We just need to rip the bandaid off and let it burn through society once and for all. The more we try to contain, the more we prolong this BS and delay the inevitable - that we're all going to get it.

I've had Covid the last 10 days and it was fortunately a total walk in the park because I was boosted. I had some sniffles and that was literally it. I've had worse colds and definitely worse hangovers. Had it not been for the fact that the CVS I had gone into had some at-home test kits in stock, I honestly would've have known I was infected.

My brother and his family are all boosted with the the exception of one of their two toddlers, who is 2 and not eliglble (but by far the least risky age group). But they are stating how proud they are for not eating at a restaurant or going into stores since Feb 2020. I'm like...ya'll realize if there was ever a time to get Covid it's now right? And trying to outrun this virus is going to just exhaust you. This variant is so much milder the ones of the past and if you're boosted you have such high protection from severe disease. But they live up in Berkeley where people are just crazy paranoid about Covid.

I wonder how much the lockdowns have prolonged the pandemic, maybe causing some reinfections too, or making some people older/fatter/poorer and more vulnerable. I could see this being particularly true in less functional countries that tended to impose more random draconian lockdowns and also didn't manage to give out vaccines. South Africa was a total shit show; they locked down too early and then not many people got vaccinated. Their adult prevalence of HIV is in the 20% range (50% poorly treated or untreated) which is much scarier than covid.

Lots of people argued we had to prevent "healthcare system collapse" (while constantly sounding the alarm about how we are about to see collapse) but in reality if you're going to have a pandemic, having a few weeks where the hospitals are overwhelmed is not guaranteed to be the worst outcome. It may be worse for everybody to keep hospitals mildly over-capacity for months rather than going through an acute period where there are too many unvaccinated-by-choice patients. And "collapse" need not happen. You can fail to treat 1 patient maximally (which may just mean shifting down a bit in the amount of care for a person with low odds of survival; did ventilator use in the early pandemic even help?) without the hospital crumbling to the ground.

Omicron seems potentially like a "good news" story to me, when put into wider perspective, though there is still a lot of uncertainty.

Here's the thing though, with other variants, you very likely wouldn't have gotten sick at all! So it's not obvious that omicron is really milder in that sense (since mild symptoms are worse than no symptoms!). In other words, average symptoms felt can appear milder but this is with a vastly different denominator (since we're not counting people who wouldn't have been considered at all). Now it could very well be somewhat milder than Delta for even unvaccinated people with no prior exposure, but probably not by an order of magnitude to make it really benign.

Anyway, I agree that for most vaccinated people, omicron is not a big deal if they get it. But even ignoring the antivaxxers (who even if are idiots, don't deserve to die), there's a substantial part of the population (I don't know, I'd guess at least 10%?) that even if boosted, still has substantial risk of serious illness or other adverse effects (stillbirth for pregnant women, which can apparently happen even when the woman is asymptomatic, long covid, whatever). Obviously they're better off than if they'd been unvaccinated, but it doesn't make sense to abandon measures to attempt to slow the spread, though of course people are tired of it and would like to pretend like it doesn't matter.

I'm not advocating for shutting things down again, but many people are acting as if it's a good thing that omicron is spreading so fast (and indeed, if they are vaccinated and not at high-risk for other reasons or ever need to go to a hospital it might be personally beneficial for them...). Instead, we need to keep mitigations that allow high-risk people to avoid getting sick, particularly universal masking in public places. With omicron, vaccine mandates in places probably won't slow the spread too much, though it will at least encourage more people to get vaccinated. But another thing to realize is probably half the cases reported in the last few weeks in the US are still Delta, and it probably varies highly by region.

I agree with you completely. And I'm speaking as a parent of an immunocompromised child under 5 who's not vaccinated yet. There's literally no reason for the humans who are fully vaccinated--to not go about their normal business as they would have in 2019. People like me still have to take caution because of a legitimate reason--but that's my responsibility. Every other person without with an immunocompromised young child--literally the only demographic at this point that has legitimate reason to be worried because a vaccine is not yet available to them--can literally just move on with their lives.

It's obvious that COVID hysteria is now a mental affliction, just as the pandemic-deniers and ardent anti-vaxxers are also mentally afflicted. They both have to be called out and addressed.

The truth about this whole pandemic, and the appropriate action to deal with it, has always been the middle ground. We've done literally all we can at this point. We've flattened the curve, we've vaxxed up, we've masked far, far longer than ANYONE would ever admitted to in March 2020, to the extent possible ad nauseum. The next chapter is finally here.

The spread has already happened, or it will happen regardless of mitigation. I think that's what many have been trying to argue--it's really a fool's errand at this point. You're only delaying the inevitable.

And to my above point, if you're also one of the individuals who still are concerned or will apparently never have good enough immunity to be in a normal public setting ever again, that's never going to stop being true, even "after the pandemic." The point is, COVID will never be eradicated.

At some point, people have to be expected to take responsibility for their own immunity, and if that means that they have to lock themselves down for a while, so be it. That's that only logical response at this point after nearly 2 years of a pandemic.

^^
You realize that hardly anyone at all thats vaccinated has died or even gotten seriously ill. So why should we wear masks forever and social distance forever to protect the few elderly morons who didnt get vaccinated? Screw up and screw the media hype over this, that is scaring people like you effectively.

Based on https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tra...vaccine-status vaccination reduces the death rate by more than an order of magnitude. Which is great, for most people, but for the most vulnerable it's still non-negligible (and if your chances of getting it increase by an order of magnitude due to lack of mitigations, you're not better off).

I couldn't agree more.

I would only differ in that I don't think we need to be testing people left and right. It's causing more harm than good.

I have healthy, vaccinated people with mild symptoms calling me all day to tell me that they have COVID, and it's literally like "Ok.......so?" They are clogging up time and resources of healthcare facilities with all of their communications and questions when people who are more seriously ill or have other medical problems need the attention.

Once again, bad leadership and lack of perspective from the people on top.

Right, I mean, they don't need to contact their providers if they have mild symptoms, just isolate. But, it's understandable that people are scared given how many people have died.

Ugh.... for once I actually envy Canada. Why can't we have common sense like this in the US? :facepalm:

Here in fucktardland, we have the opposite, where the goofballs in the media are giving attention to the few germaphobic doctors who are mad that the CDC lowered their isolation time from 10 to 5 days. Because, after all, everybody should just stay home forever and no other considerations matter....

I don't have strong feelings about masks one way or the other, but I am not sure this argument makes sense. If you are highly vulnerable you will mostly be protected by personally avoiding others or wearing a high-quality mask in public (e.g. N95). You can't rely on the other people wearing cloth masks, or not covering their nose, or taking it off to yell at somebody on their phone, and so on.

If this really is a major problem I wonder why we have not managed to make better provisions for the extremely vulnerable nearly 2 years into the pandemic (give them remote work if needed, their own housing with a door to outside, deliver stuff to them), such that we can allow others to return to normal.

Actually, by the very definition of the word, yes, antivaxxers do deserve to die if they get covid. They have not earned healthy outcomes based on their behaviors nor by the qualities they possess.

Thin the herd.

The Science is different here!

This, times 1,000%. Unfortunately, I think some people would rather relish in hysteria of getting sick for eternity.

I think the difference is here people will be unlikely to isolate if they can pass it off as allergies or the flu or a cold. Of course, they may also be unlikely to isolate if they know it's COVID but hey...

^ You totally fail to acknowledge that people who are high risk can take measures to protect themselves. Why do the ramifications of making EVERYBODY IN SOCIETY comply not matter to you? People are literally pissed, and perhaps you don't run into them very often given your circumstances, but I actually talk to them every day. They are doing the opposite of the measures that you support, which only makes things worse. It's time to start getting practical: back down, and encourage certain behaviors. But stop telling healthy adults what they can and cannot do. It's backfiring miserably.

I agree with almost all of this, but I think it was two weeks ago that omicron became the dominant variant of reported cases in the U.S. The change happened within the span of a week. I agree with all of it.

Policy-wise, based on the level of spread it seems that mask mandates are a good call for public spaces now that we're seeing vaccines be less effective for preventing infection.

Sure, it's not perfect protection, but it helps a lot compared to others not having masks at all (it's amazing how after two years, some people still don't know how to wear a mask properly, but still 90% of people wearing masks properly is still a significant reduction in exposure all things being equal). And yes, fortunately high-quality masks are easily obtainable now for people to wear.
Because, for a while it didn't seem like a major problem, with overall prevalence being quite low (risk of infection is directly proportional to the number of people out and about with COVID). And getting people housing? hah, this is America.

Not... really. Cananda has always had much tougher restrictions and actually enforced lockdowns.

The science is different there, but probably not in the way that you'd like.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/winds...rder-1.5901388

This was revised wasn't it? I think according to the latest figures, Omicron overtook Delta just last week.

This is not true at all. I know plenty of people in Berkeley who have gone out to eat or gone into stores.

What behaviors do you think are being improperly encouraged? I can understand that if you have minor symptoms, isolation instead of testing can make sense, but other than that? Do you think people should avoid isolating if they're sick or not wear a mask in public?

The testing hysteria is now negatively impacting ER capacity here in New Orleans. Health department is now recommending people to simply isolate if they think they were exposed instead of uselessly filling up the ER to get a test.https://twitter.com/nolahealthdept/s...804836357?s=20

Yeah, looks like it was revised. I missed that.

Most of the public health measures are implemented at the provincial level, which is like the state level in the US. There is some variety between provinces. Not as much as between US states but the stupid Ontario outdoor ticketing or Quebec curfews didn't happen here. Overall I'm pretty happy with how BC handled the pandemic.

Interestingly some provinces hit zero covid for a good part of the pandemic which was worthwhile as well. They got to live more or less normally for long periods of time, at the cost of border restrictions. But that period has ended now, and that approach stopped making sense after vaccines became widely available.

I think the biggest difference between Canada and the US right now is that we have a very highly vaccinated population. I have heard it's the highest aside from a couple of Asian countries. I haven't checked but I can believe it. I don't personally know anybody who isn't vaccinated, and at this point all the more vulnerable people I know got boosters as well. Consequently there isn't really anybody I'd be around who is vulnerable at this point.

Yeah this is idiotic, the ER is not where you get a COVID test...

Canada has done an amazing job, with excess deaths over the last two years 13% of US excess deaths according to https://www.economist.com/graphic-de...deaths-tracker

The biggest difference compared to the US is compliance though (the rules in Canada weren't all that stricter than the rules here in Illinois), and likely better contact tracing.

Indoor mask mandates
Now vaccine mandates in Cook County
All of the testing parameters, kids having to test for COVID and then stay home from school if they are positive (but not if it is anything else, apparently)

I realize you support this stuff, so lets get beyond that and dig into realistic policy: It is literally is too much for a lot of people, and at some point Government over-involvement in these things just starts having the opposite effect. Remember what our goal is: to not overwhelm the healthcare system. We got way more than what we bargained for, too much more.

It's like we lost our ability to deal with the reality of respiratory illnesses in our society: we actually had more common sense 2-3 years ago than we do now. Up until very recently people understood that sometimes kids get sick at school, and it builds their immunity. Parents would keep them at home. Up until very recently people understood that you stay home if you aren't feeling well, but that if you catch something when out and about that is the reality of being alive--it's not a death sentence. In the post-vaccine COVID world we were beginning to regain that, but then people decided that any illness is a failure, and that is precisely what has changed from the pre-COVID world.

Better leadership would have corrected that thinking several months ago, but instead the current crop of chosen healthcare leaders have gone along and humored this delusion that nobody should ever get sick again. Some sickness is necessary to build immunity, especially in a world of evolving and rapidly spreading viruses. That wisdom is just getting thrown away, and to our detriment.

I was just up there for Thanksgiving, and everybody was wearing masks outdoors, even on quiet streets. The city and East Bay felt much less vibrant and busy. People are batshit crazy with Covid hysteria up there, much like Seattle.

Again... this it not actually true. At all. Take it from someone that actually lives up here.

Come out to Chicago. Yes, there is some of that stupidity (people wearing masks outdoors), but not remotely as bad as what I'm hearing in Berkeley. People here are tougher all around since we have cold winters, so we're not quite so snowflakey.

Also, unlike in California you are wedged between 2 States that you can cross into within just 30 mins that have like NO COVID policies whatsoever. So when you get tired of all of crap, just head up to Wisconsin where you can do whatever the hell you want, whenever you want, all without a mask.

Much of the East Bay really isn't that vibrant on a good day. I mean if you want excitement, Fremont ain't it.

TUP you should be contributing to this page too.

https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/sho...1619&page=1036

The suburban parts yes, but Oakland and Berkeley are actually quite urban and vibrant.

It's not a safe space there...only the strongest forumers can survive.
Nah not true and I visit for everyday items since I live in a rural area. Masks indoors are a different story though.

....So by making everyone obsessed with COVID, the CDC has now undermined the exact thing we sought to do in March 2020.

Our healthcare system is overwhelmed by otherwise healthy, vaccinated people with mild symptoms wanting COVID testing. Request after request, and the urgent care has a 3 hour wait time again today.

Sicker people who actually need to be seen now have to wait 3 hours, all because so many people in our community are being goaded into COVID testing (when they actually should be at home resting and recuperating).

And how do I know that COVID is the issue? Because we have people with all sorts of symptoms, and nearly all of them just want to know if it's COVID. They don't even want to know if anything else could be wrong with them. They just want to be tested for COVID. That's all that matters in our now brainwashed society.

Awesome!

That's how San Diegans feel about Los Angeles. There are a lot more people in LA wearing masks outside than here and I was just there for Christmas walking around The Grove and Farmers Market on Fairfax/3rd and I'd say about half were masked up. In California, the Covid hysteria goes from extreme to medium to low as you move from north to south.

Has any bodies company here switched to the 5 day quarantine period versus the 10 days before the new CDC guidance?

We are still running at 10 day quarantine period.

Where are the Adults in the room going to stop this madness. Can you say fraud, waste, abuse?
And Well, it’s not like quality control could be an issue, eh?
In 2020 China gave millions of bad virus test kits to Europe…and charged for them.

Cool 13 million positive test results right out of the box to keep this shit going. Are they same test kits that the CDC just admitted that they cannot differentiate between the flu and COVID? Those test kits?

All these false positives will end up just causing fear, lockdowns and hospitalizations unnecessarily.


Awesome news from Biden

Google

Omicron Chaos: Biden Waits to Sign Contracts for 500 Million Test Kits







https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/new...ort/ar-AASfew7

Biden’s Expedited Covid Home Test Kits Arrive: Via Air China

Expedited COVID-19 test kits arrive at JFK Airport
Robert Pozarycki - 4h ago

The new offensive fight against COVID-19 got a boost Tuesday night as the first shipment of 13 million home COVID-19 test kits arrived at JFK via Air China Airlines, in the pouring rain, with more shipments planned throughout the week. In alignment with President Biden’s vow to get the variants under control, Governor Kathy Hochul has augmented the Federal supply with the NYS Department of Health, DHS and testing kit provider iHealth, Port Authority Police and CBP, by expediting these kits to the U.S. in freighter aircraft. Worldwide Flight Services ground handlers at JFK Airport transferred the test cargo onto trucks bound redistribution facilities. It's expected that the at-home testing kits could distributed to individuals and school districts later Wednesday.

....

Lol… I like the bit about the pouring rain… like, what does that have to do with anything? Lawl

^ The advantage of the "At home test kits" (which are still a bad idea since regular people really should not be able to practice medicine on themselves) is that the germaphobes and the sheeple who are obsessed with COVID can just test at home now, isolate, live out their basement dreams, and hopefully......

Just hopefully......

Leave. Me. The. Hell. Alone..

Lets play COVID Jeopardy!!!


Answer: Nothing






Question: What I do when I have a runny nose and cough

Ding ding ding ding ding ding! You've just won the round! ;)

My only motivation for getting a take-home test is just to know definitely that I got it and will hence develop natural immunity. I could care less about getting overly ill from the thing, but knowing i've had it with two shots and natural immunity is something I would like to know for myself.

Swabbing one's nose with a Q-tip and dipping it into a solution is hardly "practicing medicine on themselves".

Let's not diminish the severe effects covid can have with silly comparisons. 800+k people have died due to covid in the US.

It's not the typical rhinovirus. Or the "sniffles" as our former president (who nearly died from it) claimed.

They’ve had at home kits in Europe for a long time now. People would use them before family gatherings (my wife and I did them before going to my mother’s for Christmas last year).

But we have vaccines now so the whole thing is moot. The only reason to test now is when it’s a requirement for travel.

Don't be coy. A monkey can obtain a sample, but that's not the same thing as determining who needs to be tested and why.

dp

I've had a dry cough for months from a prior covid infection. I've had a stuffy nose for weeks and a runny nose this week. These are all symptoms that I would never go to the doctor for. I can't wait for my at home test kit to arrive in the mail to then tell me that I've been reinfected with Covid, maybe I'll get another paid week off after the holidays.

Plenty people have gone out to eat? Wow!

If anyone is still living like Covid is a thing to be worried about, then there is something wrong with them.

Yes, is that not a common thing in London, Wisconsin?

Again, you are really, really bad at picking up on sarcasm.

Why the hell would people not be going out to eat?