I really don’t understand what people are trying to achieve with the “what if Covid was vastly more deadly” line of argument.

If Covid were vastly more deadly than it actually is, then the whole cost/benefit calculation would be different, and no one (or at least very few people) would be complaining about giving up freedoms and the ability to live their lives and pursue their careers normally. But it’s not, so the whole argument is a red herring.

Proficiency with them was a job requirement, as well as vaccines. ;)
The science gets updated and changed with new information, although the goalposts were pretty good in April. Too bad unvaccinated Americans didn't want to play, so they had to be moved. It's actually their fault, but the government and vaccinated people wearing their masks in cars get the brunt end. Essentially the unvaccinated caused the science to move the goalposts in order to get them to play the game, yet they still wont. Or well they are now, because attacking the paychecks worked. As I have said (which nobody has complained about) the pandemic will be over soon. I have also said lockdowns will last forever (so much crying and fear generated) I guess it just depends on who I'm talking to. :haha:
Well ordeals aren't supposed to be fun....:shrug: but there are much worse places and situations out there in the world. First world countries have it easy.
I wanna know what you guys need to surrender your beliefs. It was proven that people will surrender for their favorite hobby or a paycheck being threatened, and it's just management and public policy. How can the government make people do something they don't want to do? It's simple. The next time the government wants people to do something they just need to threaten people's wallets. Money talks and rhetoric walks.

You two (TUP and 10023) make quite a pair: Just ignore any and all advice of public health professionals ("germaphobes" all; plan on getting covid and if you're lucky you'll survive, and don't worry about it. And if 44 of 117 players get covid, most of them apparently breakthrough infections and acquired because other team players or staff were not taking any of the recommended precautions, it's fine.

Your attitude is, of course, why covid is still running rampant in the western world.

Having someone like you actually working in health care is truly dangerous.

The Snerks are dangerous too. Back to the basement post haste! :runaway:

You sound like my 95 year old patient who insists that she can drive and still live independently even while she repeats the same question to me over and over again (which I've answered), all while her daughter looks at me and rolls her eyes :haha:

And who cares if it is? What do you expect, for these players and coaches to spend all day in the team facility wearing fucking masks? To practice wearing masks? It’s a fucking contact sport.

If you’re worried about Covid, you are welcome to stay home or wear a mask or whatever you want. There’s no reason for the rest of us to care, and you won’t be missed. Hell, London would become a vastly better place to live if all the over-70s just… left.

There should ALWAYS have been more asked of people who were actually at risk than from the general population, but that’s a different issue. At this point the pandemic is over, Covid is here to stay as another mild infectious virus, and no one should be required to change their life in any way because of it.

No one should be required to change their life... but... all those over 70 should leave London's swinging premises for your benefit.

Logic was never your strong suit, but your resentments, big and small, are awfully apparent.

I did not say that they should, and they obviously will not. I just said that the city would be a better place, from my perspective, if they did. And it would be - lots of real estate would free up, tired old restaurants would be replaced with new ones, supermarket checkout lanes would move faster, etc. ;)

Likewise Pedestrian is free to think that things would be better if everyone would wear a mask everywhere. And he can have that opinion if he likes, but no one should be forced to do it.

^ It's even more bizarre than that. Pedestrian said that he finally might be "okay with everyone around him not wearing N95 masks". Finally. Just now. In November 2021.

You just can't make this shit up :haha:

Isn’t it another frivolous claim to freedom to invoke checkout lines though?

I mean, it’s no wonder people think wearing a mask is the last straw to break the democratic camel’s back. That said, I don’t have to wear one since I WFH, whereas my wife does and I commiserate with her. One thing that bothers TF out of me is the amount of masks and tissues on my walks with my dog. I can’t help but think how every prophylactic measure that pops up is also a contributor to the environmental calamity we are faced with.

I am constantly pulling masks out of my dog's mouth on our walks.

Yep, tissues and masks nonstop. lol, nonlol.

I know you’re French(Canadian), but what the little wink emoji was meant to convey is that I added that one to my 3 examples as sort of a joke.

It’s true, but no it’s not one of the major reasons why I think removing lots of affluent (at least in terms of housing wealth) empty nester homebodies from the central city would make it a more vibrant and dynamic place, and help younger people who actually need to live and work in the city to find adequate housing without long commutes.

And then yeah, there’s a reason there are no good restaurants in Kensington (one of the “nicest” and most central residential parts of London) and that reason is old people. But this is probably a more British specific problem, since this country only discovered decent food in about 2004 and therefore it represents another generational divide.

my daughter got sent home from school early today for potential covid exposure in her classroom last week.

YAY, back to remote "learning" for the next week or so. :(

^
Some random kid probably had a cough and everyone freaked out.

No, one of her fellow classmates tested positive for covid over the weekend apparently, and per CPS guidelines, all 25 kids in her 1st grade classroom now have to go into a 10 day remote "learning" protocol.

The other 600 kids at her school (including her little brother) are unaffected for the moment, unless they track intra-school spread, in which case they might close the entire school BUILDING* for a spell.

CPS has said that once kids are fully vaxxed, any child who is fully vaxxed will not have to do these 10 day quarantines after exposure in school, which will be nice, but we're not quite there yet.


(*) Extra emphasis on "BUILDING" for those afflicted with VSIS.

^
That’s insanity. Hopefully it comes to an end soon.

Out of an "abundance of caution" the Ontario government canceled it's plan to remove the remaining capacity limits on bars, nightclubs, strip clubs, etc. starting yesterday evening. For context, the caution is based on the recent increase in cases shown below.

https://i.imgur.com/ZrQWoZu.jpg

They also keep touting how Covid will need to be handled on a regional basis, yet Toronto, where the vast majority of such high-capacity establishments are located, has some of the highest vaccination rates in the world and is still subject to the same province-wide restrictions. Over 95% of 18-29 year olds fully vaccinated, significantly higher than the populations actually at risk.

https://i.imgur.com/IicxG3m.jpg

^ Idiots

:haha:

That's exactly what has happened with COVID. It's turned into a mental illness. I fully expect the same goal post moves to keep happening everywhere, including Illinois

meh. IMO, "insanity" would be shutting down the entire school BUILDING from a single case of covid in a classroom. this individual classroom protocol is disruptive and annoying (anytime one or both of my kids aren't at their the school BUILDING on a school day is disruptive and annoying), but it is what it is, and with my kids getting fully vaxxed within the the month, it is hopefully a policy not long for this world (or at least one that will not affect our family).

afaik they dont do this in nyc schools this school year. only if kids are symptomatic.

Lucky for NYC, unfortunately in Chicago, we have one of the most militant far left teachers unions and they will do anything to work less.

^ The goalposts will shift and this protocol will remain in place even after your kids are vaccinated.

Mark my words. Remember this post, because I will quote and repost it in a few months to remind you that my prediction is right.

As soon as a breakthrough infection occurs with a kid in school I'm sure we'll be right back where we started.

that's always possible, but the new standard already applies to 12+ kids who are fully vaxxed.

my good friend has a CPS highschooler who had a covid exposure in her class, and because she is fully vaxxed, she did not have to do a 10 day remote "learning" quarantine.

I agree with you guys generally but I think that there will be considerably more pushback if they try to re-tighten measures significantly. And this time it will come from more "respectable" people.

If only for that I think governments will tread a lot more cautiously.

There will always be something to fall back on. "A vaccinated kid still has the potential to pass it on to an older person who hasn't gotten a booster yet."

I agree that regulatory authorities are running out of goodwill though. People around here who were generally cautious with Covid pre-vaccine, followed the measures, etc. are running out of patience and are converting to the mindset of eventually having to "let er rip".

This is already quite noticeable around here. Cases went up around August or so but the new measures were almost all directed at specific areas or unvaccinated people. I'm not sure they had much discernible impact one way or the other. Maybe the vaccine passports got 0.4% more people vaccinated.

I still read comments online about how officials here are incautious etc. but they are typically ultra low information (e.g. based on case numbers, and we never really had very good data in Canada anyway) and they're clearly diverging from what the province here is actually doing.

At this point I think the only real annoyance to me is the requirement that Canadians get a negative covid test before entering the country. I hope this will be dropped in the coming months.

I flew back from vacation in Scottsdale yesterday. Paid $40 for an antigen test to fly into the States, wasn't checked once. Was about to pay $140 for a PCR test (supposedly required to get back into Canada) but luckily found a place that did it for free in Phoenix. Only person to ask for my PCR test was a guy who I was assume an airport employee at the gate in Phoenix. Not a single immigration officer on either side of the border asked for proof of vax or negative test, but obviously you still have to do it on the off-chance they will.

Coming back from a long weekend in Arizona has put me in a bitter mood regarding current Covid regulations here.

My worry is mostly about testing positive and having to isolate in another country for 2 weeks.

I suspect Canada is a bit out-there these days compared to most of the world. If you look at just wealthy developed nations they are all over the place in terms of policies implemented (masks, school closures, vaccines, testing). Most did about the same even though they didn't accept the full slate of Canadian life-or-death measures. A subset of people are getting hysterical about smaller and smaller initiatives as the absolute risk of covid generally stays low or declines.

These days we're around 0.7 deaths per million per day. Our death rate here in BC over the pandemic has been about 0.025% of the population per annum. These simple facts aren't mentioned much, and you definitely won't see people contemplate what it might have meant to accept 0.05% mortality or get to 0.01% mortality. You are more likely to see the media focus on anecdotes of dead unvaccinated people.

The vaccine debate is getting extreme with narrower and narrower goals that are now about getting that last 10% or 1% of people vaccinated (some of these populations that mandates are being pushed in are 96% or more vaccinated). We can debate if the mandates are appropriate but I'm not sure how that last few % is going to change things. The vaccines do not confer lifelong sterilizing immunity.

Every couple of days we get news reports about COVID "coming back" in country X, Y or Z, but I don't have a full sense of what's being done in these places in response to upticks in cases.

Though I did hear this week that Austria was "locking down" again but I like most people have no idea what that means? Schools closed? Kids wearing masks in class? In-dining in restaurants verboten? Curfews? Essential shopping only?

Without more details (yes I know I could find them, but who does this?), it's impossible to know if their "lockdown" is any worse than the current status quo where we are.

The result for most us is just more COVID anxiety, like a sword of Damocles hanging over heads.

yep the remaining legit media and the rest of the so-called media run with it in all directions. this is what we get when no one will pay for moderated news anymore, for better and for worse. :shrug:

My therapist's office is still requiring masks, so I took a fresh one from the place where we keep them hanging in our kitchen before I headed off to my appointment. It smells like bacon, so I'm sitting in this waiting room breathing deep in my cloth mask and loving it.

I went out last night to an Alsatian-French restaurant in UES, NYC. On the one hand, the indoor dining area became almost full starting around 7pm. And there were some diners in the outdoor seating areas, which looked quite comfortable and welcoming under the orange heat lamps. On the other hand, the Vietnamese restaurant across the street, which was fairly popular pre-pandemic, was still running exclusively takeout and delivery.

I stayed in the UES last night, and squeezed into the crowded Q train around 8:30 this morning. That's an experience I haven't encountered for a while, though can't say I miss it (especially the morning Q train from the UES).

^ mta remains in the 30s-40s% per pandemic ridership levels across the week these days.

https://new.mta.info/coronavirus/ridership

the real problem i notice, as a daily rider, is inconsistency and longer waits for trains all week long.

Austria is doing a lockdown for unvaccinated people. Presumably this means that either every business has to check vaccination status, or police are just randomly stopping people, or both. Either way it sounds like a bad look for Hitler’s home country. Deine Papieren bitte!

Yep, and train driver and conductor staffing issues are also causing scheduled trains to be cancelled. Overall, trains remain lightly occupied even with school in session. They were mostly empty during the summer. Roads are a nightmare, and the bus I used to take to the subway is no longer a viable option because of road traffic.

So, coming back to the US next week..... I notice the requirements for entry are the following:
1 - If you are a US citizen, you don't provide proof of vaccination, but need to provide a negative Covid test.
2 - If you aren't a US citizen, you need to provide both proof of vaccination AND a negative Covid test.

Yep, the world has still lost its mind. None of that makes any sense from a scientific perspective......

Great to see every country still has slightly different requirements making travel a continued pain in the ass.

No, the MTA subway is at 70% ridership, the MTA bus is at 85% ridership and the MTA railroads are at 55% ridership.

There are no cuts to weekday service. The one major pandemic-era service change is no express trains on certain routes. LIRR and Metro North cut most of their peak rush hour trains, but are signaling that some will shortly be restored.

Weekend MTA ridership is at 100% of pre-pandemic levels, suggesting that the ridership dip is almost entirely WFH (and probably, in core areas, drop-off of intl. visitor counts). So MTA ridership won't match pre-pandemic weekday counts until full WFH drops significantly, and that won't be for a while.

Most transit agencies are saying 2025 or so for matching pre-pandemic counts. I think it might be a bit sooner. Intl. travel will probably have a full rebound by 2023-24, and set work norms will probably be established by then.

It makes plenty of sense. Citizens have different entry rules than non-citizens. Foreign nationals entering a sovereign nation have a higher burden of entry.

Which is why the MTA is rolling out dozens of bus-only lanes, with traffic cameras or barriers.

Basically every major bus route in the city will eventually use a bus lane.

yes, i meant subway ridership remains down 30s-40% vs pre-pandemic. the latest is down 44.7% this past monday. that's more than just wfh.

In SF muni is picking up a bit, but the last statistics I see are for June 2021 where it was 1/4 of normal. There still are fewer trains but they are filling up. The bus I ride (37) is always pretty much empty except for about a half dozen people... It used to be standing room only. Car traffic is back to normal. I guess people are too afraid to take transit, which is unfortunate and stupid.

I will say there was quite an uptick of new commuters and people downtown as of November 1st.

The train I was on this morning was packed, but it also seems like service might have been slowed on my line.

You go ahead and be the canary in that coal mine.

Transit is picking back up slowly but surely. If you're vaccinated, not a member of an at-risk demographic, and live in a city where statistically maybe one person in your train car is unvaccinated, your risk of getting sick is low, and you're risk of dying is so low that you should probably be more worried about being run over by the train.

In most cities the demographic that rides transit probably has a higher rate of covid than the city as a whole. And personally I see no reason to take the risk. The inside of a train car (or bus) is like any closed space. I avoid those when not necessary and Uber makes trains and busses unnecessary.

Where is this magic city where only one transit rider per train car is likely to be un-vaccinated?

I mean once the new treatment comes out, even your demographic probably has a greater risk of getting into a serious accident with an uber driver that you can only vet through a 5-star rating system. You are undoubtedly in the top percentile of covid cautiousness though (which is your choice and a perfectly okay decision). I'm certain there will be millions of willing "canaries" before you give public transit the all clear.

Toronto is probably pretty close given the age of the average rider, vaccination rates of 95%+ in the 18-35 demographic, and an average of ~20 people per car on a normal day.

i would seriously doubt its that high on trains and busses, given homeless and the handful of neanderthal mouth breathers you find anywhere. it's not just the bright and able who use public transit. :shrug:

but you are right, with new treatment, rising vaxxed and children vax, it will be behind us soon. :tup: