Actually, now that you mention it, there were a great number of voices arguing for this over here as well. Can’t let people go to the gym, just mix 3/4 generations in a tiny English house with no open windows in the winter. Jesus Christ the stupidity, but what old people want, old people get.

Well that's missing a lot C because of the social distancing thats required. ;)

Might be hard to slip dollar bills from 6 ft because I am not Plastic Man so my arms don't extend that far.

I tested positive this morning so I've got Covid. That's 7 of us now from the family holiday party Sunday evening. Someone who tested negative earlier that day obviously became contagious during the gathering.

I have generally mild symptoms right now. Low grade headache, minor body aches, dry cough, nasal congestion...all the classic Omicron symptoms. With first onset of symptoms Tues Dec 21, this means I'm in day 4 of it already. I notified my Doc a few minutes ago of the positive result.

I'm 58 years old, soon to be 59 (in about 10 days), but healthy for my age cohort. 5'6", 156 lbs, non-smoker, daily active, no chronic health conditions. I do drink more than most people tho. For those of you who remember, I did get vaccinated with the Moderna vaccine back on March 11, but I never got any more covid vaccines, because I developed severe tinnitus which continues to this day.

^ You are reporting a non-event, FYI

I don’t get tested for Covid because it is a silly exercise, except in a few situations

Youtube is pretty crazy, there's this crazy vaxx person ( I don't care if someone takes it or not, my best friends have taken it) today they are still saying they are going to by a gun for anti vaxx people to shoot ourselves. There is def some weird effects for some people who have had the shot 3 or more times. There's other people that have been acting strange after taking the shots.

I have friends in their 20's who live in a household together and have no elderly relatives to visit. They have to go to in-person jobs during the pandemic. Some of them also worked with somebody in my household. But we were not supposed to socialize with them. They have no car because they can't afford one. I guess they were supposed to walk home 30 minutes with groceries or take transit. We helped them out by driving them around anyway. Their small house probably has 8 people in it or something like that.

There was a big bias toward "traditional families" in the public health rules (on paper right now you can't gather as 3x20 year olds who live alone, but 2x5-member multi-generational families are OK) which isn't surprising, even though the government tries to be superficially woke. I'm gay and mostly socialize with gay males and we'll get hassled by police much more than normal because whenever we do things it registers as "a group of young guys socializing" which is inherently suspicious (2 men and 2 women = 2 households, 4 men = 4 households).

My building has a gym but it has been closed down since March 2020. They were allowed to open in the summer but they said they'd make some plans for a few months then the public health people told them they had to close again. I'd guess it's made people in my building significantly fatter/less healthy, potentially costing more in QALY than covid since this area is something like 95% vaccinated.

At this point I think the restrictions are practically entirely garbage and should be thrown out. The risk to most vaccinated people is very low and other people can take their own measures that they want to to protect themselves if they feel it's dangerous. The specter of hospitals being overwhelmed has never materialized here and anyway I don't think it is a good reason to indefinitely suspend normal freedoms (you must have this service from us but we're not administering it properly so we will manipulate your life so you need less of it). If they want to actually fix our healthcare system, including scaling up ICU capacity to normal levels in other first-world countries, I'd be supportive of that, but I don't think we can wait because it's been deteriorating for 30+ years.

I have a husband who has a compromized immune system, he just tested negative. I have to travel the country for the work that I do. The fucking instructions on the tests say to notify your healthcare provider. You're entitled to voice your childish "silly exercise" pronouncements, but it tells me how dense you are.

Hope you get well soon and don't listen to "I'm a doctor but I don't give a fuck about potentially infecting my patients." (I take voluntarily weekly surveillance tests at work... it's not a big deal...)

That’s where my part about “except in a few situations” comes in. You didn’t mention the immunocompromised husband part. So spare me the false outrage.

Cute, but you are the outlier here, not me.

I don’t know a single colleague who is doing voluntary weekly tests. That’s not necessary or normal behavior. Go find a new religion.

Vaccine, boosting, masks, and gloves on examining patients more than suffice. I don’t feel the need to do irrational things beyond that point. I actually believe in science (as opposed to using “science” in buzzword form)

Chiropractors aren't required to get tested? What about the safety of your customers??

Plenty of people do, if it's easy (as it is for me). Since COVID is associated with a quadrupling of stillbirth risk and my wife is pregnant, it doesn't seem unreasonable to me to spend ten minutes a week getting a test on my way into the office.
CDC guidelines indicate you should isolate and get tested if you have any potential symptoms, not just "except in a few situations": https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019...endations.html

My husband isn't the only individual who could have a drastically altered response to this so spare me your after-the-fact qualifications. It's about caring for your fellow friends, neighbors, acquaintences and passers-by. Get it?

There's nothing "silly" about being aware of your Covid status and then upon finding out about it taking common sense precautions.

I guess I’m just forever a skeptic then. There is nothing “common sense” about healthy and asymptomatic (or mildly symptomatic) people testing themselves for a virus that is spreading like wildfire.

This is utter futility and nonsense. I don’t believe in this and I will never support it.

The way out of this is through immunity. Not avoidance. It’s not convincing and I don’t find it rational.

I posted about this in the CE, but I think folks don't understand some of the ramifications of the "If someone tests positive, isolate for 10 days" policy you see being implemented right now. Given the nature of Omicron, a ton of people are testing positive for this, even if their illness is non-existent or very mild. Yet, these people are being sent home. Today we saw over 2,000 flights cancelled. That wasn't due to weather, and it most likely wasn't due to staff being sick enough they couldn't do their job. If I am wrong about that, feel free to show some data on how many absent airline workers are actually too sick to work, and it's not them being told to stay home because of positive test results.

This is happening in the service industry now too with restaurants/bars closing down.

This has been going on for a while over here. They called it the “pingdemic” (referring to the “ping” or text you get from the NHS informing you that you need to self-isolate).

That was just due to contact tracing, which was absurd. Fortunately they got rid of that for vaccinated people. I had always ignored the texts anyway, but restaurants and businesses were always short of people because some co-worker’s kid had a case at their school. It was ridiculous.

Two weeks or 10 days or 7 days has always been a guesstimate. Obviously people who get very sick can have virus in their system for months. Even those with weaker immune systems that aren’t hospitalized might have it for longer before their body can fully clear it. But it’s perfectly possible for people to have the virus for just a couple of days and then the immune system kills it. I have.

^ Just don’t get tested for Covid. It’s a worthless exercise, bordering on something akin to a religion. Don’t do it. It’s a form of manipulating the public, and so many people are buying into it because they don’t know better.

There are some situations where testing is reasonable. But way too many people are doing it and I am unconvinced as to why we are subjecting our society to this nonsense. The focus should be on vaccination and immunity, above all else

This needs to be treated like flu now (and flu should be treated like this). I think the days of people going to the office anyway despite a fever and bad cough because they’ve got a lot on their plate are and should be over.

But you’ve never “had flu” just because the virus is present in your nasal passages despite not feeling sick (or at least, you never would have known), and this should be the same.

We are no longer in a pandemic, vaccines are widely available to anyone that wants them, and the situation is totally different from 2020 when it was something that you could be fine with but had a reasonable chance of killing someone else. That’s now a tail risk, like it is for flu.

People already fake the tests that you have to do for travel (unless they’re idiots). Not worth having to cancel a trip if you have zero symptoms. Again, if you actually get sick then it’s not a great idea to get on a long flight, but I’m not cancelling travel because of a lateral flow test result when I feel perfectly fine.

That’s if your flight hasn’t been cancelled, of course. I sincerely hope you can fly should you wish.

Again, the flight cancellations are because of airline/airport staff testing positive. They’re perfectly fine, no illness or symptoms, but can’t go to work because a test picks up trace amounts of virus.

The problem now is not the virus but the insane overreaction to it and a silly focus on cases in a post-vaccine world.

They can't go to work because they are contagious.

Who cares? The person they give it to isn’t going to get sick either (as long as they’re vaccinated, and if they aren’t then fuck them). And vaccinated, asymptomatic people are less likely to spread it anyway because they’re not shedding virus, not coughing or sneezing, etc.

Again, this needs to be like flu. You stay home if you’re sick. You’ve never taken a lateral flow or PCR test to tell you whether you’ve got virus in your nasal passageways.

We cannot have people isolating just because of a positive test forever. We shouldn’t even be testing anymore.

People are getting sick. They're just not getting sick enough to be hospitalized. Having an extremely contagious virus that causes symptoms spread through your workforce will cause disruptions, even if everybody doesn't die.

So?

Covid is everywhere. Why is that point so difficult to process?

The focus should be on immunity. Trying to quarantine is a quixotic exercise

I don’t recall you telling everyone to get tested for Flu or RSV before they went to their jobs back in 2018

I recommend thinking this through a bit more.

Most people are not getting sick. And people always get sick. This is nothing new. We cannot live as if it is possible to not get sick.

The CDC has always issued guidelines on what to do if you are sick.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/business/sta...-when-sick.htm

^ And the CDC has created a colossal mess.

I don’t give a shit what the CDC is saying. They are fucking this up, they are idiots, and they are completely wrong in their approach to this.

Long lines of vaccinated people with no or few symptoms getting tested for Covid? To what end? Why is this necessary?!!!

Fire that moron heading the CDC. That will save more people than anything else we do right now.

The mental hysteria has now gotten to the point where healthy vaccinated people who happened to test positive are clogging up hospital emergency rooms in Vermont and unfortunately diverting resources away from those truly in need. Somehow we've become a nation of hypochondriacs. This is all so idiotic at this point. https://www.wcax.com/2021/12/22/covi...s-clog-up-ers/

My parents are coming to visit tomorrow for a belated Xmas since I've worked over the weekend, and none of us plan on getting tested since we are all fully vaccinated and boosted. It's asinine to spend hours driving around or standing in line to get tested nowadays if you are fully vaccinated.

If you are sick. Not if you’re not sick, but a lateral flow or PCR test detects the presence of virus in your nasal passageway.

Obviously the guidelines are so that you don't spread whatever you're sick with, lol. Why are we still chasing our tails about this?

Because it's having a very severe real world impact on various industries right now. People who are testing positive are calling out sick from work, even if they have very mild symptoms because they are fully vaxxed. So what do you get? Thousands of airline flights being cancelled. I just read so far today, 2,000 flights have been cancelled.

These policy decisions have very real consequences.

It's weird that some of you think "policy" is the only reason for disruptions lol. I just personally witnessed omicron spread like wildfire through my company. Ninety-nine percent of the people who work for my company can work remotely. It was STILL disruptive because so many people were sick at the same time.

Dude, the CDC literally has guidelines for this:

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019...isolation.html

It's policy.

This is why the airlines are starting to push back on the CDC because they recognize what's happening here, and the huge impacts it's having on their industry.

Great that most people in your company can work remotely, but I am referencing the airline industry where that's not an option for many folks. If employees are positive, but with mild symptoms, then should they stay home for 10 days? It's a complete overkill, knee jerk reaction.

This sounds like a cautionary tale about what cities/policy-makers who refuse to start adapting to COVID will face in the coming months.

Admittedly, HK is likely the strictest place on the planet when it comes to virus containment, but nonetheless the obvious message would seem to be that we should be collectively moving on globally from containment and fully focus on adapting:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...ntine-omicron/

The airlines are pushing back on the amount of time that people should isolate after being infected. They are not pushing back on the stipulation that people should isolate.

We'd still have these disruptions with a shorter isolation period because it is so easily transmissible.

They still recognize they can't have carriers of COVID working, especially since it can impact other people. Plus they fall under federal authority so they don't want to piss off uncle sam who could ground them.

It's almost like they have absolutely no concept of public policy, which in this case is health.

And indeed, the flight worker unions are pushing against the airlines (unsurprisingly...) to not reduce the isolation time. The trouble is that probably some people become uncontagious after a few days but others may take longer than 10 days, and it's probably not so easy to tell, so it's difficult to set policy here.

^ No, it’s really fucking easy to set policy. Stay home and don’t go to work if you are actually sick (meaning that you have clear symptoms). That goes for Covid, flu, common cold, strep throat, mono… you name it.

We aren’t trying to flatten the curve anymore. It’s not a novel virus to which people have no immunity. The healthcare system isn’t at risk of being overwhelmed.

And the people with symptoms are likely to be the ones with higher viral loads, who spread it more easily by coughing.

Some are getting sick, and those people will stay home, just as they now will with flu. But many of them are not sick, just “positive”, and no one should care.

The days when you had to be worried about being asymptomatic but killing grandma are over. Grandma’s risk is now, while still non-zero, as low as it can reasonably be (short of masks, testing, isolation and social distancing forever). The pandemic is over.

90% of Covid disruption today is caused by silly policy, not the virus itself.

HK's waning viability as a financial/business center is due to Beijing's takeover, not Covid. At this point, HK is basically mainland China, but with better food and worse housing. I used to have lots of expat friends based in HK; the only one who remains married a local HKer and had three kids, then got divorced, but doesn't want to leave his kids.

And if people are so concerned about flight cancellations, push for a vax mandate for all flyers. I'm amazed this hasn't happened yet. Talk about low-hanging fruit. Instead we have people pushing for vax requirements to enter an elevator or empty art gallery for two minutes, and no push for spending hours in a cramped tube with hundreds of others. How many vax-denying hillbillies are frequent fliers anyways?

Because being vaccinated doesn't stop you from getting infected and transmitting the disease to others. It's a tool to prevent severe illness... Many folks testing positive right now are fully vaxxed, yet because they are testing positive (even though they have mild illness) are going home for 5-10 days.

Vaccination requirements wouldn't fix this.

Vax requirements would obviously limit Covid spread, which would make millions feel comfortable traveling, since they would know they weren't killing the granny sitting next to them. I know so many people who refuse to fly now, not because they're scared for themselves, but because they're scared for others.

Vax requirements would also obviously help protect flight staff from getting sick, therefore limiting flight cancellations and economic damage. We know fully vaxxed are far less likely to pass onto others. So there are major health, psychological and economic reasons for a national flight vax requirement. It would also put the U.S. in line with other nations.

Also, what is with this constant red herring of "vax doesn't stop all Covid, therefore it shouldn't be required?" Most drunk drivers or gun-toting terrorists won't end up harming someone, so why care? No more law enforcement? Pedophiles won't harm most children in their midst, so no big deal? Teachers can be child molesters? Many stillbirths kill the mother, even with excellent hospital care. So shut the hospitals? Just because something isn't 100% perfect doesn't mean it's ineffective or not worth pursing.

I don't care if it's spreading amongst people who won't develop severe illness.

Our approach has been, and should always been to keep the hospital system from being overwhelmed. It's clear that won't happen from Covid anymore. But since everyone keeps shifting the goal posts based on making millions feel comfortable traveling.......

I don't like it but I don't see any other alternative but airlines themselves to enact mandates. No, it won't stop spread but would slow it down. It would either force those who are unvaccinated to get vaccinated or drive. I'm sure flight staff would support it.

Yeah. I do think the isolation guidelines need to be clarified, but it's ridiculous to say that people should come to work when they are proven infected and thus likely contagious lol. And changing that policy wouldn't change the airlines situation at all, since a significant subset of people infected by omicron are obviously becoming symptomatic. The airlines would just have even more spread in their workforce if they allowed infected people to work.

Dr. Fauci seems ambivalent about a flyer mandate. He said that a mandate for airline passengers wouldn't really do much to prevent the spread, but it might encourage more people to get vaccinated.

It’s all moot at this point.

Hospital capacity isn’t being stretched by the current wave (because infections are generally mild). This means that someone else getting sick doesn’t matter to you or me. That means that vaccine mandates are superfluous. It also means that case levels don’t matter.

Honesty is the key. You can not like something but still understand that it's a good move.
Yes it is. You just don't like the restrictions...
source

I completely agree (and argued so in the other thread). This likely only stops being true once a higher fraction of the workforce is sick than the symptomatic proportion, which likely isn't reached until more than half of the workforce calls out sick (which is obviously not the case, given that the vast majority of flights are still happening).

I don't like broccoli either but still eat it.