@Pat Is covid still a huge deal over there?

@trinsec

We're at about 1,500 deaths per day here. (Hard to tell because now they are messing with the numbers.) In the Netherlands you guys have had close to a million cases in the past month, so it’s a big deal there, too.

A couple of months ago someone flipped a switch and silenced all of our media here re COVID-19. Virtually all media outlets are completely ignoring it, which gives everyone the impression that it’s all clear now, so they take their masks off and people continue to die at an alarming rate.

It’s very sad, because most don’t know how dangerous it is out there and they don’t know how to protect themselves.

@Pat Many infected here, not many deaths, and hospital occupation is getting less and less. We seem to average 10-20 deaths a day. Hence why in 3 days all rules will be gone here.

At this point, my job is probably like 75% 'has been infected or is recovered'. Besides that we don't quite hug each other yet, we don't really have much of a rule anymore. Just that if you're infected, stay at home for a few days.

Coughing? A cold? Usually you're asked to stay at home. Sensible, because even a cold I wouldn't want to wish upon others.

Omicron seriously was the game changer for us. So long the pressure is off the hospitals, there's no reason to have draconic precautions anymore. And a lot of people are vaccinated here, which helps. For a large part, life's back to normal here.

@trinsec

#social

Yes, your death rate there is very low for the number of infections. I think they are getting better at treating it. But for every one that dies, there are 10-20 who have serious chronic illness or organ failure.

The virus is now completely airborne, like measles. It doesn't matter much how close you are, if you are in the same room with someone (or you enter a room where someone was recently who is infected) you can get it.

Also, vaccine and prior infection doesn't seem to prevent reinfection anymore. Also, the second (or third) infection seems to be much harder on people, maybe because of previous damage from the prior infection.

Also, people can still be asymptomatic and spread the disease, so just going by fever/sniffles doesn’t work. It’s best to wear a respirator all the time when you are indoors or around others.

Because it’s so contagious and virulent now, an N95 (FFP2) may not be enough, you may need an N100 (FFP3).

@Pat Not gonna fly with new rules. We're going for endemic now. We only undertake action when our hospitals gets overcrowded, that's actually the whole point of our rules. It's about 'flattening the curve' not 'eliminating it'. Never been.

@trinsec
I haven't flown on a commercial airline since the pandemic began.

The most effective strategy is to eliminate the virus, like China did. "Flattening the curve" creates a lot of needless suffering and death.

@Pat I didn't mean the literal form of fly. 'It's not gonna fly' type of fly. As in, it's not going to work to put in new mandates, nobody's going to accept it anymore with those low hospital numbers.

Eliminating the virus like China tried turns out not to work very well. You keep having outbreaks and keep having lockdowns.

@trinsec
>"nobody's going to accept it anymore with those low hospital numbers."

People are much less concerned about hospital numbers than they are about deaths. In the US we've had close to one million deaths by following the "flatten the curve" strategy. Nobody should accept that, under an conditions.

China eliminated the virus and reopened business and people were able “get back normal” without having to worry so much about the virus. But here in the US we’ve had a worker shortage and supply chain disruptions because everybody is sick or dead, or too worried about the virus to go back to work.

@Pat We have worker shortage here as well.

US is a special case, there was so much mismanagement and I don't think the vaccination numbers were up to par either.

China isn't going that well, seen the situation in Shanghai recently?

@trinsec

Shanghai is a recent phenomenon, just the past few weeks out over two years of the pandemic. Shanghai is less than 2% of the population of China, and last I heard they were only shutting down half of the city at a time to continue business. So a tiny fraction of the population down for a fraction of the time of the pandemic. That’s certainly worth it to save millions of lives.

@Pat I'm not really sure what you're arguing for. Getting rid of the virus 100% is impossible, there'll always be outbreaks and you'll always need lockdowns here and there.

@trinsec

Lockdowns are not a viable option in a free country, certainly not the way China did it. In the US, we could have eliminated the virus (eliminate, not eradicate) if just 40% of the population had worn N95 respirators at the beginning of the pandemic. Then after the virus is eliminated do continual surveillance testing to detect outbreaks and let people know where the outbreaks are so they can once again wear their respirators.

Instead, in the US the White House COVID-19 Task Force and the CDC actively suppressed information about the effectiveness of respirators – they fooled people into wearing cloth masks instead and then when our strategic supply of respirators was finally released, they told people not to wear them. They are sadistic. They wanted millions of people to die.

Now they are fucking with numbers, the data about how many people have died from COVID-19 to further trick people into thinking that the “pandemic is behind us”.

@Pat I guess I'm just glad not to live in the USA.

@trinsec

We get a lot of things right, but I guess pandemics is not one of them.

@Pat Well, we don't either. No country did it great.