outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

Yeah the statement “there will not be another wave” is ludicrous.

So is “maybe there will, maybe there won’t” tbh

yeah my work has been 3 days per week in office since march 1st, and I'm looking at it as potentially/probably just a nice interlude where we can reestablish some of our face to face energy before more shit happens

also though nyc is weird compared to other localities and, i feel, especially hard to predict how its trajectory will relate to everyone else's

I understand the vehemence. It's not a logical response but rather a fear-based response. A trauma response, even. This COVID shit has fucked everybody up psychologically, in a variety of ways and probably for some time to come.

Seems to me that covid has proved its ability to rapidly morph into successful new variants. the first omicron variant is less than six months old, contagious to a degree almost unprecedented in virology, and appears to have thrown off a marginally more successful variant already. the world's population is far less 'naive' and has developed some resistance, but we have not caught up with the virus' ability to run ahead of us.

to my mind the real question isn't whether there will be new waves, but whether the successive waves will be as damaging and deadly, or much less so. there's room to think that omicron will be the high water mark of this pandemic and future waves will look less frightening even as they continue to generate large numbers of infections when judged against recent non-covid epidemics.

There is definitely a wave rn. For example, I now have the blasted rona for the first confirmed time

So is “maybe there will, maybe there won’t” tbh

I have been wrong about this stuff so many times in the past that I have long since resolved that the answer to questions about the future course of COVID is ALWAYS "maybe yes, maybe no." When the next wave comes it will not mean that it was certain to have come.

i mean i don't know for sure that evolution is true. it's just a theory. but i am once again asking people to note that everything that every time a wave happened in europe, it happens 1-2 months later in the US.

Hey French people, it looks like the “Pass Sanitaire” is no longer needed?

The number of friends who've gotten it in the past month or so is exponentially higher than it has been at any other point. Anecdata, of course, but I mean it's certainly made me feel like a wave is coming if it's not already here.

my supervisor got it after they required managers to go to the office to get ready for the rest of us to come back. she was off friday and monday and still has symptoms. i don't care if i'm not going to die from it, that's not something that makes me eager to be in an office.

Several friends got it in January and February but since then nothing. But the truth is, I don't know many people who've had COVID, or, more accurately, I don't know that many people who know they had it and who told me they had it.

Omicron blew through my extended circle in mid-December, sparing no one except me and my family and closest friends. So far nothing since, but, after all, these people still take precautions despite new guidelines.

Isn’t a new wave just a result of the whole US just dropping everything? No more required masks, we are all going back to work, etc

the only thing that confuses this for me is that I don't think this last wave declined so rapidly because of any particular restrictions

It (temporarily) ran out of people to infect.

xxp, it's looks like the european wave that's starting now is BA.2 (i.e. the other omicron variant).

it's definitely not recent changes in NPI in the US. there's no wave here yet, and NPIs barely existed 3 months ago in most of the country anyway.

two out of my team of 20 at work are now off with it, both vaxxed and having a not great time of it-- not hospital level, but just like a really really bad cold or flu, one of them was snuggled up on a sofa with two other team members at an in-person team meeting last week. (I was the weirdo wearing my N95 mask in that meeting because I knew I was seeing my ILs last weekend and didn't want to bring them the London germs, whether COVID or lurgy)

i mean i don't know for sure that evolution is true. it's just a theory. but i am once again asking people to note that everything that every time a wave happened in europe, it happens 1-2 months later in the US.

lol as if m8, how would it even get here?

The UK's busiest airport will abandon the requirement to wear a mask from Wednesday this week.

A statement from Heathrow read: “Face coverings will remain available at the airport to support those who wish to continue wearing them."

The airport’s chief operating officer, Emma Gilthorpe, said: “We’re gearing up for a busy summer travel season, and this change means we can look forward to welcoming our passengers back with a smile as we get them safely away on their journeys.”

British Airways and Virgin Atlantic welcomed the move.

Jason Mahoney, BA’s chief operating officer, said: “For destinations where the wearing of a face covering is not mandated, our customers are able to make a personal choice, and we kindly request everyone respects each other’s preferences.”

Corneel Koster, chief customer and operating officer for Virgin Atlantic, said: “As we learn to live with Covid and with the legal requirement to wear a face mask now removed in England, we believe our customers should have the personal choice whether to wear a mask onboard, on routes where international regulations around mask-wearing do not apply.

“We encourage everyone to be respectful of fellow passengers’ mask preferences.”

fwiw, BA appears to have reversed the decision to make masks optional today.

lol sic but masks at the airport don't matter, any more than wearing a mask while you walk from the door to your table at a restaurant matters.

A lot of passengers hang out in the airport for multiple hours, and hundreds and hundreds of staff do.

eh, they hang out in the covid island before then for multiple weeks.

Not if they're transferring from elsewhere.

(Normalising masking in indoor public situations has a salutary effect beyond the specific utility in each venue. Requiring customer-facing workers to do so unmasked, in thousands of encounters a day with people travelling from any number of exciting-new-variant hotspots, is simply murderous.)

i agree, but is not relevant to the point i'm making (no masking at heathrow will make no difference to the US).

The robust tracing system at both ends will at least let us know whether any cases are acquired en route. 👍

fwiw, BA appears to have reversed the decision to make masks optional today.

Thanks for this - looks like there's no policy reversal announced, but flight staff maybe pushing back?

I received my next batch of government covid tests in the mail today, so I guess I'm at least ready for this next wave

xps
I work at an airport and the rest of the time on 'covid island' I'm not around any other people so not wearing masks at said airport affects me at least. calculating at what point the percentage of passengers not wearing masks makes me wearing one pointless. as ever let's hope it's mild when I get it( have avoided so far afaik)

this newsletter very good and reasonable as per usual

https://calmcovid.substack.com/p/the-omicron-sequel-no-one-wanted

Thanks. Good read.

bad news: the one-star reviews are coming back! pic.twitter.com/7E42fEVcjN

— drewtoothpaste (@drewtoothpaste) March 20, 2022

I know it won't last, but today Austin hit the lowest rolling average for new hospitalizations since March 2020

lowish hospitalizations might last!

If BA2 is omicron phase 2, then I'm not very optimistic about that

I thought omicron was supposed to not have the anosmia thing

in the UK infections are up 38% and hospitalisations are up 25% but deaths are holding steady (all 7 day rolling averages)

no make at all in the post office or co-op when i popped out yesterday afternoon. i think the uptick in the weather has made people careless

I've been traveling a fair amount in the US the past few weeks, mostly in big cities, still consistently seeing masks in large numbers (though I'd say less than half of indoor people) despite it not being required anywhere I've been (except in the airport and on the plane, where mask compliance was, as usual, near-universal)

not sure tbh about the uk government's stance on masks, i feel like they just got bored of it. the shops generally still have their signs up (maybe through inertia) but people increasingly don't care.

talk of a 4th jab for vulnerable people. maybe a new jab every 6 months is a thing now.

On Monday at 11 am, students from Seattle Public Schools (SPS) walked out of class and rallied at the John Stanford Center for Educational Excellence to demand the district reinstate its mask mandate.

“[The district] would rather have our family members die and have us deal with this for another five years than deal with some conservative parents complaining about how their mask itches,” one student said into the megaphone. “Get your shit together, SPS.”

So happy I live in the Pacific NW. That makes me proud.

Think how much easier this issue would be if epidemic disease forecasting models were brought up to the current level of weather forecasting models.

We are going to be dealing with this for another five years regardless.

and we're still not good at predicting intensity xpost

weather forecasting is still a long way from perfect, but it's leveled up to the point where almost everyone accepts forecasts as accurate enough to modify their behavior based on their predictions

Into my kids’ veins

We're announcing positive interim data from the Phase 2/3 KidCOVE study of our #COVID19 vaccine (mRNA-1273) in children 6 months to under 2 years and 2 years to under 6 years of age.https://t.co/CqdRMSv3Kv pic.twitter.com/whcObVY4CD

— Moderna (@moderna_tx) March 23, 2022

Has anyone here used an LFT test as proof of negative covid status before travel? Our five year old isn't vaccinated and we need proof to travel to greece, supposedly you can get an LFT from a certified provider, test at home and upload your test result and get the certificate emailed to you. But what's to stop you just faking the test?

Where do you live? We did lfts in London for travel to the US but we had to get them done supervised at a test site and upload the certificate.

Birmingham, flying from Stansted. We'll probably do one at the airport anyway. Found one test provider that says This is not a supervised service, please ensure that an unsupervised self-swab is acceptable for the country you are travelling to. so maybe that's it - the gov.uk site says the requirements are proof of a negative COVID-19 rapid antigen test from an authorised laboratory which is ambiguous.

Yeah, it’s not super helpful wording.

ledge, we've done supervised LFD tests with Qured-- you buy it online, they mail it to you, you book a video call for the day you need test done, they watch you swab and then you email them the photo of the test 15 minutes later. Did that in both directions on our US trip over the summer.