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Author Topic: Covid General discussions  (Read 13494 times)

digitaldog

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Re: Covid General discussions
« Reply #280 on: February 12, 2022, 11:45:55 am »

Please stand by while we research possible nasty names to call Alan in response to this juvenile comment.
There are many but my first choice is “moron”.
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digitaldog

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Re: Covid General discussions
« Reply #281 on: February 12, 2022, 12:02:16 pm »

We're supposed to show some respect for each other. 
Respect has to be earned.
You lost that here years ago.
I'd respect you a bit more if you STFU and stopped posting utter rubbish and not only about politics and Covid but about photography and imaging, the focus of this web site. Case in point:
I edit in sRGB because I'm posting on the web which is sRGB and don't print.
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Original prints are 300dpi
https://forum.luminous-landscape.com/index.php?topic=136760.msg1194660#msg1194660
So often wrong but never in doubt; no respect for you dear!
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I hope we all continue to do that.
This is from the fellow who lied by accusing others of calling him a liar. 
"The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that's also a hypocrite! "-Tennessee Williams
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LesPalenik

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Re: Covid General discussions
« Reply #282 on: February 23, 2022, 05:18:58 pm »

Of course, truckers ignored the courts.  The whole thing is civil disobedience.  The truckers knew they were breaking the law from the beginning.  Nothing's changed for them.  The courts can't move trucks.  Only the police can do that.  What are they waiting for? 

Protesters defy injunction order, continue to occupy key U.S.-Canada bridge
WINDSOR, Ontario/WASHINGTON, Feb 11 (Reuters) - Protesters opposing pandemic restrictions were still occupying a vital Canada-U.S. trade corridor on Friday, hours after an injunction order to end the blockade that has disrupted North America's auto industry took effect.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has promised President Joe Biden quick action to end the crisis and earlier on Friday a Canadian judge ordered an end to the four-day-long blockade of the Ambassador Bridge, North America's busiest land border crossing.That order came into effect at 7 p.m. Eastern Time (0000 GMT) but more two than hours after the deadline, about 200 protesters, including children, milled around the entrance to the bridge, waving Canadian flags, while others set off fireworks.

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/canada-protests-enter-third-week-sophisticated-demonstrators-dig-2022-02-11/

Now, inspired by the Canadian truck protests, the American truckers head to Washington. Let's see how Biden reacts to "People's Convoy".

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A group of American truckers began a cross-country drive from California to Washington on Wednesday to protest coronavirus restrictions, taking a cue from demonstrations that paralyzed Canada's capital city, Ottawa, for weeks.

More than two dozen 18-wheeler trucks, along with some 50 pickups and recreational vehicles, left Adelanto, California, about 80 miles (130 km) northeast of Los Angeles. The self-styled 'People's Convoy' is beginning an 11-day trek to the Beltway, a major highway encircling the U.S. capital, to demand an end to COVID-19 vaccine and mask requirements.

"This is for our freedoms, our human rights. Enough is enough," said Ron Coleman, 61, a trucker from Reno, Nevada, as he prepared to make the 2,500-mile (4,000-km) journey. Coleman, a trucker for 45 years, said the group was also pushing for the end to the emergency powers that U.S. politicians have used to enact pandemic-related restrictions.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-truckers-plan-pandemic-protest-inspired-by-canadian-counterparts-2022-02-23/
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Chris Kern

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Re: Covid General discussions
« Reply #283 on: February 23, 2022, 06:46:04 pm »

Let's see how Biden reacts to "People's Convoy".

I rather doubt that Biden has—or, as president, by statute should have—any personal involvement in the preparations, although I'm sure he has been briefed on them.  The District of Columbia police (who are responsible to the Washington, D.C., city government) and the Capitol Police (who are responsible to the U.S. Congress) have requested support in managing the demonstrations from the federal Department of Defense, which has agreed to deploy unarmed military "reserve" personnel to assist in traffic control (i.e., to prevent the demonstrators from blocking surface transportation) if any of them attempt to impede traffic into, out of, or within the city.

Peter McLennan

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Re: Covid General discussions
« Reply #284 on: February 24, 2022, 06:21:27 pm »

Indeed.  It will be very interesting to see the police response in America should a similar occupation to those in Canada appear.
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Chris Kern

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Re: Covid General discussions
« Reply #285 on: February 24, 2022, 07:23:45 pm »

It will be very interesting to see the police response in America should a similar occupation to those in Canada appear.

Well, the closest precedent I can remember—one of the few virtues of being old—was the "tractorcade" protest by farmers in 1979.  The protesters filled the National Mall with their vehicles (just across the street from where I was working at the time) and caused what I recall as relatively modest disruptions to rush-hour traffic.  The city police mostly just let them alone, notwithstanding complaints from irritated commuters.  The stalemate persisted until a big snowstorm hit the city and the overwhelmed Washington department of public works—we're not very good at handling snow around these parts—requested the farmers' assistance in digging out the city:

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Tides turned on President's Day weekend when a blizzard hit, covering the city in two feet of snow. The farmers, in possession of some of the only vehicles able to move, rose to the occasion and helped dig out DC. They plowed out hundreds of cars and aided stranded citizens. They transported doctors and nurses to hospitals, where the wives of AAM farmers helped cook and clean because regular staff was unable to get to work. Twenty-two inches and a whole lot of goodwill turned these agitators into heroes.

Washington has much more experience with protesters than it does with snow.  Given the planned police presence and military reserve back-up, I'd be surprised if next month's protest turned into a repeat of the Canadian occupations—much less last year's attempted Capitol Building insurrection.

Robert Roaldi

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Re: Covid General discussions
« Reply #286 on: June 17, 2022, 09:55:08 pm »

I haven't paid much attention as mask mandates were being lifted here in Ontario and Quebec (probably other provinces too) but I noticed on Worldometer today that the 7-day moving avg of daily US deaths is hovering in the 250-300 range. Using a rough number of 275, that annualizes to about 100,000 deaths. That's higher than any of the usual things people worry about like gun-related deaths, automobile accident fatalities and really bad "normal flu" years. So far as I can tell around me, everyone is acting as if it's over but it doesn't really seem to be. That might be number low enough that everyone is comfortable with though.
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Robert Roaldi

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Re: Covid General discussions
« Reply #287 on: July 01, 2022, 02:06:18 pm »

As of June 30, the US 7-day moving avg daily deaths from Covid is hovering around 250, which is still surprisingly high. It annualizes to 91,000 or so. The number seems to be plateauing at that level, not steadily dropping anyway, but I doubt we can read much into that yet. The decline from here on may be too slow to observe at weekly time frames.

The last time I looked at the reports, the Ottawa area seems to be hovering at 1 or 2 deaths per week. Some people still wear masks in grocery stores or similar places but in general masks are no longer commonplace. I can't make a comment about distancing because I always maintained distance from strangers as a matter of course.

I have to say one thing. I really miss some parts of lockdown, no daytime traffic, easier access to hiking/biking trails, etc. Some friends and I had many email discussions about how nice it would be to actually have a "day of rest" where most places were closed so we could enjoy some peace and quiet. When I go grocery shopping on weekday mornings, the traffic to-from the big box malls is an annoying as it ever was.
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Alan Klein

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Re: Covid General discussions
« Reply #288 on: July 01, 2022, 02:50:13 pm »

I haven't paid much attention as mask mandates were being lifted here in Ontario and Quebec (probably other provinces too) but I noticed on Worldometer today that the 7-day moving avg of daily US deaths is hovering in the 250-300 range. Using a rough number of 275, that annualizes to about 100,000 deaths. That's higher than any of the usual things people worry about like gun-related deaths, automobile accident fatalities and really bad "normal flu" years. So far as I can tell around me, everyone is acting as if it's over but it doesn't really seem to be. That might be number low enough that everyone is comfortable with though.
The 250 death number is still high.  But I can't seem to find data that explains who's dying that was available a year ago when it was bigger news. Maybe that's why they're not reporting it.  If it's mainly people who have not been vaccinated and old, then most people are not going to be affected at all.  So they're not concerned. 

While I'm old and have co-morbidities and should be more careful, I like to believe my two original shots and two boosters are protecting me from anything serious even if I should contract it.

Have you been able to find the breakdown of who's dying by age and vaccination rates? 

digitaldog

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Re: Covid General discussions
« Reply #289 on: July 01, 2022, 02:51:03 pm »

The 250 death number is still high.
So much for knowledge:
So now that Covid is on the way out, we're left with the economic damage.
"Those who have knowledge, don't predict. Those who predict, don't have knowledge."-Lao Tzu
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LesPalenik

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Re: Covid General discussions
« Reply #290 on: July 01, 2022, 11:00:50 pm »

The 250 death number is still high.  But I can't seem to find data that explains who's dying that was available a year ago when it was bigger news. Maybe that's why they're not reporting it.  If it's mainly people who have not been vaccinated and old, then most people are not going to be affected at all.  So they're not concerned. 

While I'm old and have co-morbidities and should be more careful, I like to believe my two original shots and two boosters are protecting me from anything serious even if I should contract it.

Have you been able to find the breakdown of who's dying by age and vaccination rates?

In Germany, the new cases are on increase. lthough Germany has only 1/4 of USA population, the new cases numbers are now the same in both countries.
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Robert Roaldi

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Re: Covid General discussions
« Reply #291 on: July 02, 2022, 07:04:05 am »

In Germany, the new cases are on increase. lthough Germany has only 1/4 of USA population, the new cases numbers are now the same in both countries.

I saw a news item about a 30% rise in infections in the UK in the last week (or two?). The emergency department of a small regional hospital about an hour west of Ottawa in Perth Ontario had to shut down for 5 days yesterday because of an outbreak.

As fewer people die every week the rest of us grow more confident that we can ignore the whole thing. That's more or less what happens with flu. Until someone you know dies, you don't pay attention. I think it's true to say that the newer Covid strains are less lethal, I hope that continues to be the case. 

I'm not sure how reliably you can compare infection rates in different countries these days, no idea how or if the stats are collected in equivalent ways. I've only looked at daily death rates for months now, my feeling is that it is a more reliable number.
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Chris Kern

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Re: Covid General discussions
« Reply #292 on: July 02, 2022, 11:49:17 am »

From what I've been reading, the Omicron subvariants currently circulating in much of North America and Europe are not only extremely infectious, but they have evolved to circumvent antibodies from both vaccines and previous infections.  And pandemic-weariness has prompted much of the population to stop wearing face masks indoors and practicing physical distancing.  So apparently many people are getting infected for a second or even a third time.  But since so much of the population in those parts of the world already has acquired a durable secondary immune response to the coronavirus, either through vaccination or prior infection, those who do get infected typically experience mild symptoms.

Of course, as the gross number of infections rises, there will inevitably be some increase in those who require hospitalization or who die—especially people who are old or who have other ailments that affect their ability to fight off the disease.

Robert Roaldi

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Re: Covid General discussions
« Reply #293 on: July 14, 2022, 01:47:53 pm »

The 7-day moving avg of daily deaths in the US has inched up over 300 again after plateauing in the low 200s for a week or so. In Montreal yesterday, 11 people died of Covid. I don't know the stats for Ontario but I can say that I see very few people wearing masks in stores and restaurants here in Ottawa and especially so on the Quebec side of the river.

I saw part of a story online yesterday about some major league baseball player objecting to Canada forcing him to put things in his body. I assume he was talking about vaccines. I didn't read the story very carefully mostly because I couldn't care less about whining millionaires. But if he was sent back at the border because he wasn't vaccinated, I say Great!, that's what border controls are for, to keep out undesirables. If you don't want to observe the laws of a country, then don't try to enter it. You don't have a "constitutional right" to travel to other countries.

If he had stepped on a nail, would he object to a tetanus shot?

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Robert Roaldi

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Re: Covid General discussions
« Reply #294 on: July 23, 2022, 07:54:08 am »

Hospitalizations and infections are up in eastern Ontario in our 7th wave, I'm not sure about the rest of the province. Ottawa is getting high readings in their sewage viral count analysis. It's not clear that we're seeing statistically significant increases in deaths though.

The 7-day moving average of daily US deaths is stubbornly hovering in the low 300s as of yesterday, which annualizes to about 100,000 per year. If that were consistently trending down I could understand why it's not attracting more attention. I suppose there is something called "Covid fatigue", which is a bit lame imo. I wonder if soldiers in combat get bored with enemy gunfire and start to ignore it. That's probably unfair, but I said it anyway.

But it could very well be that the majority of people who are now dying failed to take the minimum precautions, like getting vaccinated. If that's the case, people's sympathy will only go so far, which is totally understandable. I hope someone in public health is continuing to analyze the data. But I'm cynical and I've read the Michael Lewis books, so it's more likely that authorities are cutting funding to those public agencies, to avoid having any useful data for which they might be called to account. But that assumes that people are paying enough attention to even call someone to account, which I doubt. I know people will always die of something, but the numbers still seem high to me.
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Chris Kern

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Re: Covid General discussions
« Reply #295 on: July 23, 2022, 09:18:03 am »

But it could very well be that the majority of people who are now dying failed to take the minimum precautions, like getting vaccinated.

From what I've been reading, the deaths are mostly among (1) individuals with compromised immune systems, (2) those who are not vaccinated, (3) old patients (e.g., over 75 or 80), and (4) those with certain chronic diseases which make them more susceptible to respiratory infections.  Of course, as the infection rate increases—and it's very high now because so many people are being infected multiple times—there is bound to be some increase in total deaths even if the death rate remains low.

Here in the States, we're still experiencing deaths from SARS-CoV-2 at an annualized rate of more than 150K.  I gather most epidemiologists expect it to exceed 200K by the end of the year because of an autumn through winter surge.  By contrast, we typically have 12K-52K deaths from influenza each year, many resulting from secondary pneumonia infections.

LesPalenik

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Re: Covid General discussions
« Reply #296 on: July 23, 2022, 02:36:04 pm »

Hospitalizations and infections are up in eastern Ontario in our 7th wave, I'm not sure about the rest of the province. Ottawa is getting high readings in their sewage viral count analysis. It's not clear that we're seeing statistically significant increases in deaths though.

The 7-day moving average of daily US deaths is stubbornly hovering in the low 300s as of yesterday, which annualizes to about 100,000 per year. If that were consistently trending down I could understand why it's not attracting more attention. I suppose there is something called "Covid fatigue", which is a bit lame imo. I wonder if soldiers in combat get bored with enemy gunfire and start to ignore it. That's probably unfair, but I said it anyway.

But it could very well be that the majority of people who are now dying failed to take the minimum precautions, like getting vaccinated. If that's the case, people's sympathy will only go so far, which is totally understandable. I hope someone in public health is continuing to analyze the data. But I'm cynical and I've read the Michael Lewis books, so it's more likely that authorities are cutting funding to those public agencies, to avoid having any useful data for which they might be called to account. But that assumes that people are paying enough attention to even call someone to account, which I doubt. I know people will always die of something, but the numbers still seem high to me.

In the previous two summers, the covid deaths in Canada were pretty much on the low end of statistics. This year, however, the July death numbers shot up to the highest levels of the chart from the beginning of the pandemic to the most recent data points. If the number of deaths will follow the historical trends, this would indicate much worse situation in the coming months.
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LesPalenik

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Re: Covid General discussions
« Reply #297 on: August 07, 2022, 03:52:26 pm »

Two years ago, I was reading about people worldwide dying from covid, but none of the people I knew personally, reported such an incident.
This year, quite a few of my direct friends or their friends reported that they got covid. Today, I spoke with my nephew who told me that his 35 year old colleague returned from a vacation with covid, was taken to the hospital, and died there within a few days. Apparently, he had diabetes and the covid vaccine was not effective.
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Robert Roaldi

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Re: Covid General discussions
« Reply #298 on: December 18, 2022, 07:41:56 am »

It hasn't been mentioned in a while now but the USA's 7-day average daily deaths from Covid has been hovering around the 250 to 300 mark since April 2022 according to the Worldometer graphs https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/. So far, there doesn't appear to be an obvious steady decrease, looks more like a plateau. I arrived at the avg number by eyeballing the graph so it's a very crude approximation.

Using the lower 250 number, that annualized to just over 90,000, which I think still makes Covid a significant cause of death in the USA.

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digitaldog

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Re: Covid General discussions
« Reply #299 on: January 08, 2023, 12:17:29 pm »

Ah, the longer we move on, the more silly the statement appears:
So now that Covid is on the way out, we're left with the economic damage.
Todays NYT:

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COVID-19 PANDEMIC
Experts eye new Omicron variant
Quickly spreading XBB.1.5 now accounts for nearly 28% of cases in U.S.
By Carl Zimmer
The New York Times
Three years into the pandemic, the
coronavirus continues to impress virus
experts with its swift evolution.
A young version, known as XBB.1.5,
has quickly been spreading in the
United States over the past few weeks.
As of Friday, the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention estimated that
it made up 72% of new cases in the
Northeast and 27.6% of cases across the
country.
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