective outcome.

Seeing the economic wash up after all of this is done is going to be interesting. Yes, the centre-right side of politics (or those participants who just wanted to sink the boot into the state government because politics (rather than helping with a public health response) was It'S aBoUt ThE EcOnOmY StUpiD, but we had 3-4 months of major restrictions and things are now roaring back to life (December's unemployment figures for Victoria will be interesting as they'll reflect a full month of severe restrictions having been lifted and continung to be eased through November). It'll be interesting to see how things go - where each country/sub-national jurisdiction ends up whether you go down the path we did versus trying to balance things that other countries seem to be doing (hoping for vaccines to do the job etc).

^ Of course, I can see about what you're saying. I was kind of a tongue in cheek.

But fact is there's also some geopolitical, economic and sociological matter, if you really want to speak broadly.
You guys are neighbors of Southeast Asia that's booming. So your economic constraints are not the same as ours. Tomorrow is surely a good thing to you, no matter what virus, with the massive economic growth all over your region and around your country.

It is harder to reassure the people about their economic future in this part of the world, Europe, where there's an old establishment that keeps taking everything for granted.
The youth is not really optimistic about their future here. Thus their skepticism towards the government and anything related.

Protesters take to the streets over new COVID-19 restrictions

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Ironic that they're waving US flags.

On the bright side most of them will likely get COVID and with vaccines on the horizon we are getting closer to herd immunity.

But people do get infected more than once.