Covid 19 #43: Oh Omicron, oh Omicron, how numerous are thy spike proteins.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

2 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I'm so sorry. I have been lying to you all this whole time. Wendy speaks the truth and we can no longer hide it from the world.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/republican-arizona-senator-wendy-rogers-trolled-after-saying-kiwis-are-emailing-her-about-jacinda-ardern-and-covid-camps/ZAWEIFMIAME5LDZUZ52FT73SUY/

I'm not even in New Zealand, since as the article confirms people have been outing the country as having no internet access and email is banned, so I can't keep up the pretence any longer. My decades long jig is up.

The invasion is imminent; or at least it would be if they could find you on a map.

I see that 12+ 2nd doses have crossed 90% in your country. Nice. 

Edit: she's posting the emails from NZ on her twitter feed and there is absolutely no possibility they're written by the same person. None. Nada. Zero. Zip. 

Edit: She is getting absolutely roasted in the comments. I haven't laughed like that in a while. 

[Week]

Sigh.

In good news, Boston is going to require vaccinations for entry into a bunch of indoor establishments. Better late than never.

 

 

[Zorral]

We should do that in NYC.

We won't.

Our zip code, which has always been the lowest just about for positive cases in the City throughout the pandemic, as of this weekend is the highest.  Well, probably not higher than zips on Stanton Island etc., but in Manhattan.  Nope. I'm wrong.  We're higher than the highest section of Stanton Island.  The whole downtown map is deep indigo -- unlike most of the rest of Manhattan.  The interactive graph that shows each zip code of New York City's positive cases only goes up to 13% of the tests in each area. According to the graph, our zip had a very high number of tests performed. We're still just about the highest vaccinated group, yet this. I tell myself this graph deals only with TESTs.  Yet, of course the across-the-hall neighbor has it.  This is the first time there's been covid in our building.

Quote

.... The positivity rate measures how many tests come back showing an infection. High positivity can give a sense of where the virus is spreading fastest, but it isn’t the same as the infection/transmission rate. A high positivity rate—above 5%—can also signal places that have only enough tests to keep pace with severe cases but not mild cases. ....

 

So ya, this morning the news here hasn't improved at all. The Mayor is already requesting federal assistance to deal with the numbers. There are more new cases reported here today, than in the state at large.

Quote

Confirmed infections declined through September and October but spiked in the first two weeks of December. The city reported 5,940 new cases on Monday, the highest single-day count since February 2021. City health officials attribute the dramatic increase in cases to the long-present delta variant and the newly arrived omicron variant, which is thought to be circulating throughout the city.

 

[Fragile Bird]

1 hour ago, Week said:

Sigh.

In good news, Boston is going to require vaccinations for entry into a bunch of indoor establishments. Better late than never.

 

 

I sure as all hell hope Ontario announces the same here tomorrow. But knowing the Conservatives they’ll say they need to give notice to hard working business people and measure won’t start until Dec. 27. So we can all go shopping on Boxing Day.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

In other news, Brick killed a guy:

 

[The Anti-Targ]

Bit of a pooh, but understandable I think. The govt has decided that home isolation on entry from Aus (and a few other countries) won't come in on 17 Jan but be pushed to end of February so we can prepare for omicron by having more people boosted before the border loosens up. Quarantine period has been extended from 7 days to 10 days. Boosters to be available 4 months after the second jab, down from 6 months originally.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

Whooo boy, I got the Moderna booster on Saturday, and I'm just starting to get back on my feet. The fever portion wasn't so severe, but I've been full of aches and pains for two days with a big ol' swollen lymph node in my armpit (same arm as injection).

I'm already hoping the next booster won't be so bad.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

And welcome to season three of COVID:

 

[Paxter]

6 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

I sure as all hell hope Ontario announces the same here tomorrow. But knowing the Conservatives they’ll say they need to give notice to hard working business people and measure won’t start until Dec. 27. So we can all go shopping on Boxing Day.

Quebec isn’t stopping shops from trading though, right? So Boxing Day is also on there…

[kairparavel]

NHL is taking a Christmas break. 

https://www.espn.com/nhl/story/_/id/32913690/nhl-pause-season-wednesday-resume-scheduled-christmas-break-amid-covid-19-outbreaks-sources-say

[mormont]

Meanwhile the EPL refuse to consider a break despite having to call of 6 of 10 matches last weekend due to COVID. I'm sure this is fine.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/59732905

[Luzifer's right hand]

Sequencing in Austria outside of Vienna is really lackluster. We have no real idea how widespread omicron is here.

After nearly two years of seeing people ignore measures at work, overhearing countless conversations how COVID is not real or harmless and finding COVID denier leaflets in the break room regularly I have decided to take a break from employment. It is not good at all for my mental health. Things are not really better on the operations side in other companies in the field in Austria as far as I know so I won't seek employment until spring.

HR was very accommodating and we are terminating my employment amicably and the HR person I talked with said she can't imagine how shit having a job among anti-measure folks must be and that public transport is hard enough for her currently and my last day is soon(I had a 3 months notice period on paper but we cut that down to 3 weeks). Hopefully before omicron hits with full force. I'm not worried about myself I have established through confrontation(other approaches did not work) that people keep their distance from me I just can't take seeing why we fail so hard regularly anymore(my employer has great measures it is compliance that is the problem).

Nobody cares about the mental health of people who feel better when measure are enforced. It is always "the measures ruin mental health". In my case and of many that I know it is the constant contact with anti-measure folks that harms our mental health especially because they can't shut up about it at work and can't be bothered to mask in puplic transport.

I feel much better already knowing that I have only 9 days of work left and that most fuckwads will be on leave for that period.

In case certain things do not work out I have been making tentative plans to leave Austria. A country with such an anti-science culture has no future I want to experience myself in the 21st century I feel. The preparations that are necessary to weather the other crises that experts predict will not be implemented with such a culture.

[Spockydog]

3 hours ago, mormont said:

Meanwhile the EPL refuse to consider a break despite having to call of 6 of 10 matches last weekend due to COVID. I'm sure this is fine.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/59732905

Considering it took just two positive tests to shut down the entirety of English football last year, the past few days have been weird.

Welcome to Covid Britain, where football clubs make decisions on public health

Quote

 

These are hard decisions, important decisions, in many cases ridiculous decisions, and yet by and large they remain entirely in the remit of clubs themselves rather than governing bodies or the actual government. We can quibble about the extent to which clubs and the Premier League have followed protocols, or been driven by self-interest. But surely we can all agree on the absurdity of these decisions – in many cases, pressing matters of public health – being delegated to football clubs.

And if it occasionally feels as if the Premier League is operating in a vacuum, publicly sensitive to public health concerns while doing the bare minimum to address them, then it is only really taking its cue from central government, whose time-honoured absence of leadership stopped being funny some time ago. Even now, as Omicron becomes this country’s dominant strain, Boris Johnson’s administration has refused to impose limits on public gatherings, refused to restrict the privileges of the unvaccinated, refused to offer anything beyond a wink-wink and a series of vague noises that can mean whatever you want them to mean.

We know why this is, of course. The government is still reeling from the scale of the Conservative backbench rebellion last week, still deeply embarrassed by the revelations about parties in Downing Street last Christmas, and has thus tried to nudge people into being careful without moving a single legislative muscle in that direction.

And really, how did we think football would proceed in this scenario? Unilaterally shut itself down? Restrict its own stadium capacity? Of course not. We end up, instead, with a weekend where some matches are being postponed at a few hours’ notice while others take place in front of capacity crowds. Where different clubs have wildly differing rates of vaccination and nobody really knows what to do about it. Where everyone insists that player welfare is the top priority while insisting that the fixture calendar must be played in its entirety, in the allotted time, no exceptions. After all, this is Covid Britain, and here anything goes.

 

 

[BigFatCoward]

To be honest I'm not as worried about the football, compared to the darts at Alexander Palace, which has the potential to be the biggest superspreader event in history. 

Odds that lodkdown happens on the 27th as PM fucknuts hasn't the balls to do it over Christmas? and that is the only factor in his decision making. 

[Filippa Eilhart]

I still don’t really get how one variant outcompetes others. Shouldn’t they all just be in circulation? If I get omicron it doesn’t magically mean I’m immediately immune to Delta? 

[Deedles]

53 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

To be honest I'm not as worried about the football, compared to the darts at Alexander Palace, which has the potential to be the biggest superspreader event in history. 

Odds that lodkdown happens on the 27th as PM fucknuts hasn't the balls to do it over Christmas? and that is the only factor in his decision making. 

And to be rude and stereotypical, the audience shots wouldn’t fill me with confidence that people infected there will do well medically

 

[A wilding]

24 minutes ago, Filippa Eilhart said:

I still don’t really get how one variant outcompetes others. Shouldn’t they all just be in circulation? If I get omicron it doesn’t magically mean I’m immediately immune to Delta? 

I understand that that is indeed how outcompeting works. Getting one variant makes you at least somewhat resistant to other variants, i.e. less likely to get it and likely to pass it on to fewer people if you do. So the variant that infects you first has a competitive advantage and is likely to become the dominant one,.

[The Anti-Targ]

33 minutes ago, Filippa Eilhart said:

I still don’t really get how one variant outcompetes others. Shouldn’t they all just be in circulation? If I get omicron it doesn’t magically mean I’m immediately immune to Delta? 

Yes, you could get a super infection with both delta and omicron, especially since they seem to be targeting different parts of the respiratory tract to invade they are not really directly competing for "food". Delta focuses on the alveoli of the lungs, omicron on the bronchi. But omicron produces more virus and has a shorter incubation period which makes it spread faster, and earlier, and you will get sick sooner and (hopefully) limit your social contact before delta has as much of a chance to spread. So, even if you are infected with delta and omicron at the same time you will give omicron to more people than you will delta. Omicron will spread through a population sooner and faster and delta might try to follow, but omicron will generate an immune response in its wake that stops delta in its tracks.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Small update on the personal christmas nuisance story from Friday.

Called my dad's nursery and asked about his test results. Thus far he has tested negative. I assume it holds up and christmas visit can go ahead as planned.

[Which Tyler]