outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

This has been weighing on my mind more and more.

https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/This-is-a-crisis-Tens-of-thousands-of-children-16515894.php

Yeah, that one case where both parents died and left behind four or five kids, including a newborn...it's just the worst. So much needless collateral damage.

Cases in the UK really going up again. Pandemic not over

But but my boss keeps telling me it is!

the UK situation (cases high and stable for like 20 months) is so anomalous with the rest of europe and the US that i feel like it can only be explained by the use of AZ? the NPIs in the UK aren't *that* different.

(maybe not, just speculating here. IIRC they use non-mrna vaccines in india too and there's nothing UK-like happening there)

*2 months, not 20 months

Some models earlier in the summer were predicting 100k cases. Never went near that and it felt like cases were coming down even more.

Over the last week it's really going up again though. No new strain. 80% + of the adult population has been double vaxxed.

people have really stopped taking precautions ime. i'd say public transport is down to like 60% masked. shopping malls maybe 30%. shops, bars restaurants - nobody's wearing a mask at all. everybody's forgotten about handwashing. maybe each of these things is small but thinking back to that metaphor about a 'pile' of safety, and each little thing you do adding to society's total pile, i think the pile has gone down A LOT.

Would estimate that the number of unmasked passengers going through Gatwick has at least doubled and probably tripled since late august, and then loads of them come into our shop looking to buy masks when they find out whichever airline they are flying with requires them.

meanwhile, Florida's occupied ICU beds *finally* just dipped below 1,000 for the first time in....*checks notes*....*checks notes*...*checks notes*...

I mean… the government lifted *all* covid restrictions at the beginning of august, which I don’t think other European countries have done? I’m not surprised our numbers look worse than places which are doing similarly well with vaccines but didn’t tell everyone to stop wearing masks or to go fucking clubbing without getting vaccinated 1st &c

Worth remembering too that the stated plan all along was to basically let it spread unchecked now to ensure max population immunity for winter, & even the predicted 100k cases would have been part of that — so if you buy the theory, maybe an increase in cases now is good not bad idk

Yeah lifting the mask restrictions could have been a huge mistake. Just one more to add to the pile. Covid inquiry reported too soon.

UK heading blindly towards a combined flu/Covid winter surge, a huge amount of people seem to think being vaccinated automatically makes you immune so mask wearing etc is way down. Not to mention social media-sponsored anti-vaxx misinformation as high as ever. I'm half wondering whether there'll be another lockdown if it gets really bad. Sigh.

It's so frustrating to keep getting these "please remember to wear a mask" warnings at places where no fucker whatsoever is doing so. Went to a London Film Festival screening at the Royal Festival Hall, full fucking house, maybe 10% of ppl wearing masks? Sure everyone else was exempt.

I understand venues can't really do anything because there's no way for ppl to prove they're exempt but at this point I'd rather we just dropped the pretence.

i have to say i don't even see warnings like that anymore. the pretence has been dropped afaict.

London Film Festival does them, so does the Prince Charles Cinema, and TFL.

Probably 95% compliance at the Royal Opera House but the audience trends towards ‘high risk category’.

TFL is asking for people to wear masks but yes less than 50% compliance on my trip at the weekend.

TBF, we're currently under a state, county, and city mask mandate with respect to any indoor space that isn't your private residence, and there's still scofflaws a-plenty. Wearing a mask is such a bummer, you guys!!!

I was in line at a fast food place this weekend and there was a guy in front of me who was unmasked. The counter girl called out "Next in line!" twice and the guy was just staring off into space. I was standing 6 feet behind him and I heard it. After she called it a third time, the guy took notice and walked up to the counter. "Sorry, I couldn't hear you because of your mask."

We were in a hotel for the first time since March 2020 this weekend. The hotel had a mask mandate which was followed 98%. We were on the elevator two different times with people with people who didn't have masks on and both times my wife told them about the mask mandate and they put masks on. One time was a family and the dad's mask had an American flag on it.

How's everyone feeling about movie theaters at the moment? I'm still desperately hopping through listings, looking for sparsely attended screenings and generally avoiding weekends. But I look at a countless amount of seating charts all the time, and it seems most people don't care now. Am I still being overly paranoid?

We don't have too much of that kind of bellicose posturing in the UK that I've seen (other than musicians on the experimental circuit for some reason), more of a shrugging fatalism and the innate British attitude that it's all someone else's problem.

xpost

Fucked if I'm going to a cinema any time soon.

I'm certainly overly cautious but I have no plans to do theaters again anytime soon. Partly because the theater in our town closed last year and I'd have to go to more crowded screenings in the city, partly because very little has changed on the COVID front over the past several months even despite our ongoing mask mandate.

I will say that the Prince Charles Cinema is still doing social distancing, staggered showtimes, one way exits. So as much as they can short of not letting ppl w/o masks in.

It's quite possible to pay for a noon or 1 p.m. show and get a sparsely populated experience. I went in the middle of a Saturday to watch Titane, one of six people. I remained masked and felt perfectly safe.

i've been to the cinema plenty of times and there's never been more than about 10 people there. i don't mask because i'm constantly slurping soda and eating popcorn. AITA?

OL, since we've learned that we live near the same now shuttered theater, pretty much sums up my standing as of now, though I'm also holding off until my son gets jabbed.

I will say that I'm starting to dream of a future when I don't have to wear a mask for 9-10 consecutive hours per day (yet another minus for the open plan office, which means I'm effectively in a public space 100% of my day) at work. Illinois and Chicago are both saying the indoor mask mandate for everyone will stay "until more people get vaccinated". Given the number of intransigent assholes out there, I'm guessing this means... always? Don't get me wrong, given current cases, I'd rather have the mandate than not, but I can understand why even the most well meaning and obedient people are getting a little despairing about masks being a thing for many years to come.

vaccine take-up probably accounts for a lot of the difference in attitude. it’s easier for people to feel both personally safe and that they’re not running the risk of spreading anything when they know approx 80% of the eligible population has been vaccinated.

Quite like to go to see the new Velvet Underground doc in a couple of weeks.

Maybe taking day off and going at an early day screening could work out!

I mean, to be crystal clear, I'm not anti-mask and I happily wear it all day and whenever I pop into any indoor space. It's clearly helping to reduce transmission and I'm happy the mandate has in place here through the Delta wave, just noting that I can understand why fully vaxxed people might be ready to consider some real triggers/thresholds for when they might not be required and not just vague mutterings about "not forever".

I've meaning to write a "COVID endgame" thread for a while and I apologize this is somewhat delayed compared to media interviews like https://t.co/dQuo9i6ER7 and https://t.co/48MmCeq33g and to recent seminars like https://t.co/PGcgDinSNT. 1/17

— Trevor Bedford (@trvrb) October 13, 2021

Thanks for sharing, this tweet in particular stood out:

Together, this would suggest perhaps 40k or 100k deaths per year in the US from COVID at endemic state. Most infections would be relatively mild (just like flu), but there's enough of them that even a small fraction of severe outcomes add up. 15/17

— Trevor Bedford (@trvrb) October 13, 2021

Which would put this significantly higher than the flu, at least compared to the last ten years of data:

2010-2011 37,000 (32,000 – 51,000)
2011-2012 12,000 (11,000 – 23,000)
2012-2013 43,000 (37,000 – 57,000)
2013-2014 38,000 (33,000 – 50,000)
2014-2015 51,000 (44,000 – 64,000)
2015-2016 23,000 (17,000 – 35,000)
2016-2017 38,000 (29,000 – 61,000)
2017-2018* 61,000 (46,000 – 95,000)
2018-2019* 34,000 (26,000 – 53,000)
2019-2020* 22,000 (18,000 – 29,000)

That didn't format well at all, but the second digit is estimated flu deaths for each season, with the uncertainty interval in parentheses)

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/09/negative-pcr-test-covid-symptoms-self-isolate

(Leaving aside wtf is a 'rapid PCR'?) this positive-LFTs-then-negative-PCR is definitely a thing where I am in the UK (anecdotally, usually occurring where the person is actually ill) but the messaging around it is a disaster for getting anyone to do anything other than essentially 'guess whether you think you have COVID'.

The past few weeks one of my kids has had 'covid symptoms' (ie a high temp, not that unusual in pre-schoolers) a couple of times, for the first time since before covid. There seems to be a lot going around as they say, requiring PCR tests which I'm now not as confident in as I was.

xp do bear in mind those are back of the envelope estimates/calculations, probably good to within a factor of a few. the low end of his 40-100k estimate in the US is pretty much in line with flu.

Yeah, I'm not taking those numbers as gospel or anything, was just curious to compare.

Mudhoney bassist Guy Maddison, who is an ER nurse by day, on his experience working through the pandemic (in Seattle, where the initial US outbreak was), and his attitude toward returning to shows as punter or performer:

https://crosscut.com/culture/2021/10/mosh-pit-er-mudhoney-bassist-being-nurse-during-covid

Good stuff, thanks.

Yes, great read. I'm still not quite at live shows yet but I'll see how I feel post-booster next month. At this point I'm comfortable with going to the theater and just watching a movie, no food or drink. (It helps there's an Alamo five blocks away and they've got empty seat policies separating ticket buyers, which is all right by me.)

Good thread on the under reported mortality:

For example, the Economist’s analysis is brilliant and uses this data to infer excess deaths worldwide, suggesting that currently over 16 million deaths have occurred worldwide. Over 3 times as many as reported. Thank you @Sondreus for all this work https://t.co/IJrASYk3B6

— OJ Watson (@ojwatson92) October 14, 2021

Wish the Economist article didn't require registration.

Try this: https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.economist.com%2Fgraphic-detail%2Fcoronavirus-excess-deaths-estimates

Thanks!

i try not to follow this stuff closely too days, but it's hard not to notice. i assume this is a common dynamic between police in cities that mandate vaccinations

Tensions between Chicago’s mayor and police over the city’s vaccine mandate grew this week as the head of the police union urged officers to ignore a deadline to report their vaccination status.

Chicago city employees, including police officers, are required to report their vaccination status by Friday. Employees who aren’t vaccinated will be required to get tested twice weekly, a temporary measure until the end of the year as the city decides what to do with unvaccinated employees.

But the head of the Chicago branch of the Fraternal Order of Police, John Catanzara, urged members of the union in a video message this week to “hold the line.”

He told officers not to submit their vaccination statuses, and instead to flood the city with exemption requests on Thursday.

“Submit those all on Thursday, give them everything at one time, and that’s it,” he said. “Do not fill out the portal information,” he added, referring to the reporting of vaccination statuses to the city.

Officers and other city employees who fail to report their vaccination status by Friday will “be placed in a non-disciplinary, no pay status,” according to Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s office.

Catanzara said that “it’s safe to say the city of Chicago will have a police force at 50 percent or less” over the weekend.

“Whatever happens because of that manpower issue, that falls at the mayor’s doorstep,” he said.

They've already been working at 50 percent capacity, if that, all year now, so, good, fuck 'em. They haven't done jack shit anyway.

I'm not usually one to be doomposting about the violence in the city, but shit has gotten wild this year. I'm not arguing that we need more police, but this summer was rife with motorcycle and car groups taking over intersections for hours at a time to film each other doing donuts and there was, if I'm remembering right, three rolling shootouts in River North in four days, an area that doesn't usually see that sort of thing. In all cases there wasn't a cop to be seen anyway, so not sure we'd notice a difference even if these crybabies throw another temper tantrum.