Thanks, Taylor Swift.
/s
Bad enough as those numbers are, for the size of the population this is a tiny fraction of USA numbers.
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I get that and we’ve done well to date, but the timely mix of holidays, opening up and Omicron is something else again, and that’s with 90%+ of the over-12’s vaxxed. Hoping desperately this won’t be mirrored in the hospitalisation numbers.
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Today, Japan saw its first locally transmitted cases of the omicron variant, with three members of the same family testing positive in Osaka today despite no recent overseas travel. (Japan has had cases of omicron before, but these were all caught in airport quarantine in people returning from overseas.)
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If they can do it with air, they could do it with water? 
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Sorry to say this, but it sounds like your family is stupid.
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Covid-19 was third leading cause of death in 2020, driving record rise in death rate and nearly two-year drop in life expectancy
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Inevitable
Encouraging
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More than one so far. We have a sizable population of trumpers so not unexpected.
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I’ve just got back from getting my booster (Moderna, this time). I was finally able to get an appointment after they re-opened the mass vaccination centre in the centre of the city yesterday. Before now, the earliest appointment I could get was in mid-January.
And if we continue at this rate, we’ll be at 50% of the population boosted before Christmas.
(EDIT- Today’s figures have just come out. We had another record day for the number of vaccinations given. 1.5% of the country’s population got their booster today, bringing us up to 49.6% of the population boosted. We’re going to hit that 50% earlier than I thought. Oh, and they were giving out packs of lateral flow tests to everyone who got their booster.)
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“This calculator lets you estimate COVID risk and find effective safety measures for customizable situations. Examples: how risky is a trip to my grocery store? What’s the safest way to see a friend? How much would it help to wear a better mask at my workplace?”
No idea how accurate this is. Hopefully some of you have the experience to assess.
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Yeah, good luck trying to convince them to do the right thing. His platform from day one is “being an asshole is a good thing”. Trump and his supporters have made that bed and now they have to lie in it.
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Dangerously high Risk
23x your weekly risk budget
~4,500 microCOVIDs each time (probably between: 1,500 to 14,000)
Yeah, no shock. Kinda shocked I haven’t got it yet, TBH.
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“Got in the way” on purpose. The usual suspects:
And the more extreme lockdown protests were farm teams for January 6th.
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Warning: She’s spewing lots of misinformation. (And she’s a wee bit batty.)
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No idea how accurate this is.
I like how this fills a the gap for those inclined to want to dig a bit deeper for some re-assurance about what (not) to do, or explain it to your kids, or their grandmother 
.
I’ll give them top marks for the tool. I have only had time for a once through of the white paper but I like what I see. They are thinking about risk very clearly and have supplied a very approachable framework.
Why? There are a few dominant risk factors that we’ve talked about here over and over and those seem well represented. They have lots of co-authors and an open process. They aren’t “trying too hard” with the math, everything is straightforward and transparent. They aren’t overworking numerical estimates of risk, I’m not seeing fudge factors. The summary “traffic light” is something everyone will understand in the end. Silver bullets: none. Quackery: none noted. If I had one criticism, the “social distance” considerations may need a bit of rethinking. They are open about not being updated for Omicron and what that means for risk.
Disclaimer: I do risk analysis in financial settings every day with Very Hard Math. 
I’m not a medical doctor nor an epidemiologist, but do understand their mathematical tools. I have spent a lot of time looking for mistakes in other people’s work with, I’m proud to say, enough success that I’m genuinely disliked in some circles.
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I do like how their risk tool notes that just talking loudly increases risk by a factor of 5. This is something I had seen compelling studies of over a year ago, but I think still isn’t fully appreciated by most people. Turning down (or completely turning off) ambient music in bars and restaurants is a very simple step that could help reduce transmission, but almost nobody is doing it and I haven’t even seen prominent government recommendations strongly suggesting it.
In California there’s a very mild “guidance” document for restaurants that has a single line suggesting that restaurants “adjust music volume so that workers can maintain distance from customers to hear orders” but that’s just to allow workers to maintain 6 feet of distance, not to prevent diners from talking loudly and spreading it to each other. That same document has a section listing 30 different ways to sanitize surfaces and limit physical contact, which, while not entirely useless, is not the major transmission mode for this virus.
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