outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

Seriously.

Pom I would be terrified of the consequences to me my wife and the dog if I quit my job rn but what your employer is imposing on you, to me that’s unconscionable and intolerable. However iirc your post is in academia so I expect it was very hard-won, and I’m just a middle manager at a housewares company.

^^^that sounds snarky it was not meant to be at all

Didn't scan as snarky in the least! And I completely agree – I was supposed to head back in October and managed to postpone my trip until this spring. Work-wise, my physical presence will not be necessary before January 2022, so insisting on having me there for no apparent reason this year is absurd and it's taking a toll on my mental health tbh. If anything, having this trip in the offing has had a negative impact on my productivity – it's lose-lose all around.

You don't have to be living in a separate country to not see your family for a year. Loads of people haven't.

(Also not meant to sound snarky! A reminder that lots of people have been locking down to this extent throughout particularly if family is old/vulnerable)

my stepmom has pretty much every preexisting condition you don't want in conjunction with Covid, so I've been able to see my Dad a few times, knowing they more than anybody have been keeping safe

my Mom on the other hand has been frustrating - she's been good (she worked as a contact tracer until the end of the year so she knows how serious this is) but her husband is still all over the place, seeing his grandkids and going sailing and all that, which means we effectively can't see her

You don't have to be living in a separate country to not see your family for a year. Loads of people haven't.

I had a colonoscopy last week, went fine. Had to get a COVID test two days prior, came up negative. everyone at the hospital was of course masked up the whole time. just saying, don't neglect your health because of COVID, all of the conditions and issues the human body may have to deal with didn't go away just because we're in a pandemic.

TMI but same here, evol. And I'm glad I had the procedure bc they found multiple (small, benign) polyps. Despite being in and out of waiting rooms full of ppl with mediocre mask etiquette I've been okay so far.

The hospital staff were getting their vax shots when I went in, so they're probably all done w the process already and it's just dodging other patients' exhalations from now on.

I've been in an out of hospital for months and will attend every weekday for the next month.

Mask wearing in hospital is a joke, with half the people there maskless or dicknosed. Many of them are coughing constantly.

Our Beloved NHS Heroes God Blessum don't do social distancing at all. One of them pushed in behind me in a revolving door today.

yeah i was in the hospital in august and the diversity of mask-wearing was surprising/alarming

gyac did you see my post saying that wasn't intended to be snarky? You blamed living in a different country for that situation. I was saying that - in addition to that situation - other people haven't seen family in a year. I didn't mean to imply anything about who does or doesn't deserve empathy.
I'm sorry but I'm genuinely not getting what point you're making about your in-laws. My reasons for not travelling abroad are also not frivolous...?

How silly of me, I forgot that if you’d been rude, immediately disclaiming it after meant that it didn’t count? By the way, the context of this is me replying to table being rude about people’s reasons for travelling abroad, so your point (which seems to be implying that I’m ignoring that people who’re from here in the same shit situation? Which I already knew because I’m married to one? Do we have to caveat every point we make in our posts so as to avoid this kind of thing now?) isn’t remotely relevant or necessary.

I wouldn't pay much attention to Leo gyac

no one has chatted more shite throughout this whole thing than him

and he changes his mind on a weekly basis

I can only apologise. No implication was intended that you were ignoring anything.
I'll leave this thread now as that's two people I've managed to upset without meaning to, for which I can only say sorry again.

He's a physician by trade, right? You'd think that would help.

xp

doctors can be pretty dumb

Especially when they’re dyed in the wool Thatcherites who enjoy human suffering.

I logically know that NN, but I know things are bad at home and I wouldn’t put it beyond them to be even worse than the public’s most authoritarian instincts.

I am this man at 1.06 forever when it comes to Leo Varadkar, basically.

As @campaignforleo turns 40, we asked people on Leo Street for their thoughts on the Taoiseach pic.twitter.com/vo727SCiJ8

— RTÉ News (@rtenews) January 18, 2019

(xp) My God, yes.

Even Dr. Sebastian Gorka?

I might lose my livelihood if I don't cross the Atlantic at some point this year because my employer has decided that it's necessary even though it absolutely isn't. To add insult to injury, this trip will cost me a small fortune if government-supervised hotel quarantines are implemented (spoiler: they're about to be). What should I do, quit? Until the Coming Libertarian Utopia™ is fulfilled, I'm afraid that's simply not an option. I suppose I'll be lumped in with all the snowbirds even though I'm not going South and I am perfectly aware that this trip is a dangerous waste of… just about everything, really.

― pomenitul, Tuesday, January 26, 2021 5:55 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

i don't have any gripe against foreign travel if people quarantine both ways. just obvious that there's a lot of "business as usual" foreign travel going on without quarantine and that it is ludicrous that governments haven't done something about this already. my favourite uncle died last week, i won't be going home for the funeral - although it won't be for over 2 weeks due to COVID slowing down autopsies - because i can't afford last minute air fare plus 2 weeks in an airbnb when i arrive. the fact that i saw thousands of tourists here in the summer irks.

I agree that governments need to do something about it, and it looks like they're about to. I'm just upset because I'm getting the short end of the stick for reasons beyond my control. I do not want to travel this year at all – it's not reasonable or necessary in the least given my particular circumstances, and I wish my employer would fully understand this instead of assuming a bright spell is right around the corner. By the way, my wife is currently unemployed (on call as a substitute teacher but no one has requested her services yet – which is a mixed blessing), so quitting my job is even less of an option than the non-option it is to begin with. In any event, I'm sorry for your loss, jim.

im sorry you have to fly to britain for no reason because of a daft boss

So it's sound like these new variants are looking more and more likely to rely on boosters on top of the vaccine? I mean, okay, but if we can't even handle distributing the vaccine correctly, do boosters even matter? It's just increasingly hard to avoid complete and utter despair at the state of things.

Where did you read that?

speculations of various quality are being pushed out to the public and the public is not well-equipped to evaluate their relative merits

I guess it would be more accurate to say that we have no idea yet how these new variants will stack up with the existing vaccines. Everything I've read seems to indicate that, fortunately, they aren't dramatically different enough to render any of the approved vaccines useless, but that some of them may require a booster. I don't think any of that is controversial to state, we just don't know enough yet.

My despair comes from the lagging vaccination rates and the potential spread we could yet see with these variants and, if they do indeed require a booster, just how far behind the eight ball we may find ourselves.

speculations of various quality are being pushed out to the public and the public is not well-equipped to evaluate their relative merits

nbc, npr, fox news, propublica, newsweek, cnn, hannity, cbs, chapo, lester holt, breitbart, bbc, mark levin, the Belltown 'only good news', the pastor, the doctoral candidate, the eyewitness, chuck fucking todd, larry king, action news 5 investigative journalist, time-lapse camera footage, gorka

the public doesn't know how to evaluate anything, and a large part of the current tragedy is the realization that we should never, ever, ever, trust "the public" on anything, ever. that is demoralizing for true public servants

There was this, for instance:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/moderna-developing-vaccine-booster-shot-against-virus-strain-first-identified-in-south-africa-11611581400

xps

First tweet in thread, with 4000+ retweets and quote tweets. "Good and bad news." (What bad news? It was all-around excellent news). Finally, 22nd tweet with a clarification. Only 37 retweets and quote tweets. Don't do this people. Also don't get your information this way. pic.twitter.com/9jM4mOveYs

— zeynep tufekci (@zeynep) January 26, 2021

this feigl-ding guy is a seth abramson level grifter. will FP anyone who posts him here.

caek, does that mean you have FPd yourself?

insert DJ Khaled "congratulations, you played yourself" meme here

No idea how anyone in the gen pub is supposed to parse whether an efficacy drop is or is not 1/6th of 95%, smdh

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/22/uk-official-covid-death-toll-undercounted-fatalities

Little piece on the uk govt’s “coronavirus dashboard” undercounting deaths because they only count people dying within 28 days of a positive test - so at the time of this article the official count was 93,290 but looking at more robust data from statistical agencies (which lag behind the “official” one) would get you 110,200. Spiegelhalter explains the benefit & drawback:

“It’s useful as a rapid indication, but the problem is the media reporting, who give too much attention to the daily reports, and don’t seem to understand its limitations, particularly the huge undercount in the first wave due to limited testing.”

Which is cool but I wish the guardian would tell the guardian this! Annoying to open the app and see them reporting about reaching the “milestone” of 100,000 deaths today when the same paper reported that that figure had been reached 2 weeks ago. tbh I don’t think they should ever refer to the official toll without an accompanying clarification briefly explaining the above - if nothing else it’s kind of an insult to the thousands of um unofficially dead ppl

Just here to apologize for my insensitivity earlier.

Obviously I know that not everyone here lives in the same place as their families (fwiw my partner's family is all in O'ahu, we're in Philadelphia), and that seeing them is sometimes necessary, and tbh I can't imagine being in pom's situation.

I was lashing out at the idea of someone just going to Rio for a taste of the beaches, a sort of bogeyman I made up in my head, and doubled down instead of admitting I was in the wrong. Again, apologies.

It's cool, table. I think we all agree that covidiots who are currently vacationing in all inclusive resorts to 'blow off some steam' are scum and should be prohibited from travelling altogether.

It can be difficult to remember that some people like their families.

No idea how anyone in the gen pub is supposed to parse whether an efficacy drop is or is not 1/6th of 95%, smdh

agree about that dude

tbh I don’t think they should ever refer to the official toll without an accompanying clarification briefly explaining the above - if nothing else it’s kind of an insult to the thousands of um unofficially dead ppl

In the daily briefings here in Scotland they always state what the measure is and therefore how it would exclude >28 day fatalities. They also always brief the weekly (higher) ONS figures.

It all gets lost in the noise by the time the press are regurgitating it.

Of course yr online covidiots are always playing on "with covid" vs "of covid" so they can write off the imaginary thousands who caught it on the way to a bus crash.

we're going to die but we're not going to die.

the vaccines are great and the vaccines are terrible

COVID's going to end but it's also going to be here forever.

bob is my uncle and

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/26/us/politics/biden-coronavirus-vaccines.html

WASHINGTON — President Biden, under intense pressure to speed up the pace of coronavirus vaccination, said Tuesday that his administration was nearing a deal with two manufacturers that would enable 300 million Americans to have their shots by the end of the summer.

this is great news for people in states that are getting shots into arms quickly. (it makes no difference for states that are fucking up distribution e.g. california, and it would be good for the federal govt to step in there, but still you take what you can get.)

also we're now fully vaccinating people at approximately the rate new positive tests occur (200k-ish/day).

that's not the same as saying "we're vaccinating people faster than they catch it" (which is obviously what we want), because the number of positive tests is an underestimate of the number of people who catch it each day. but it's a good sign!

that's true! and a good metric to keep an eye on. (IL distribution has also been bad...is it good anywhere? i haven't heard any good things)

my state is pretty much fucked because we're run by a mini-Trump who resists the 'evil helping hand of the Fed'. doesn't want "FEMA camps", lies or distorts the number of vaccine distributed.

guessing protests will start back up when numbers creep down a lil more (which they've been doing in FL for the last week or so)

that's true! and a good metric to keep an eye on. (IL distribution has also been bad...is it good anywhere? i haven't heard any good things)

― Karl Malone, Wednesday, January 27, 2021 1:06 AM (fourteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

west virginia, israel.

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-global-distribution/

to be fair florida is exactly the US average

Is this a MAGA thread now? Or is Biden’s “deal” not going to come at the expense of other countries’ deliveries of the vaccine?

my state is pretty much fucked because we're run by a mini-Trump who resists the 'evil helping hand of the Fed'. doesn't want "FEMA camps", lies or distorts the number of vaccine distributed.

guessing protests will start back up when numbers creep down a lil more (which they've been doing in FL for the last week or so)

― if Spaghetti-Os had whammy bars (Neanderthal), Wednesday, January 27, 2021

DeSantis doesn't have any control over the fed, though, but he's made his comments for the record and for the sake of his presidential run.