outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

"It’s a bit worrying if half the people presenting themselves with Omicron are vaccinated, as only 35% of the adult population in South Africa is"

How many had more than one dose?

Anyway, in a week or two we should have more data to draw some better conclusions. If it isn't bad, then I expect we will carry on as is, just rolling the dice on the variants.

this gammon muttered "fucking idiots" under his breath whilst walking past me and the kid at the shop entrance the other day, presumably because we had masks on. I didn't have any witty response and kept it to "fuck off, dickhead". I get the feeling there is going to be much resistance to the return of mandatory mask wearing in shops in the UK.

I didn't have any witty response and kept it to "fuck off, dickhead".

appropriately calibrated level of wit for the scenario imo

the old tried + tested classics never fail!

xp can only hope for some improvement at work compared to friday where at one point 10 of our 12 self service tills were occupied by maskless customers.

yeah I was in Asda last week it was like 5-10% of customers wearing masks, don't want to get too self-righteous - but fuck these selfish morons.

even more annoying that most of them probably had masks in their pockets being as they need them onboard their flights

The US government made this statement the day after it announced its travel ban on South Africa and the majority of the region, which is really just irony at its cruelest and most peak https://t.co/ZkVuThkuo6

— Zoé (@ztsamudzi) November 28, 2021

yeah I was in Asda last week it was like 5-10% of customers wearing masks

so messed up. it is still high in scotland but tailing off a bit. i was in berlin last week and would estimate mask wearing was around 99%+. i'm currently in madeira and it must be around 99.9999%. i'm actually not sure i have spotted anyone not wearing a mask indoors. there doesn't appear to be anyone who has an exemption either.

england increasingly feels like a foreign universe.

We're on vacation this week in Oaxaca, and just about everyone wears masks everywhere — even outdoors! People on scooters and motorcycles are wearing them. It's going to be weird to go back to Tennessee in a few days where at best a third of the people in any given store might have them on.

To hear how most of South Florida takes masks more seriously than England is a bummer.

I went to LA/OC this week and it was pretty striking how few people wore masks compared to Oakland. At a big indoor concert in Long Beach, no vax check, only a few masks...

england increasingly feels like a foreign universe.

I was in Denmark earlier in the month and I can't have seen more than a dozen masked people in a whole fortnight - except in airports, the only legally enforceable place, although even there it was only about 50%. Plus there was at least one car (saw it twice and heard it four or five times) driving round Copenhagen broadcasting anti-vax messaging.

England was ok until the ppl in charge told everyone they didn’t have to wear masks for any reason anymore - they are trying to reintroduce them for shops & buses (? I think, sorta stopped following this shit) from tomorrow, we’ll see how that goes

I still see 30-40% mask wearing in supermarkets and shopping centres round by us even with nothing to enforce it.

In central London it definitely varies by age - younger people less likely masked.

somebody local to me has been putting THERE IS NO PANDEMIC stickers on bus-stops, lampposts etc . I'd imagine this type of thing won't be new to city dwellers but it's new to me.

Yeah a lot of "vigil for victims of vaccines" stickers in Stoke Newington.

I've heard lots of complaints about ppl not wearing masks in Germany and the Netherlands. Also worth remembering Germany has considerably more momentum in the anti-vaxx movement than the UK does. So you know, grass always greener etc.

As far as pushback against masks being reintroduced - well it was never actually enforced innit, so if you don't want to you just won't wear one. Security guard at Tesco unlikely to make an issue of it, bus driver might refuse to take you on if they're really brave about it maybe.

Bus drivers just run the ‘it’s there to protect us all’ PSA if someone sits down unmasked, a display of proper British passive aggression.

xp lmao if there was one neighbourhood in London I’d have put money on that shit appearing…

Unitarians just asking questions

meiji restoration 2 owns https://t.co/70Lv0vG7NJ

— thot experiment (@AliceAvizandum) November 29, 2021

Don't get that tweet, the Meiji restoration was what ended the isolationist Tokugawa era and kickstarted Japan's opening of borders to the West? #wellactually

Bus drivers just run the ‘it’s there to protect us all’ PSA if someone sits down unmasked, a display of proper British passive aggression.

90% of the time yeah, tho that announcement also includes "exemptions do apply" so plausible deniability. The one time I saw something kick off maskwise tho was a couple of coppers restraining a middle aged dude because a bus driver was refusing to let him in unmasked. "They're going to close the pubs again!" he shouted.

‘it’s there to protect us all’

as bad as 'see it, say it: sorted'

"Don't get that tweet, the Meiji restoration was what ended the isolationist Tokugawa era and kickstarted Japan's opening of borders to the West? #wellactually"

Lol I couldn't remember which way round it was.

I think the gag is Meiji 2 (reopening post covid) is a failure

This thread is good.

On developed country privilege, and the marginalisation of the global South in much of what passes as Covid public science: a view from the South. A thread. 1/20

— Tom Moultrie (@tomtom_m) November 29, 2021

I think there's perhaps been some confusion regarding transmissibility vs immune escape in Omicron. The apparent rapid increase in frequency of Omicron in Gauteng does not mean that Omicron is necessarily more intrinsically transmissible than Delta. 1/15

— Trevor Bedford (@trvrb) November 29, 2021

If it takes you 15 tweets to explain something, I'm not sure twitter is the format for you.

I'm not sure twitter is the format for you.

For sure. Goes without saying. But good format or not, if you want to be read, you have to go where the audience is and entering the twittersphere has the added attraction of not requiring any capital outlay. So it's going to get used to communicate stuff that takes 15 tweets, no matter how ill-suited it is. See also: Technological/practical "backward steps" we all just accept now

the problem with the old ways of communicating stuff -- out loud, in person, or via a letter or written correspondence -- is that not enough 3rd parties were inserting themselves into the process to make money off of your communications. the way of the future is to make sure that as many other people and corporations as possible are taking a small financial cut off of our daily activities, like talking, breathing, and eating. if there is something simple you enjoy right now, like spending time with your dog, prepare for the inevitable future of somehow having being put into the position of having to report to some third party every time you spend time with your dog, for some reason

a long tweet thread was recently made into an acclaimed movie

just a weird complaint in 2021

I don't see the inherent problem with Tweet threads, you can unroll them. the main problem is people who have nothing to say are also doing Tweet threads, and sometimes people tend to give undue weight to the words of people who write tweet-threads as if they mistake verbosity for content, but....this was a problem that existed long before Twitter.

also, I feel like some people are less likely to read Facebook posts that are several paragraphs long, or Op Eds that may or not be paywalled, than to read tweet-threads, which are bite-sized. I mean, sure, we didn't have that luxury when I was growing up, but these folks are going where the audiences are, rather than worrying about the medium of their message.

I'm certainly not going to begrudge frustrated scientists, angry at the media for getting basic details wrong or amplifying their biggest fears as likely scenarios in headlines and chryons, and the Feigl-Dings of the world who have basically used the pandemic to make money and earn clout, for using this to try and calm the masses and clarify incorrectly information already circulating.

a long tweet thread was recently made into an acclaimed movie

― STOCK FIST-PUMPER BRAD (BradNelson), Monday, November 29, 2021 2:10 PM (fourteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Please let me know which movie so I don't accidentally watch it.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/3/37/Bean_movie_poster.jpg/220px-Bean_movie_poster.jpg

lol

it was Zola.

you can unroll

adding fourth and fifth parties to make money in between the reader and author

or you can just read the entire thing!

ftr i haven't ever unrolled a tweet thread

just gonna assume Zola is about a small Italian who dreams of scoring a backheel against Norwich, or a French novelist biopic

when can I watch the Chuck Todd biopic

Chuck Todd (Meryl Streep)
Joe Scarborough (Kevin Costner)

Not good:
Bloomberg: Toddlers Make Up 10% of Hospital Cases in Omicron Epicenter

That twitter thread by Bedford is good

Sanpaku did you read the article you linked?

She said that part of the increased rate of admissions may reflect extra precaution on the part of parents given the new concern about the mutation.

Also read that admissions are similar for Delta. You’d have to conclude some people are enjoying this!

Also read that admissions are similar for Delta. You’d have to conclude some people are enjoying this!