Think we can take the boards down now, or have to wait until inauguration day?

Things will likely start opening back up and restrictions loosening by then, but I imagine there will still be elevated levels of caution and some restrictions in place for most of the year. 2022 seems like a realistic time for when things will be back to pre-2020 "normal".

Things will NOT "return to normal" for a long time. Maybe never. The "work from home" thing will recede but not totally. Some people will start riding transit and going out to eat again but not everybody--not me for a while at least.

I think there's a difference between removing restrictions, which I expect to happen before next summer, and convincing people to abandon the self-protective measures they feel comfortable with.

That's really the only reasonable long-term goal. The virus likely isn't going to be eradicated forever. Get to the point where people can decide for themselves what level of "openness" they're comfortable with while not inadvertently harming at-risk individuals (by promoting adequate vaccination rates).

Economically though, this has a very "before and after" feel to it. I don't think economic/employment opportunities will fully recover for a very long time. I can't imagine what the job market will look like for recent grads, as companies cut in-person staff (and probably try and push lower wages as part of a work-from-home, balanced lifestyle). It's going to likely further discussions around the wealth gap as we see a top-heavy economic recovery from rebounding stock markets without equal employment gains at the bottom.

A lot of people are going to be struggling far past 2022 I fear.

I suspect that a year from now I'll wear a mask in public when I'm sick, but otherwise act normally. And I suspect that will be common.

But I'll probably be working partially from home.

Even if the mask is only worn during SOME of the contagious period, the community spread would be dramatically reduced.

And I kinda like wearing the mask when it's cold anyway.

Wearing is a mask is the reason why countries like Taiwan and South Korea have been able to beat COVID and return to normalcy. That and requiring 14 day quarantine for travelers coming into the country. Clubs and raves are lit over there now like COVID never happened.

Just wear it, brah.

https://cdn.dribbble.com/users/10046.../nike_mask.png

I think masking will stick around with some of the population, mainly those with health issues, elderly and those hypervigilant (same ones who take selfies with them on and those who wear them in the car alone) but I suspect when Covid slows down to a dull roar after a vaccine has time to make its way around, the vast majority will ditch them. I surely won't be volunteering to wear one once this passes...

I think that come December we are really going to be screwed. Going into Christmas will be different because of what happens due to Thanksgiving get-togethers. It will be very bleak here I think. Too many Ohioans who will not believe in fact and science and just plain common sense.

The cat is out of the bag with masking in the Western world.

Never again will masking feel strange or be met with widespread derision or suspicion.

Yes, we will stop wearing them after the pandemic, but in the future it will not be an uncommon site to see a person wearing one when sick and walking around in public. Kind of what you were seeing in Asian countries after the Swine Flu epidemic.

Yeah, masks definitely have advantages in masking (haha!) smells as well.

Yup. My main pushback against masks outside were 1. I am not sick, so why wear it? 2. It's hot as fuck.

I think wearing a mask when you're sick but must go out is a nice gesture. I also love my mask now that its freaking cold. There's an upside to everything!

he's in his parent's basement in peoria larping.

never a shred of proof about any of his claims about himself.

it's the internet folks.

:rolleyes: :shrug:

This will sound contradictory as I am someone who totally complies with masking, as a good citizen and a team player in society.

But I am less and less convinced of its effectiveness. Where I live has 100% mask compliance in indoor public places, and all sorts of limitations on gatherings of any type you can imagine. This is also true of our neighbouring jurisdiction Ontario and both they and us here in Quebec have been seeing record numbers of infections.

Perhaps without the masks things would be even worse, but I don't subscribe to the theory that *if only every wore a mask*...

There is something insidious about this virus, that makes it very unpredictable about where it will rise and fall next.

I see lots of videos and articles about Asians and Australians living it up right now in public crowds (reaping the fruits of having "obeyed") but I am not sure that's the only factor or even the main one. They might find themselves in a harsh lockdown in short order.

Anyway, I am still gonna keep wearing my mask every place and for as long as our public health officials tell me to.

^ there's nothing "insidious" about it

Masks are not a protective force field -- they help to limit the potential spread by lessening the release of aerosols and lessening the inhalation of aerosols.

With actual distancing measures enacted and adhered to, plus mask wearing, control of community spread of viral pathogens can be achieved.

The problem is that after a few months, everywhere opened back up in the summer... many people wore masks, many people didn't wear masks, people started seeing family and friends again... maybe not big gatherings, but they still did... and then big gatherings started up again.

Bars and restaurants opened back up... smaller capacity, yes, but no mass
k needed if you're seated! :haha:

School started, college started, sports started, libraries opened, museums opened, art galleries opened, stores are packed again...

It's not a mystery. The economic strain was too much, and people (especially Americans) are weak motherfuckers.

It's really two things, and the key word is mandatory.

- Mandatory mask wearing
- Mandatory quarantine for those infected and travelers

If we rented out hotels as quarantine zones and required a 14 day quarantine for anyone testing positive, or anyone traveling state to state or coming in from out of the country, and wore masks as advised, you would be able to go hit da club right now.

But no, freedom!

https://media.giphy.com/media/h3oOXD...sgZj/giphy.gif

This is awkward...

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/sw...le-11605538856

I am aware of all of that but the semi-free summer of 2020 is long gone. Things have been re-locked down for a while, and we've had a pretty nice fall that has allowed people to get some fresh air and not stay indoors too much.

Cases here continue to rise and reach record levels, whereas Atlantic Canada has its own "bubble" where there is a fairly high degree of normalcy and "freedom" (arguably moreso than anywhere in USA-Canada) and cases have not spiked there at all.

All of which leads to me to believe that the virus is "seeded" in certain places and at the least sign of people letting up, it surges again (or in some cases, for the first time in places where it didn't hit very hard).

It's all extremely unpredictable, and will likely remain so until mass vaccinations start taking place.

Six months ago a massive outbreak in North Dakota also seemed far-fetched. Just because Atlantic Canada hasn't experienced an outbreak yet doesn't mean that they never will.

"Re-locked down" is a relative description though. Restrictions on entertainment venues, gyms, bars/restaurants is not the same as "locked down". With workplaces and schools still bringing potential carriers together, especially now that colder weather is here, viral transmission will flourish.

Atlantic Canada is largely a "bubble"... the transmission vectors just don't exist there like they do in more largely populated, busier areas. We see blooms in places like North Dakota in the US because adequate prevention measures were not taken early on, and spread control measures have not been widely practiced for months. The virus arrived via a host who infected other hosts and the exponential infections of hosts followed... and now they're trying to play catch-up... and they're finding that there is no "catch-up", only management (virus transmission moves rapidly when people largely continue to live as if it doesn't exist).

Viruses aren't "seeded" in places. Viruses are seeded in hosts. They move via hosts... the more potential hosts you get within the required transmission distance... the more cases of disease you get. It's actually very simple -- cut off the vectors. A virus doesn't "surge" by itself.

That's exactly what I am saying.

Not really. Asian countries have returned to normalcy because there was some degree of community resistance to this virus to begin with.

^

He's ALIVE!!!!!!

He's ALIVE!!!!!!

:D

Maks help the user by 10-15% compared to non-mask users. Hardly a magic bullet many claim they are.

I don't know how many time we can beat the dead horse about mask-wearing. It's about adding layers of transmission reduction. A person wearing a mask next to someone who isn't is better than neither. Both wearing a mask is better than just one, standing 6 feet apart from each other while wearing masks is even better, etc. etc.

There is no magic bullet to saving everyone from Coronavirus in the same way there isn't saving every victim of a car crash. We still put on our seatbelts and expect our airbags to be in working order to give a better chance.

That's why everybody has to wear them.

As much as I hate wearing these effing things, it's not about protecting the user as so much those around them. Unless you're wearing an N95 mask, they are not really going to protect you but the purpose of requiring them is to mitigate someone who may be asymptomatic from spreading it around.

There is increasing evidence that they do offer some protection even to the wearer:

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019...sars-cov2.html

I've also seen that wearing a mask can give you a lower dosage of the virus, which is almost as good as a vaccine and in theory could have the same effect.

These places are also easier to manage from a border control standpoint. Islands, a DMZ as the only land crossing, etc. They might be more vulnerable to explosive outbreaks then a place like Sweden, but due to advantageous conditions and the right tactics they have room to carry on somewhat normally and not have to administer 1st gen treatments in a panic.

Fwiw, I had covid back in April. I'm not really in the mood for a debate right now, but as someone who immediately went into strict quarantine, confirmed antibody presence and has tested negative for the virus multiple times since (including as recently as three weeks ago), I'm starting to get some serious mask fatigue.

Why? Because as someone with a little bad luck (had to get an operation recently where, let's just say I lost enough blood to make that covid quarantine seem like a vacation in Hawaii) and less than stellar choices (have had to work and take public transportation throughout the pandemic) at some point when you, even in the spirit of civic responsibility and good will can't help but notice that even being around people who are 90% compliant 90% of the time, that still leaves an exponential amount of possible exposure over 8-9 months in the dense urban area I live and work in.

I'm not questioning the utility of masks. I'm sorry to say though I'm glad to have overcome the virus and I'm not terribly concerned if I did somehow get it again. I wear the mask for others, follow mitigation efforts to a T. But my patience wears thin.

A few thoughts...

I'm more supportive of stricter yet shorter shutdowns. If there is a flare up of cases, It might be a more effective way to limit spread and more efficiently enact emergency support measures. Months of half measures hardly seem worth the static.

If you do get sick, I would carefully consider the need to go to hospital. If you tell them you're going blind and are paralyzed you're leaving the staff no choice but to run a battery of tests all while potentially infecting others. I get it, it hits some people harder than others. For me it felt like the Flu, where it's much worse for others. I have little empathy for covid hysteria though. Be honest with yourself. Have what you need for an emergency quarantine in place now so you don't have to run to market, pharmacy when you're coughing and sweating bullets when it's 25 degrees out.

Get a flu shot. As I'm sure people in the medical field already know and probably have already taken. (it takes about 2 weeks to develope antibodies and it's recommended before the Thanksgiving holiday here in the states - typically the first major spreader event during normal flu season - hence the flurry of shutdowns.) Aside from the obvious benefits, In my experience it was the closest thing to feeling remotely sick since having covid. (It feels like you have the flu, but you're not infectious- we can only be so lucky if there are vaccines anywhere near as useful anytime soon.) Point being, if you do get a flu shot, and a month later you think you have the flu, it might actually be covid.

Just saying.

At some point this is like listening to people on a jetliner question the pilot.

And why are we closing a lot of things right now? Because a lot of pilot-skeptics aren't wearing masks and social distancing.

Can't say I didn't expect this...

A study of Quebec high school students has revealed that the number of students who are in danger of failing has soared. Where the figure was traditionally 5-10% at this time of year, it's now in the 25-30% range.

While the school system has adapted reasonably well since the fall return to school, the end of the previous year was a bit of mess in a lot of schools, with authorities scrambling to organize at-home learning as best they could. All of them eventually did, but a lot of class time was missed and even so kids weren't followed that closely by their teachers.

A lot of my kids' friends readily admit they didn't do dick from March to June.

Now it seems like it's catching up to a lot of them.

The best thing might be to write off a school year and pretend it didn't happen and start off this coming March where we left off last March.

Well, but also because the risk/reward ratio of some things just doesn't justify leaving them open. I'm thinking bars, mass indoor entertainment events (from sports to opera) and similar things. These are high risk and while some may feel they are also high reward (I am a great fan of opera), I don't think it's high enough. I've signed up for streaming Met performances on demand and for a year that will do (I just hope the damage of losing almost ayear of revenue doesn't kill off these cultural resources).

Blame the non-compliers who've kept the infection numbers up.

Yeah, you obviously don’t have school age kids

No, I don't. But the alternative is to try to patch all the cracks and deficiencies on an individual basis and you have to have a lot more faith in the public education system than I do to think they can do that.

In the absence of a school system reboot, parents will have to take the lead in getting their kids back online and they've proved very unreliable in doing that. The kids from one-parent families and those with all sorts of disadvantages will inevitably be left behind. If you don't want to start the last year over, you have to accept that only the "smart" self-learners will really overcome the harm.

Around here we had relatively light restrictions but we were still supposed to have 6 person bubbles. Now we are not supposed to have any social interaction whatsoever outside our household, but it's recommendation with weak enforcement (police might show up if you have a big party for example).

A lot of people were not following the 6 person bubble rule before, and they were the ones who caused the cases to go up so much.

I am a bit skeptical that leaning harder and harder on those who follow the rules is a good strategy. My guess is the hammer is going to come down hard on everybody eventually, but who knows? It's also possible the cases will burn out in the higher risk pockets. Another factor is that people might just "get the hint" about the severity, adjust their actions a bit overall, and that will be enough. In this sense the public health messaging can be interpreted as vague signals designed to encourage the right behaviour rather than specific rigid rules to follow. That implies they should not shriek at 11/10 about covid all the time; eventually people tune out.

We are also seeing disparate outcomes in different areas. All of metro Vancouver is on "lockdown, please" but a lot of transmission is happening in private in specific parts of town. My impression is that cases didn't really go up significantly in my specific area, but the regulations are mostly per health authority region and these are large and have odd boundaries.

I don't think it's a question of having (blind) faith in the education system.

It's that given the current circumstances, that kind of remedy might be worse than the disease itself, and might actually kill the patient. Metaphorically speaking.

I am not sure I fully agree but there are studies that show that even the two-month summer break isn't the best for kids' learning, as a decent chunk of what they've learned in the previous year lapses when their brains are unplugged from school for those two months.

Can you imagine the impact of a full 12 months without school?

Any disruptions of this nature and any band-aid solutions (which are all we can hope for right now) were always going to disproportionately affect certain kids anyway. It's a sad truth.

My teenaged kids are fairly self-motivated and my wife and I keep close tabs on their schooling. We could be bombarded back into the stone age, and they'd probably still keep learning by candlelight and be *ok*.

Another thing about a one-year shutdown is the impact on one-parent families (often working hard to make ends meet, with some difficulty) of younger kids who can't take care of themselves?

It's the worst-kept secret in town, but while the re-opening of schools was first and foremost an educational decision, it was also about giving kids a place to go during the day to take some of the burden off their parents who have to go to work.

School is obviously a basic essential social service. It is one of those "keeping the lights on" type aspects of developed societies, and disruption in it should be considered a big failure, like when the power goes out or a building burns down and the fire department doesn't show up. And when the firefighters show up they are assuming considerable personal risk as part of their job.

The kids themselves are at approximately zero risk due to covid. Here in BC I am pretty sure we have not yet had an under 40 fatality. This is in an area with about 5 million people over a 10 month period. The kids are more at risk of getting hit by a car.

The problem is that enforcing behavior is much harder than setting rules that the big players (employers, spectator events, etc.) will follow.

Kids' safety isn't the point. It's about transmission to others. Plus teachers etc. who are at much higher risk.

This has been covered ad nauseum.

You make it sound like minimizing covid cases is the only goal in society and some people are just idiots for not realizing that if schools are open there are likely to be more people who get seriously ill or die from covid.

I was talking about the other side of the ledger, the need to educate children, something that was considered pretty basic before 2020 in North America. And pointing out that we are involuntarily forcing them to sacrifice their education to reduce risk for other people. I didn't say whether school closures are justified or not. I think it depends on the time and place. But they should be considered socially costly. Around here we have had schools open since September with minimal spread in them and some people screaming constantly that they must be shut down.

This is a separate issue but in a lot of places a teacher's covid risk would barely register on the workplace safety scale, particularly if you put semi-sane policies in place like filtering out the small minority of teachers who are at unusually high risk (get them to help with online learning for kids who don't attend for one reason or another, for example). In a lot of places teachers can retire with full benefits at 55 or so and they are not a particularly at-risk population.

I think you misunderstood me.

I am talking about the period March 2020 to March 2021. ⅔ of that is already past and whatever happened is water over the dam. Unfortunately, in too many cases nothing happened and the kids missed school during that 8 months. Certainly not a good thing but nothing to be done about it now. As for the remaining 4 months, sure--do the best we can to teach them something, remediate the worst off and so forth.

But what I am saying is that basically no matter what we do between now and March, so many kids will not have progressed since March 2020 that we might as well assume almost none have and try to pick up the educational process at that point.

I am not suggesting any additional time "without school". What I am suggesting is that not much school has really occurred for 8 months (or will occur until the kids can go back to class live) and maybe we shouldn't bother to pretend otherwise.

I'd say that at least *some* school happened for a strong majority of kids over the past 8 months, in most places in the US and Canada. (Summer holidays excepted of course.)

covid is hard on mta — chaos on the ‘ol metro lately, with an uptick in violence by the unchecked nutty homeless people shoving, but more so that than outright thieves thankfully. also suicides by train sadly, ugh:

https://nypost.com/2020/11/20/two-pe...oss-nyc-today/

and being its a friday — here is a very sad situation — a ny streetery martini these days — ugh!


https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/J5...gTIH2qSw=w2400