Swear JDM gotta be Skinny’s troll account :suspicious: lol

Taiwanese news says 2 shots of mrna gives 40%ish defense, 3= 75

Two doses of AZ = 10-20% or so can't recall, anyhow it was like no defense

Hate to say it but I think we will face some sort of restrictions in the near future, possibly another lockdown. Virus dgaf if we are exhausted or not. Check out this deck published by Ontario Science Advisory Table today. Specifically, look at slide 6-8 related to the severity of Omicron. Even if Omicron is less severe than Delta, it can still overwhelm hospitals if the rate of infection is exponentially higher.

https://www.documentcloud.org/docume...tions_20211216

• South Africa is cited as evidence of Omicron’s lower severity, but hospitalizations, ICU occupancy, and in-hospital deaths are rising despite a younger population with some immunity
• A steep rise in cases in South Africa during the current Omicron wave is followed by a steep rise in hospitalizations, while the rise in deaths currently is less steep than in previous waves
• Initial data from Denmark indicate that the percentage of cases requiring hospital admission is not lower with Omicron

In Ontario, they are essentially recommending a "circuit breaker" lockdown + boosters immediately.

won't do much at this point. it's everywhere. i think the city is absolutely full of asymptomatic and mild case carriers

vaccinated people are going to test positive
vaccinated people are going to exhibit some mild symptoms
the virus will continue to do it's job which is to become endemic. can't do that if everybody dies.

Trying to prevent this from happening is futile and not a good reason to destroy the economy again. small business/hospitality/travel/tourism/entertainment/gig the lifeblood of a community. these people deserve to stay the course of the road to recovery, to start to rebuild after making real economic sacrifices over the past 2 years. There's finally a light at the end of the tunnel - and far far too many people are willing to just toss these folks back in the hole to make themselves feel safe (from the comfort of their job security)

get the boosters going (I expect my invite in the next few days) and let it roll.

can I start petition to get the daily numbers reported as percentage of population? it's the exact same metric - i just don't want the media to get to use big numbers to scare people anymore

fixed this for you JDM

Again, nobody is "trying to prevent covid from happening". We want it to become endemic and achieve "herd immunity" which is impossible with current vaccines (and probably impossible no matter what, since many people around the world don't have access to vaccines)

HOWEVA!

You want that to happen gradually, so hospitals aren't completely overwhelmed.

That's why certain measures need to be taken.

Old, immunocompromised, come on in.
Young, unvaccinated, don’t believe in medicine? Why start now? Here’s a link to a Joe Rogan podcast. Best of luck.

how will we make sure that "certain measures" don't affect the economy disproportionally as they have in each previous instance?

politicians will once again decide who prospers and who crashes and burns.

rinse and repeat...

Weather, real estate and stock prices cannot be predicted after a century of daily data. What makes anyone think a once in a century event with such a short history can be modelled with any accuracy.

Pretty much every policy in most countries in the world will favor rich people. That's a separate thing that needs to be addressed, but a lot of powerful opposition is making sure that won't happen. Election reform is probably the first step, but again a lot of boot lickers and rich cucks don't want this to change.

When someone who DOES want to make these changes, like Bernie or Ocasio-Cortez, they get campaigned against and turned into laughing stocks, etc

Let’s look on the bright side. Each wave is proving to be more infectious BUT milder. A year ago, catching covid was almost a death sentence or a guaranteed trip to the ICU. Now, we are seeing tons of asymptomatic cases everywhere.
Isn’t this how it is supposed to work? Higher infectious rates, but milder cases. Sure, I would love if covid just disappeared, but this is basically the most realistic and positive outcome.

According to the Ontario Science Table findings (that GGnoRE posted), it is inconclusive how Omicron's severity has changed compared to past variants. S.Africa's data suggests that it is ~25% milder, but it has a differently aged population with a different level of community immunity than what we have. Early Danish data is suggesting that Omicron is has roughly the same severity as past variants.

Hospitalizations and death counts have always lagged behind the new infections count by some length of time. So I guess we'd have to look at our own data before we can arrive at anything semi-conclusive.

(And yes, that goal post has just shifted right in front of our eyes again... just like the N-th time that it has done so since March 2020... FailFish )

https://yourlocalepidemiologist.subs...-update-dec-17

Well, this is not good news.

I traditionally host Xmas dinner for my extended family (19 people) but this year is kinda up in the air - had been hoping to get this restarted after skipping last year. There's one nephew who is now old enough for a shot but the parents have held him back for now and that's become a sticking point for other family members to come out. How are folks dealing with those kinds of decisions?

During a Pfizer investor call just now, they said they expect covid to be endemic by 2024

So enjoy another year or more of this SeemsGood

Pfizer's probably wishing for covid to last forever. $36B in sales just from covid vaccine this year, another $30B next year with R&D costs paid by the govt. $1B in annual sales is considered a blockbuster drug (after pouring hundreds of millions in multi-year R&D).

In regards to mild symptoms or harsh symptoms ... that's secondary when it comes to over burdening healthcare and hospitals. It's all a matter of numbers and percentages. Suppose 100 beds is hospital capacity.

Delta - 1000 infections with 10% hospitalization = 100 = capacity.
Omicron - 10,000 infections with 1.5% hospitalization = 150 = over capacity

Hold off till 2025 and you’ll be ok

More bad news. FeelsBadMan

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world...cid=entnewsntp

(Reuters) - The risk of reinfection with the Omicron coronavirus variant is more than five times higher and it has shown no sign of being milder than Delta, a study by Imperial College London showed, as cases soar across Europe and threaten year-end festivities.

The results were based on UK Health Security Agency and National Health Service data on people who tested positive for COVID-19 in a PCR test in England between Nov. 29 and Dec. 11.

"We find no evidence (for both risk of hospitalisation attendance and symptom status) of Omicron having different severity from Delta," the study said, although it noted that data on hospitalisations remains very limited.

Pre-entry PCR tests are coming back for short trips

Newsflash: you are rich. There are a billion people who would trade places with you. Depends which lens you are looking through.

Well there goes any more cross-border shopping trips. Nice while it lasted :drunk:

In related news, you can now fly back from S. Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, etc!

No need for shut downs, the economy will shut itself down. That's an easy 5000 cases a day if you only add in Quebec. Thousands of people having to call in sick and stay home to quarantine.


Ontario reports 3,124 new COVID cases as Ford expected to meet with cabinet today

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toron...ases-1.6289571

We are gonna do separate Christmas dinners now. Grandma is still gonna do the Christmas cooking, and one of the siblings' family -- probably mine -- is gonna be having Christmas dinner there since Grandma helps us with looking after our kid anyway. The other siblings are just going to pick up the turkey and ham from Grandma, and we'll probably do some sort of Zoom / Google Hangout / Facetime thing for a bit during the eating part. Separate Christmas meal with the MIL as well, when we normally would have invited her to join the big family festivities too.

It is what it is, but I don't remember myself resenting this BS nearly as much last year even though things probably looked more bleak last Christmas. As Turd was saying, "this sucks."

fuck off with the molecular test
at least offer free rapid test

Welp we fly out to Puerto Vallarta for 3 weeks on Christmas Day.

Better bring my work laptop as I might be down there longer with all this Omicron crap :lol

Ah well.