Lol, I hear you... when I go to my parents house, I bring my laptop just so I can kill time. But our fam and extended fam are not super tight-knit at all.

I think we just found that balance where we're more than strangers so we actually cared to talk to each other, but not tight knit so we didn't take this opportunity for granted, because realistically, I only talk to my cousins maybe once a year during the holidays.

Too often in the past, we just meet up at a gathering and the physical presence seemed to be adequate for the evening. I guess everyone was actually forced to talk this time on a zoom call, and it was interesting, we got to know each other a lot better.

I think all in all, I initially thought these zoom calls were going to be dumb and a waste of time, but now in hindsight, I'm really glad we had them.

Last time I checked Taiwan is doing fine, their economies haven't had to shut down. But they do have strict ass rules that they follow and real contact tracing. Just wait till new years, they already found the mutated virus in Ontario.

According to per capita death rates, Canada isn't doing bad at all.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EphPw-gX...jpg&name=small

Covid appears to have only taken the place of some of the other illnesses, as you can see in the graph below, basically all other causes are down.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EphQzTFX...jpg&name=small

Pretty interesting thread going through the numbers here
https://mobile.twitter.com/Milhouse_...10519797460996

Hitting close to home... Entire housing estate to have mandatory covid tests after the virus is detected in their sewage.

This housing estate is the closest "city" to me (I live in a rural area so if I want to go somewhere close for dim sum or McD's or to the post office, pharmacy, or wet market, this is where I normally go).

Fourth wave, and the fourth outbreak at this estate. I haven't really been there in a long time because of this, but it's definitely a no-go from now on until I get vaccinated :heckno:

I had no idea they were testing sewage, but it seems like a good way to cover millions of people all at once, and narrow down from there who has the virus.

Canada reports first cases of U.K. coronavirus variant.
Can somebody tell me why they are still letting flights in from UK?!
Why are not all flights stopped?
shutdown businesses, keep flights open :facepalm:

Flights have been shut down for day’s now. These people came in before the stopped flights

Flights should have been stopped for non residents all year. Make special cases for logistics where people delivering cannot leave a certain area

rant: why do people seem to think boxing day is a holiday?

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/corona...nger-1.5246911

Meanwhile, in Wuhan...

Depends who you work for/ where you working.

Boxing Day is a federal holiday and is listed in the Canadian Labour Code as a holiday. However, it is not uniformly observed in all provinces and territories. It is not an official holiday in Quebec, nor is it a statutory holiday in Alberta and British Columbia.

If you do a quick Google search, you’ll see what Boxing Day was originally about and why it became a holiday.

ok news to me that Ontario has 3 stats in the span of like a week

You mean Canada's we strongly recommend you should "wink" really quarantine "wink" doesn't work? Let alone welcoming American tourist "cough" I mean direct route essential travelers to Alaska.

This is the kind of stuff that feeds the Covid conspiracy folks.

How is it possible that within the city this virus apparently originated from, is able to have live venue concerts (with minimal mask usage), without any consequence or additional outbreaks of disease?

At the same time we're here we are talking about how 2021 will not have any live venue events like concerts, movies, conferences, etc.

It's very odd.

scmp is pro-china so they are showing you what they want you to see

Yeah it's pure propaganda

2,206 new cases of COVID-19 and 74 deaths over the last 5 days

512 cases from Thursday to Friday
447 cases from Friday to Saturday
424 cases from Saturday to Sunday
441 from Sunday to Monday
382 from Monday to Tuesday

378 were in the Vancouver Coastal Health region, 1,375 in the Fraser Health, 44 in Island Health, 238 in Interior Health, and 171 in Northern Health.

The number of people in hospital with the disease rose by 32 to 373. Of those, 80 patients are in intensive care.

Another thing to factor into all of this is that it's during the holidays so testing numbers are probably down to an all-time low. Nobody is going to go get tested for potential COVID during Xmas.

Positivity rate hasn't gone up though, so that's a good sign that it's not a major factor. If people were deliberately choosing not to get tested and the cases were low, its likely the positivity rate would be quite a bit higher too if the real number of cases were substantially higher.

Is it though?


I'd like to believe it is. Because I find it incomprehensible that the country with the highest population in the world, ground zero of the virus, could have it under control to the extent they say they do. The number of tests would have to be in the billions. Even the false positives would have their case numbers much much higher than what they're reporting.

I was all about the The Fast & The Furious memes at the start of this pandemic, but life has really imitated art with the endless sequels and spinoffs.

The only way to know for sure is to talk to someone who is living it, and (importantly) is willing to speak openly and honestly about what they see. As opposed to what they're being told. I think we have a couple members who were there at least when it started, not sure where everyone is now though.

Hong Kong locks down hard whenever cases go over like 100 a day, and we all know that HK = China now, so I assume China has similar policies just on a much larger scale.

You would NEVER see scenes like this in Hong Kong these days. Even white people are wearing masks now, and not many people are doing unnecessary group activities. Most keep it within the family, and mask usage is like 99% when in public. Even joggers and cyclists wear masks these days.

My assumption is that there are hotspots all throughout the country at various times, some manageable, some at near disaster level. And there are some places where it's pretty much contained. We won't know for sure what is going on, and neither will the citizens. They just deal with it as it comes to them, just like everyone else.

Easy, just don't give a shit about what happens to the people.

Why would you think there's no outbreaks as a result of this?

:badpokerface:

https://www.statista.com/graphic/1/1...sed-number.jpg

so you really believe china is reporting real, accurate numbers?