outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

Glad he's ok with it. We're lucky to have a smallish school and no cases so far but I'm still Staying Alert!

Found out today that my landlord caught COVID on February 1 and died of it on March 1. Spare me ILX's ritualistic dekulakization bullshit; he was a good guy and I'll miss him. He owned my building in partnership with his sister, so according to his son nothing will change as far as rent, selling the building, etc.

Sorry to hear that, unperson. RIP.

How awful, I'm so sorry.

I'm mostly worried because a lot of the stupid fucks that live in the building walk around maskless, bring friends over on the weekends, etc. He always wore a mask when he was in my apartment, but who knows if one of my neighbors gave it to him?

I think it's still true that masks protect others more than they protect you, especially now that the more virulent new variants are taking over, so it's not impossible, provided he actually spent a non-negligible amount of time in the presence of these jerkoffs.

sorry to hear unperson but glad that it's not impacting your living situation.
After Sandy demolished the block i lived on, the owner of my building rebuilt and then had a heart attack without a will. His brother moved his mother into my apartment about four months later iirc

Like a lot of things I think masks are cumulative. They offer you some protection, they offer others more, but they offer the most when most people wear them.

Also sorry to hear about your landlord UP

2.9m doses administered in the US today.

Three people I know in their late 40s got their appointment call yesterday. Hope that means I’m up sooner rather than later.

2.9m doses administered in the US today.

As someone with one but not two relevant comorbidities (I use an immune-modulating medication) I still seem to be another two months away per WA guidance? Maybe that’ll change again in a week, it’s another two weeks before they activate phase 1B2 and start vaccinating grocery store workers etc

Seems bad

Extent of damage to AstraZeneca vaccine’s perceived safety in Europe revealed

% saying they would refuse this vaccine and wait for a diff one

AstraZeneca 🇩🇪27% 🇫🇷22% 🇮🇹 23% 🇪🇸19% 🇬🇧2%
Pfizer 🇩🇪6% 🇫🇷7% 🇮🇹 7% 🇪🇸5% 🇬🇧4%
Moderna 🇩🇪12% 🇫🇷11% 🇮🇹 11% 🇪🇸6% 🇬🇧5%https://t.co/rppoUptxIO pic.twitter.com/yY6rpEcxIJ

— YouGov (@YouGov) March 7, 2021

*I should say presumably from long Covid, as he was healthy prior to getting Covid and spoke of how bad his symptoms were following a lung function test, just before he passed. Here’s an article about him https://t.co/0per6WxYeJ

— M. Elliott Rollé (@melliottr) March 8, 2021

It's very sad looking at Ed's last living days via his TL posting about his struggles with severe long covid symptoms.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-08/u-s-coronavirus-cases-have-slowest-weekly-gain-of-the-pandemic

With the U.S. vaccination effort picking up speed, new coronavirus cases in the U.S. rose 1.5% in the week ended Sunday, the slowest increase since the pandemic began almost a year ago.

The U.S. reported 420,285 infections for the week, after recording 471,198 cases in the prior seven days, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University and Bloomberg. The percentage gain was the smallest since Bloomberg began tracking cases in January 2020.

In the past week, an average of 2.16 million vaccine doses per day were administered in the U.S., with the total number of shots reaching 90.4 million, according to the Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker.

At the same time, many state and local governments are easing mitigation measures as warmer weather and family holidays approach and virus variants gain strength. That’s spurring some concern that the virus could gain new footholds ahead.

It’s no time to relax, Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser on the pandemic, said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” U.S. cases remain “very high” and a rush to lift virus-related restrictions risks triggering another surge, he said.

family holidays approach

could just as well have said Passover & Easter.

So yeah, our mayor just sent out an email basically blasting our state and county officials. He says that not only have they still not seen any increase in distribution, they've been told not to expect any increase in March either. Also, our city's residents are specifically being excluded from mass vaccination sites in Chicago proper, because we have our own health department. But our health department isn't getting enough supplies. What a fucking mess.

A few choice quotes:

The State’s current approach to vaccine distribution appears to favor setting up large Mass Vaccination (MassVac) sites over utilizing our existing public health infrastructure. Although MassVac sites should certainly play a role in a national vaccination campaign of this scale, I’m concerned that our local public health department and our hospitals, which are well prepared, trained and equipped to administer large quantities of vaccine to the community, are being vastly underutilized.

Between the City and our healthcare institutions, we have the capacity to vaccinate at least 10,000 people a week — if we have the vaccines. We are dealing with a supply issue, not a capacity issue.

Because we have a certified public health department, residents are currently excluded from the Cook County MassVac sites. Given the limited supplies allocated to us, this is simply not fair to our residents. We’ve voiced this concern to the County and the State, and are hopeful that residents will soon be able to register for the vaccine at these locations.

and in response to a specific question about Biden saying all teachers will get their first shots this month:

We support that goal and also want our kids back in the classroom. However, we have not yet been presented with an implementation plan and corresponding vaccines to carry out this objective. At 1,200 to 1,400 first doses a week, and still thousands of seniors to vaccinate, we lack the supplies to vaccinate other essential workers in Phase 1B at this time.

Good to have confirmation that all of Biden's promises are full of absolute horseshit.

I'll shut the fuck up now, I just haven't felt this bleak about moving past COVID in months. This was a slap of reality in the face of all the optimistic news we've been seeing.

this wouldn't be the same mayor you have previously said was full of horseshit?

I hope he's full of shit, honestly. It's just such a bleak update that is so at odds with the optimism we're seeing most places.

This seems pretty good news

Full vaccination (two doses) of the Pfizer/BioNTech lays waste to the most infamous variants. https://t.co/qKDloX4OUx pic.twitter.com/bA52AjdY9q

— Andrew L. Croxford (@andrew_croxford) March 8, 2021

That is certainly good news, be curious to see how J&J stacks up.

I did a little more research and got to the bottom of the issue in our city. So the state department of health decided that any cities with their own certified health departments would be excluded from state and county vaccination events. This means that where I live, along with two others cities (possibly a fourth, but I’m seeing conflicting info on that), are sort of on their own and, as for now, and residents in those cities are blocked from mass vax sites. I guess it’s an imperfect way to address equity, since we have the infrastructure to distribute more than other area cities. Which, sure, fair. But apparently these three (maybe four) cities are not being provided with the additional doses to make up for this, meaning we have capacity with no supply. The upshot, right now, is that if you live in Cook County, but NOT in these three cities, you can register for an appointment at the new mass vax site if you meet the other eligibility requirements (currently, as I understand it, 18+ with underlying health conditions or comorbidities, essential workers). If you do live in those three cities, it’s up to those cities. Can’t speak to the others, but my city is currently limited to healthcare workers and those over the age of 70.

This just doesn’t seem ideal and seems like blocking people from those three cities is doing more harm than good, at this point.

From WaPo:

The Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine appears to be highly effective against a more contagious variant first discovered in Brazil, according to a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, raising hopes that ongoing vaccination efforts will help curb its spread.

The study was conducted by scientists with the vaccine manufacturers — U.S. firm Pfizer and German partner BioNTech — and researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. It comes as public-health experts warn that the more transmissible variants could drive yet another surge in covid-19 cases, particularly as restrictions are lifted across the United States.

As health officials rush to get ahead of the virus variants, Congress is on track to pass pandemic relief legislation after months of debate, with the House set to begin consideration of the $1.9 trillion package at 9 a.m. Wednesday. Once passed, President Biden will sign the measure into law.

Here are some significant developments:
Some experts disagree with the CDC’s guideline that discourage vaccinated people from traveling. One leading physician said the agency “is being far overly cautious in a way that defies common sense.”
Cybercriminals are flooding potential victims with scams using the pending coronavirus relief plan as bait, according to a report by researchers at cybersecurity firm Proofpoint.
The backers of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine signed a deal Tuesday that could pave the way for production in Italy, a potential major step in Moscow’s efforts to expand its vaccine reach in the West.
The coronavirus began proliferating rapidly in the United States around this time last year. Now, infectious-disease experts are acknowledging how they underestimated the pathogen, especially in the critical early days of the crisis.
The seven-day average for new daily coronavirus cases in the United States has dropped below 58,000 for the first time since mid-October.
Nearly 32 million people in the United States have been fully vaccinated, a little less than 10 percent of the population. The nation is averaging about 2.1 million doses per day, up from about 1.5 million one month ago.

NEW: Alaska is now making covid vaccines available to everyone over the age of 16. It's the first state to expand vaccine eligibility to all ages that are approved to receive covid doses. pic.twitter.com/ugNHNqAa91

— Mike Baker (@ByMikeBaker) March 10, 2021

From kip covid thread:

In other KIP news, the flu is/was virtually non existent this year (so far). Not just low, as I understand it next to nothing. I just saw that in Canada, for example, "Influenza activity remains below the threshold required to declare the start of the 2020-21 influenza season." In the US, "Public health labs across the U.S. reported a grand total of 3 cases of flu in the U.S. last week, out of nearly 16,000 samples tested. Clinical laboratories, which tested nearly 25,000 samples, found just 14 flu cases. So far this season, labs reporting to the CDC had just 1,585 samples test positive for flu of any kind. Compare that to last year over the same period, when there were more than 183,000 positive samples."

That's hundreds of thousands of people not sick, not in the hospital, and not dead. That's good news. Granted, it took some terrible news to get us there, but ... KIP!

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 9 March 2021 23:58 (yesterday) link

More than anything it illustrates how contagious covid-19 is by comparison. The social upheaval of nonclinical interventions against covid, that still resulted in half a million dead in the USA, virtually eliminated flu transmission.

― Canon in Deez (silby), Wednesday, 10 March 2021 00:25 (eleven hours ago) link

The other day a senior health official here was warning that the coming winter is going to be shit for the health service, not directly because of covid but because they’re expecting it to be a particularly bad flu year due to the above leaving us with a much lower population immunity.

Moved to this thread cause obv not really kip but it’s an interesting wrinkle & a reminder of the ongoing cost of the pandemic even post-vaccine. I’m hoping that we maintain some of the new norms (masks, sanitiser stations) to at least mitigate the surge in other respiratory viruses once restrictions are eventually lifted.

i've expressed many times itt and others that mask wearing should absolutely be a normal thing during flu season

other countries do it why not all of us

I’d rather not, tbh.

"I'd prefer not to."

I think I’ll wear a mask if I’m sick, but not all season long!

it's usually cold out anyway and it keeps your face warm but you do you

ha yeah I've been wearing a mask when I walk before sunrise not for COVID but to warm/protect my throat.

just thinking wistfully about how fewer dead ppl there'd be xp

At this point I feel like I will be wearing masks in the winter (at least) for the rest of my life. #1, it lowers the spread of disease and I'm someone who gets at least one bad cold every winter, but didn't get one this year; #2, I wear a cloth mask, not a surgical mask, and it keeps my face warm in cold weather. That said, I'm curious about how the shift away from mask-wearing in 1918-1919 went. Would be interested to read an article or paper about that, just to see how gradual a process it was, especially since from what I've read there weren't nearly as many "muh freedom" chuds back then.

pretty sure i'm going to be the guy on the subway with a mask from now until the sun dies. Outside I can see getting over it pretty quick.

I will honestly say that I am extraordinarily stoked about eventurally not having to wear one outside— on my cycle around the city this morning, the moments in the parks, away from any people, were glorious— breathing fresh early spring air without a mask on does wonders.

I have a walking route through my neighborhood that takes me through very empty streets where I'm the only person on my side of the sidewalk and there's often no one in sight at all. I let my mask down for that part of the walk and it feels wonderful. Being able to smell the spring air makes a huge difference to my mood.

Yeah no one wears masks outside here, people walk by all day long but there's plenty of room--not in the city obv.

other countries do it why not all of us

I went to the Philippines during flu season. It definitely didn't seem to be everyone. Maybe one in ten people, which is still a lot of people. The flu was bad that year.

I'm not sure if those wearing it were sick but I assumed probably they were or just trying not to get sick.

(2019)

other countries do it why not all of us

Anywhere outside of the Japan/China/Korea and environs though?

San Francisco now over 200,000 with at least one shot; over-65 population about to hit 70% of that, approaching 40% with two doses.

My wife (teacher) should get her second shot next week, I think!

when we say "other countries do it", i don't think "it" is "wear a mask all winter"?

Anywhere outside of the Japan/China/Korea and environs though?

― Wrote For Lunch (Tom D.), Wednesday, March 10, 2021 11:13 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

not to my knowledge but what, is it a bad idea

making waves of controversy in this thread today i see

Personally I still haven't cracked the glasses-fog problem, so I'm unlikely to wear a mask all winter without duress, but it would be awesome if it became normal to wear one for doctor's visits, flights, what have you

i am def talking more about dense urban experiences than your super isolated walk in the park or whatever