I knew this was coming. I knew this was coming. I knew this would be bad. I predicted that the health care system might collapse in multiple jurisdictions in the West. I’m still somewhat shocked at the ferocity and this wave. There are lots of people saying that Omicron is milder than previous variants (see… Continue reading 2021-12-18 General
Category: Mitigation Measures
2021-12-17 General
I remember thinking it was really strange that more people died in the second year of the Spanish Flu pandemic than the first. I’m not surprised any more. Vaccines Someone asked me today, “would Omicron still have arisen if we’d had equitable and effective vaccine distribution globally? At first I hedged, and said we couldn’t… Continue reading 2021-12-17 General
2021-12-16 General
I’m tired and kind of depressed. I (and many other people) saw Omicron coming weeks ago, and now it’s here. It’s just as bad as I feared, and perhaps even worse. 🙁 Omicron is dominating the news, but … it’s not really news. There’s a lot of people saying “OH SHIT! WE ARE FUCKED!”, but… Continue reading 2021-12-16 General
2021-12-15 General
Mitigation Measures This article says that the federal government is advising against international travel. (If you go to the travel advisory page, for every country, it says you shouldn’t go there.) This article says that the Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland committed a whole bunch of money to fight COVID-19 . Variants There were a ton… Continue reading 2021-12-15 General
2021-12-11/12/13 General
Testing This report says that rapid tests are really inaccurate (they compared to PCR). This Twitter thread summarizes, but the brand I just picked up in the US misses half of symptomatic cases and a quarter of asymptomatic cases. (They say you should test multiple times, which if the failures are randomly distributed, should drop… Continue reading 2021-12-11/12/13 General
2021-12-07 General
A lot of highly technical material dropped today, on a day when I was kind of busy, so I have not had enough time to really understand everything. AND information about Omicron is still in flux. So if you don’ t understand something here, it’s not just you. Also, there will probably not be postings… Continue reading 2021-12-07 General
2021-11-30 General
Mitigation Measures This article describes tightened border controls in Canada in response to the threat of Omicron: Nigeria, Malawi and Egypt have been added to the list of restricted countries (South Africa, Mozambique, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Lesotho and Eswatini were already on the list). Those who have been to any of their home countries in… Continue reading 2021-11-30 General
2021-11-26 General
Variants This article talks about the race to contain B.1.1.529, now formally named Omicron (not Nu). This article reports that Pfizer/BioNTech say that they will know in under two weeks how effective their vax is against Omicron, and that they can have a revamped shot done in 100 days. Moderna says they’ve been working on… Continue reading 2021-11-26 General
2021-11-24 General
I spent a lot of time on my “when will it end” section, immediately below, so I ignored almost all other news. I’ll catch up tomorrow. Mitigation Measures/Vaccines/Opinion/Analysis Everybody wants to know when the pandemic will end — when we can stop masking in grocery stores, when we can go to the Whatsit Expo without… Continue reading 2021-11-24 General
2021-11-23 General
Mitigation Measures I have heard that it is critically important for masks to fit well to be useful, yet most of the people I see wearing masks have big obvious gaps in them. How could these possibly work? And yet, clearly they do. In addition to multiple studies showing mask-wearing reduces cases, pretty much every… Continue reading 2021-11-23 General