Not in San Francisco--chains are banned.

https://sfist.com/2013/06/19/what_we...n_we_talk_abo/

There are exceptions in a few areas like Fisherman's Wharf but there are the rules in areas most popular with locals.

Unless you are Brazilian. See above. Also note that it is believed immunity by having recovered from COVID is weaker than from vaccination, especially against the Brazilian strain.

Your fears are based on pure speculation; because Covid could become more dangerous to younger people, we must hunker down indefinitely. No.

If the science and data reflects more young people succumbing to covid, we then should act accordingly but not simply out of hypotheticals. And once you're vaccinated, you're chances of dying are almost zero and odds of serious issues are low as well so why perpetuate living in fear post vaccine?

Again--the Brazilian variant is apparently more dangerous for younger people and it has already been found in many places in the US. It is NOT speculation.

This doesn't mean "we must hunker down indefinitely" because the vaccines apparently do work against it. But it does mean that young people need to be as careful as older people--especially going forward as the variants become even more prevalent-- and especially get vaccinated. Until 60-70% of the entire US population is vaccinated, precautions like mask wearing and avoiding indoor crowds should be practiced by EVERYBODY (10023 can take his chances with the Brazilian variant--I still want to see his blog about the experience).

My parents have been fully vaccinated. They waited 2 weeks after their 2nd shot on 3/4 and then they started going out to restaurants and traveling. I'm so happy for them after a year of self confinement, senior shopping hours and avoiding their friends and family for a year.

There's a difference between being proactive at any age and being hysterical. I'm seeing a lot of the latter and it's off putting. I can't relate 10023's mentality but I can't get on board with the histrionics either. I think young people should be responsible but still be able live life.

I never tried those. They were always very early in the AM and I'm both a night owl and late sleeper. But I found evening shopping to be maybe even better. Very few people in stores where I am in AZ after the dinner hour. We'll see about SF when I return--I expect to be doing my own grocery shopping there too for the first time since the fall of 2019.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer attributes Michigan's recent elevated case counts to pandemic fatigue coupled with the state's early pandemic successes in flattening the curve:

Talking about COVID is soooo beyond tiring... sigh...

But.....

I really will NEVER understand why so many people have an issue with masking. Just do it. It allows you to do so much.

It is interesting that despite lockdowns and restrictions, states like CA and now MI were not immune to experiencing surges. It's almost as if they had the opposite effect. Because cases were so well controlled early on, as pandemic fatigue settled in, coupled with new, even more contagious variants, lackluster contact tracing, and the holidays, the surges were inevitable.

It’s not almost as if they had the opposite effect. They had the opposite effect. Lockdowns merely prolonged the inevitable, as I predicted last spring.

Look at places like Italy and France that had the strictest, earliest lockdowns in the West and now are locking down again.

The unpleasant truth is that, aside from enough suppression to keep the hospitals functioning (which, let’s not forget, was the original justification for lockdowns), this thing just needed to work its way through the population, a small percentage of which were going to die (either the very old or the very unlucky).

You can argue it's more than "pandemic fatigue". As I calculated a few pages back now (and it's not entirely my own calculation--"experts" have made similar ones), nationally it seems like maybe 40% of the population is still vulnerable but in places where the first wave was light or kept well under control, that could easily be 50% of more simply because there are fewer recovered cases with natural immunity.

Even if the new wave is limited to only half the population, with the more virulent/contagious strains (as you said), that could be a lot of people sick at one time. And we do seem to be seeing something that suggests this is what's happening: The demographics of the current "wave" is different with mostly the under 50s who haven't yet been eligible for vaccination (and some oldsters who remain unvaccinated).

No place in Europe has yet vaccinated enough people to make a noticeable difference. Instead, look at Israel which had a serious problem last spring/summer and now doesn't because it is really there only country that has vaccinated most of the population.

Locking down did not have the "opposite effect" and was not "pointless", merely inconvenient for YOU.

What it has clearly accomplished is to give time for some effective meds to be developed (the egregiously underused monoclonal antibody cocktails) and vaccines. As the "experts" keep telling us, it is now a race as to whether we can vaccinate enough people to blunt any new wave and emerge with lots of people (hopefully ME) who never got it and never will.

In the current European surge, the death rates are lower not only because the sick are younger but because we know better how to treat it and have the better meds. If we had faced the current variants last Spring it could have been much worse than it was and, because of what science has given us in the interval, much worse than we are likely to see now.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/new-co...nce-june-2020/

https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/04/...content=manual

I admit to being a little relieved by this. Yes, I realize that the "issues" other countries have had with the vaccine are pretty insignificant on a statistical level, but still, if we don't need it let's stick with the vaccines that haven't had those issues.

Now what to do about the Astrazeneca vaccine we have or have contracted to buy. We should and probably will donate it to other countries but there could be blow-back over this. I expect complaints that we are dumping our rejects on the poorer countries. Well, offer it to them on a take or leave it basis.

For the "It Ain't Over 'till It's Over" file (and keep your masks on):

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/cana...calculator-to/

They have now reintroduced a 4-week "lockdown" to try to step the tide (though, of course, certain participants here will argue it's unnecessary and pointless).

I get that much of the population isn't vaccinated and covid is still spreading but I don't think those who are vaccinated should still be holed up in their houses.

The stuff about the health care system being strained is somewhat misleading and partly based on speculation about future demand. Right now they're around 400 in ICU out of a population of 14.5 million. Total provincial ICU capacity is in the 2,000 range, with most beds being used by non-covid patients. The net impact of reducing non-covid ICU capacity is unclear.

Ontario publicized plans to add 500 new ICU beds to its capacity at one point, more than they have seen in demand due to covid (with each covid-positive person being considered a net new ICU bed used, an upper bound). Over time we have heard more and more talk about how just about any ICU bed utilization due to covid puts a strain on the system. We hear it here in BC and we're at 79 in ICU out of a population of 5 million.

Ontario produced some hockey stick style models based on assumptions of increased R values of variants but it's unclear how accurate those will be as predictions. The old predictions have not been accurate.

Just over 15% of people in Ontario have received at least one dose of vaccine so far. The highest risk (e.g. care home residents) have generally been first to get vaccinated, so future hospitalization rates due to new infections are likely to be lower. Death rates have already dropped. Our death rate in Canada these days is about 1/6 of what it was at the peak last May.

And when is it fucking over?

There has to be a level of acceptable deaths, and looking at the stats these days in the US, we are there.

Old people die. It’s what they do.

I would assume herd immunity. I do see many normalizing masks as part of the 'new normal' and how we all should embrace it (fuck that) and lockdown until every single strain is identified and under control (not going to happen). Still, we're not anywhere close to herd immunity and shouldn't derail things until we get there. Old people don't 'die' and many actually get older. My 70-something parents have plenty of miles left in them.

How do we know that there will be herd immunity or covid will go to 0? Many people may elect not to be vaccinated, there could be some immune escape, etc. My guess is we'll see outbreaks for years to come, but the spread and consequences will be much smaller.

I think the public health aspect of this will end when everybody has had the option to get vaccinated. At that point we should move to a regime based on personal choice. If people don't want to get vaccinated and would rather risk covid that's their choice. If they have unusual health requirements they are better dealt with individually rather than locking down all of society. In fact the proper functioning of society is what allows us to have the wealth to have elaborate health care services. I doubt that the current situation is sustainable.

That's what I always thought it was going to be, and I figure it will go by county since that's how they have been doing things (at least in CA). Maybe localities hit hard by future season flu outbreaks will adjust, and I bet workplaces are gonna be tougher with people who are sick. It hurts productivity anyway coming into work and coughing up a storm...everybody in the office gets sick.

Increasingly they aren't. I'm not. I now do my own grocery shopping and other shopping in uncrowded stores, I go out to eat outdoors, I do pretty much everything I've ever done outdoors. But I wear a mask indoors (in stores etc) always.

It will be like measles, mumps and polio: The diseases will still exist but there won't be a steady stream of cases, only sporadic outbreaks of a size that allows rigorous contact tracing and isolation of the infected.

It will be somewhat like what we are seeing in places like South Korea or New Zealand but a better example is Israel, a place that had a severe epidemic and has brought it under increasing control by vaccinating the majority of the population (in spite of resistance in the Orthodox community) although even there the job isn't finished--they are approaching herd immunity but haven't yet reached it (though as I keep saying, it's a thing with a gradual slope, not a sudden demarcation):

https://www.timesofisrael.com/new-co...nce-june-2020/

That reproduction number of .61 is critical. That means every case spreads it to .61 other people. In other words, over time there should be fewer and fewer cases, eventually getting to or near zero except for the occasional imported case or other exceptional incident.

When there are zero regularly occurring cases, then even the unvaccinated will be pretty safe as they are in New Zealand. But as we repeatedly see with measles (a much more infectious virus even than coronavirus), occasional cases pop up from travelers and others and the only way to keep the virus suppressed aside from rigorous contact tracing and quarantine in getting the highest possible percentage of the population vaccinated.

If we take your position that it's simply a matter of personal choice, it's quite likely we will never entirely suppress regular cases meaning people who, for one reason or another can't be vaccinated will remain at risk. That's the point of "herd immunity"--to protect even the "can't be vaccinated". In free democratic societies we will never force people to be vaccinated but we can certain apply tough incentives as we do with children who are not allowed to attend public schools without their "shots" or travelers to places where cholera or Yellow Fever have been endemic who are not allowed entry unless they can demonstrate immunization. As I've said, with COVID, at least for now, I'd go further: No entry to any indoor venues where there are crowds like concert halls, sports arenas and so on. Possibly even restaurants. According to my TV, the Washington DC baseball team was only allowing fans to attend their season opener (before it was cancelled due to an opposing player getting COVID) who can show vaccination. That's what we probably should do for a while at least.

Why are the monoclonal antibody "cocktails" underused if they are effective at treating covid if administered early enough? Are many doctors ignorant about their effectiveness, or are insurance companies reluctant to pay for them? Any at risk patient with early covid should be given them. Patients need to request them and doctors need to use them. They have lots sitting on the shelf. Like tamiflu for early covid. Monoclonals should be routinely used for people with early covid who are at risk of developing serious disease because of at risk factors (age, prexisting conditions, etc.).

Pedestrian, are reputable N95 masks now available online? On Amazon they still sell mostly Chinese masks and who knows if they are any good. Can one obtain domestic N95s from companies like 3M or Honeywell? Any advice?

I got some through my in-laws (who are physicians) who ordered from some medical supplier that I assume is reputable, but have no way to check.

Covid may be with us forever, like influenza and the common cold is. In the 3rd world, it may take years to get enough vaccinated to achieve herd immunity, so new variants may keep appearing. I read that some of the animals in India like the wild rhesus monkeys are now infected. More variants. And of couse there are bats practically everywhere who could catch it and be a source of new infections and wicked variants. What if our cats and dogs get it? If this isn't a mess it will do until a mess comes along.

we walked up to the javits convention center early this morning on the highline and my spouse got the pfizer vaccine. while it sounds like a nice, ideal walk it actually sucked eggs as it was flipping freezing with howling gale winds. we were literally the only people on the highline the whole length of it except for park workers lol. we got off in the empty hudson yards and there was a weird, errie whistling noise around the buildings from the winds.

anyway the javits was the opposite of that. i waited outside and it was quite a scene. old people, young, people of all stripes, cabs, old folks home vans all coming and going. it only took 20mins — and that included the 15min wait afterward.

Older people are like 55x more likely to die from Covid.

No, we do not have to be as careful as older people.

Basically, her rationale is:

I did such a good job and now people aren't following what I want them to do, its their fault and they are stupid lol

if only illness or death were the extent of the outcomes. unfortunately lingering health issues can affect all ages. :shrug:

Yep.

As with like, nearly every disease out there

It's not wrong. Despite being one of the places that was hit hard early, Michigan is substantially below the national average in cases per capita.

No. They are cumbersome to administer. They are given as an infusion slowly and the recipient has to be watched (nursing staff time) since you are giving a foreign protein there are more reactions to these than to vaccines. In an ER, that means the people are taking up a needed bed. Where I am now and other places, "infusion centers" have been set up to provide this but that requires the patient to be discharged from the ER and to drive (or otherwise go) to an infusion center. Many simply refuse. Remember that these drugs have to be given within 10 days of diagnosis. At that point many people don't feel too bad so they won't bother going to get infused with monoclonal antibodies and by the time they start to feel really sick it's too late.

The average age of death is over 80, and those people generally do not.

Personally at the point where I’m no longer self sufficient, and can’t actually ski down a black run, I’m done. I am an extremely active person. I hate being at home, don’t watch TV, actually kind of hate being inside period. Old age would really not work for me.

The young always feel invulnerable. COVID is no different. Some change their minds on their death beds before they lose consciousness. Cases and hospitalizations among the 18-34 year old set are rising rapidly because the variants are more virulent among them and because a high percentage of older folks are now immune.

But enjoy your couple weeks of feeling miserable if it comes to that.

Or like 3 days. I’ve got a higher risk of death or serious harm every time I ride a bike in London than going to a bar where I might catch Covid.

Risk tolerance is an individual thing, and living is not just the opposite of death. Something I’ve realized recently is that I’m increasingly bored with England because it’s just too safe. Even the landscapes are soft, manicured, rolling green hills. The climate is mild, if wet (the worst weather - I would prefer -10 degrees and sunny to the 50s and rain). There are no harsh, dramatic landscapes or extreme weather. Life needs danger, sex, and violence which are all lacking in that culture. There’s a reason that I like doing things like surfing and backcountry skiing. Without some risk of harm or even death, you’re never really living.

Covid and the restrictions in place over there are just the latest example of this cultural preference for the safe, familiar and boring. The Brits would be happy to just stay quietly in their houses in a way that Americans, or even the Spanish, would not. They’re weenies.

Also, where is your data to suggest that hospitalisations (cases are meaningless) are rising rapidly amongst the 18-34 demographic? Numbers as well as percentages - a big percentage increase on a minuscule number is still a minuscule number.

In December, hospitalization rates were 4.8/100000 among 18-29 year olds and 67.9 among 65+ year olds. The most recent data (March 27) show them to be 2.2/100000 among 18-29 year olds and 12.5 among 65+ year olds. That's a drop from 14:1 to 6:1. And the numbers are changing rapidly as we vaccinate 1% of the population, mostly over 65, every 2 days.

Source: https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/covidnet/covid19_3.html

10023, based on your lifestyle preference, you might as well move back to the US, probably to the Western part. Of course, the cities there that are even close to being urban in a European sense are non existent besides SF and parts of LA and Seattle, but the dramatic natural landscape of the mountains, deserts, forests, and rocky coast will really appeal to your desire for action. There’s also Australia and New Zealand and Western Canada if you still want free healthcare.


As for the topic, I have been volunteering to give vaccines recently and it’s a very easy and quick process.

:haha:

Yeah, unlike the rest of us for whom old age is a dream come true! :uhh:

Anyhow, for a person who hates being sedentary, you sure invested heavily in the sedentary lifestyle when you spent $10,000 on that couch

Isn't falling absolute risk much more important than risk relative to some other age category? And in the previous post you said "Cases and hospitalizations among the 18-34 year old set are rising rapidly because the variants are more virulent among them and because a high percentage of older folks are now immune". Then you posted numbers that appear to show the opposite. I don't know why higher immunity in the older demographics would cause cases and hospitalizations to go up in the younger demographics. I'd expect the opposite due to lower spread between age cohorts. Even if unvaccinated you are better off being around vaccinated individuals, all else being equal.

Looking at evidence that shows your demographic has 1/50 of the risk and then accepting that your risk is 1/50 is not the same as feeling invulnerable. It's a clear-eyed data-based assessment, while your retort is an age-based stereotype.

Most people don't have the ability to avoid all risk or cloister themselves away indefinitely, so real risk assessments matter. For them vague catastrophizing based on fear can easily be either harmful or useless. They've got to go out and work as nurses or line cooks and it matters if their risk of death is 1%, 0.1%, or 0.01%.

It's super creepy that the age-based shaming is actually ratcheting up as vaccines are deployed preferentially to older demographics, but sadly not surprising. Is there an Onion article about this yet? Politician shocked that unvaccinated cohorts get infected more frequently?

I see that less than half as many 18-29 year olds are now hospitalised as in December. That the drop was faster among older people is down to vaccines as you say, but also irrelevant. And the rate of hospitalisation amongst older people is still more than 5.5x as high.

I have no idea how you think this data supports any argument you are trying to make.

But then why sacrifice youth for old age? That’s what everyone has been asked to do for more than a year now.

A year of your 20s or 30s is worth more than a year of your 70s or 80s, and probably several times more.

^ I don’t think I sacrificed much. I prefer pre-pandemic life, but I know that many, many others have had it worse

I just went on a great drive today, I sure as hell am not exactly suffering

Cloistering right now, in the US, Canada and the UK should be unnecessary. As I've said, I'm for taking all restrictions off individual outdoor activity. whether dining or sports or whatever (spectator sports and entertainment in outdoor venues with crowds excepted).

I think vaccinated people and the young who want to take the chance can do things like shopping, even in malls and so on but they should wear masks and avoid crowds. I think the riskiest places are bars and pubs and those should not be allowed to serve indoors. If we are going to have outdoor crowds at sports and concert activities, they should be distanced (unrelated people sitting 6 ft apart).

The shaming is largely because irresponsible people, mostly but not exclusively young, are just behaving badly IMHO with their scenes like in Miami for Spring Break (so far no videos posted of last night's Arizona women's Final Four victory celebration but I'm going to bet it was ugly). Sitting on the beach, swimming, beach volleyball, relaxed fun in the sun and even outdoor drinking with a few friends isn't enough--they have to pack as many people into small spaces, unmasked, as they can and get rowdy. That should be shamed IMHO.

There's no getting around the fact that neither the young nor many of the old are isolated in our society and if they are passing around the virus among each other, it's going to spread to the rest of us. All anybody has to do right now is wear a mask indoors, maintain some distance from strangers outdoors and get vaccinated when you can.. Local governments should, IMHO keep the riskiest, least essential venues like indoor drinking establishments closed for now (but probably only for a another month or two--until everybody they can induce to get vaccinated has had a chance). It's spring so outdoor drinking and dining should work again. Gyms can probably reopen with care--keep people distanced and make them wear masks if they are within 15 feet or so of each other and the ventilation isn't exceptional for an indoor space (sorry about that, but you exhale far more aerosols exercising than resting and you need to wear a mask if doing it indoors even though you hate it).

I look at what past generations endured--war, depression and so on--and I just can't get too worked up about the "suffering" of today's 18-39 year olds. Just do what you should do and not what you want to do for once.

^ THIS ISN’T A FUCKING WAR.

That needs to be repeated again and again. It’s a virus that is a fair bit worse than flu but with a still quite low fatality rate in the grand scheme of things, and for which the risk is generally (albeit not completely) limited to certain groups who should be taking additional precautions.

You see it as you want to see it--as allows you to selfishly ignore it. It has killed more Americans than our wars have: 554,000 vs 25,000 in the Revolutionary War, 116,000 in WW I, 405,000 in WW II, 36,500 in the Korean War, 58,000 in Vietnam. Only the Civil War had more casualties (655,000) and that number will probably be surpassed before COVID is history.

Flu kills more Americans than Vietnam or Korea over the same time period. And the pre-Revolutionary population of the US was what, 5-10 million? What’s your point?

About 650,000 Americans die every year from heart disease. Is McDonald’s our enemy in a war? We should be talking about obesity not Covid.

Yeah, and I’ve improved my situation by going to Miami. Otherwise, speak for yourself. Plus, no offense, but you’re a middle aged guy in the suburbs with kids, and that’s a group that generally seems to feel pretty ok about all of this based on my anecdotal observations. The more one’s normal life differs from lockdown life, the more burdensome it has been. You also earn a living, as I understand it, from things that have been less affected whereas my business has been badly affected.