Coronavirus

So Macron refused to take a Russian Covid test and did not want to follow their protocols. Apparently he feared the Russians would get his DNA information.

www.bbc.co.uk

Macron refused to take Russian Covid test

A source says the health procedure was unacceptable amid reports France was protecting Mr Macron's DNA.
www.bbc.co.uk

Now here’s a thought: what if Steve Harris did not agree with the protocols set by The Darkness because he was afraid they could get his DNA? I mean, The Darkness could always use that information to know why someone has a fear of the dark and modify things so that fear turns into love of the darkness, leading to world domination, right?

Those evil Hawkins brothers probably had it all planned but they failed, mwahahaha!!!
 
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We're at half capacity at restaurants and bars and such, with full capacity on March 14th, which I think is fine. The vaccine passport is probably about to go the way of the dinosaur in Ontario - which I think is okay with omicron, as it will infect people as it feels unless you're boosted. But the key for me is watching hospitalization rates - if those spike, we need to lock things down again.
 
LooseCannon said:
We're at half capacity at restaurants and bars and such, with full capacity on March 14th, which I think is fine. The vaccine passport is probably about to go the way of the dinosaur in Ontario - which I think is okay with omicron, as it will infect people as it feels unless you're boosted. But the key for me is watching hospitalization rates - if those spike, we need to lock things down again.
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Should be fine, if other countries are anything to go by. Less people get sick with omicron, those who end up in the hospital spend less time there than with delta for instance, and less people need intensive care.
 
It's becoming harder to tell what the situation is in places where restrictions have been lowered and people feel covid isn't a big deal any more. Far too many people I know don't bother with PCR tests any more, some don't bother with LFT tests, and some who take LFT tests don't report the results.

Deaths and hospitalisations are down a bit from when we had the proven 100-200k cases a day recently, but even though deaths and hospitalisations do lag 3-4 weeks behind high infection rates, they're still a little too high for comfort. Numbers of tests taken and recorded have dropped by a long way now. It suggests that even symptomatic case numbers are much, much, much higher than the stats show.

Something that struck me recently in my town is the unusually high rate of hospitalisations per number of recorded covid cases*. Currently 60-100 cases confirmed per day, but also 16 hospitalisations a day. That doesn't match the observed hospitalisation rates elsewhere relating to Omicron. Although the vaccination rate in this town is comparatively poor (only about half of population aged over 12 fully vaccinated), it's also not clear if the more serious cases and deaths are largely restricted to the unvaccinated/people with severe underlying conditions, or if severe covid is still more of a lottery than flu ever was even if fully vaccinated.

*It's also worth pointing out that this figure includes covid patients who may not have been hospitalised first and foremost for covid.
 
Poto said:
Should be fine, if other countries are anything to go by. Less people get sick with omicron, those who end up in the hospital spend less time there than with delta for instance, and less people need intensive care.
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It should be, yes. But omicron isn't the last variant, I expect, and we need to be ready for the ability to 1) surge health care capacity and 2) restrict things to reduce input to hospitals.

One of the untold costs of the pandemic is those who have had necessary, life saving, and life altering surgeries delayed for years due to the need to surge capacities for COVID patients. It's especially infuriating now, when idiots who won't get vaccinated are taking up such a huge percentage of hospital beds. If we're not planning for future variants to do the same, then we're in a lot of trouble.
 
LooseCannon said:
It should be, yes. But omicron isn't the last variant, I expect, and we need to be ready for the ability to 1) surge health care capacity and 2) restrict things to reduce input to hospitals.

One of the untold costs of the pandemic is those who have had necessary, life saving, and life altering surgeries delayed for years due to the need to surge capacities for COVID patients. It's especially infuriating now, when idiots who won't get vaccinated are taking up such a huge percentage of hospital beds. If we're not planning for future variants to do the same, then we're in a lot of trouble.
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I think we agree on most things. Health care capacity definitely needs to get better for a future pandemic. Regarding future variants that's speculation. There could be one, and yes, we should prepare for it, but we can't live in fear of it either.

Regarding restrictions to reduce input to hospitals, Norway had a lot of restrictions before xmas but that did basically nothing to stop the disease from spreading, so in this case it probably does more damage than good. Omicron will burn through the population no matter what, the option is to close down completely but that's not a good thing either. And not necessary.
 
Jer said:
I’m only 3 days out from receiving the Moderna booster, but as of yesterday (2 days post-vaccination) my tinnitus seems to have increased a similar amount to what it did post-J&J, so it’s now noticeable all the time, and about as loud as if I’d gone to a metal concert with no ear protection the night before. Thankfully it doesn’t muffle anything or mess with the EQ, so music still sounds normal to me, just with this persistent ringing alongside it.
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Now 2+ months out from the Moderna booster and after having the tinnitus level bounce around between 2/10 and 8/10 volume, it seems to have settled in at a constant 6/10 volume for quite a while now, about 50% louder than the persistent post-J&J tinnitus effect. Still not muffling anything or messing with the EQ as far as I can tell, and at least I can sleep normally and generally tune out the effect so it doesn't drive me nuts, but I wouldn't want it to get any louder.

I have now filed my VAERS reports for these events and will see about getting my hearing tested, though I'm not sure what will come of that other than a suggestion to get rid of all caffeine, alcohol, and salt from my diet in a vain attempt to reduce the effect, which isn't really a tradeoff worth making in my book.
 
LooseCannon said:

So, he's going to actually do it.
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Steve and Tony must be there :/
I wonder if all that antivaxers have been take an aspirin sometime or been injected some medicine in hospital when they needed it.
I think there will be some protests of antivaxers around Brussels close to the EU Parliament. I've also seen that there's a lot of COVID back in Denmark after they quit off restrictions. So it's worrying.
Spanish government is quitting off restrictions too but we must be cautious. I'm still wearing mask (with 3 + flu vaccines)
 
The_7th_one said:
I've also seen that there's a lot of COVID back in Denmark after they quit off restrictions. So it's worrying.
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29k cases yesterday. Far away from their top which was around 55k. The hospital number is rising though. 1465 yesterday. They had 1294 one week ago. About half of those were people who had tested positive, but were admitted for different reasons. It's also worth mentioning that omicron patients spend less time on average than delta patients. They have 25 people in intensive care. 12 in respirators. Numbers falling.

Norway had 14k reported cases yesterday, but a lot of cases aren't included. In any case that's not too interesting. There are 36 people at the intensive care in Norway. Four weeks ago there were 79. 124 on december the 23rd. A lot of those were delta patients btw unless I am completely off the mark. 25 in respirators. Four weeks ago 55. On december 26th there were 85. Numbers falling. It will be very interesting to see the development in Norway the coming weeks. I expect hospital numbers to go up. There are 353 covid patients as of today in hospitals, and I expect that to rise quite a bit. We should be fine though.
 
Tested negative. So I'm free to go out again. That means back to work too. At least I charged my batteries in this week.

As I said before, my experience with omicron was far far from the worst illnesses in my life. Got through just with a sore throat (but I'm double vaxed, so that could have something to do with that). But I can see how this can fuck one up. And judging from hospitalisation rates, Delta was/is 3-4 times worse...

Glad I got through it as I did.
 
What will be interesting in the long run, is to see whether omicron gives enough immunity against other variants (on a population level) to allow countries who have had a big omicron wave to ride through future waves with less restrictions.
 
Hospitalisations, ICU care rate and deaths is what is interesting now. Cases aren't. It is a different game now. Thank H.
 
That's not true. Cases have a different correlation to hospitalizations than they did a year ago, sure, but they also do not have zero correlation.

Ontario has seen more hospitalizations during Omicron than ever before, even as the hospitalization rate per infection has dramatically dropped off. None of that stops hospitals from delaying needed surgeries and the like.
 
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