Yes. It’s the dicknosing cashier who is the asshole there.
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Today, Japan saw 398 new cases (and this is not including airport quarantine), with 76 in Tokyo and 61 in Osaka. These numbers represent an increase of over 50% from a week ago.
New Year’s Day is the most important holiday in Japan, and a lot of people are traveling to be with family for the season. It is also customary to go out for celebratory food and drink with friends and coworkers at the end of the year and to go to temples (for the last day of the year) and shrines (for the first couple of days of the new year), and these can get extremely crowded (some shrines get three million visitors in the first three days of the year).
In short, things have been going very well in Japan, but we may be on the verge of turning a corner.
ETA: Just for reference, Japan has only just begun third dose vaccinations, and only 0.5% of the population (frontline healthcare workers) have had booster shots.
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It needs to be done, unfortunately. And I didn’t do that today, because I didn’t want to be mean by pointing out that the deli employee was coughing (lightly) while making my sandwich. I should have said something, or left, or I dunno, anything but what I did, which was pay for a sandwich I didn’t trust and leave without saying anything because I didn’t want to be rude. I think being overly polite can kill us, or make us sick.
Today I bought a sandwich that I threw away after thinking about what risks I want to take. The employee didn’t wash their hands after coming off break before gloving up. Didn’t use a clean surface to warm meat up in a microwave, and was coughing. They were wearing their mask properly - yea? - but it was a surgical mask, and those have outward leak rates of up to 75% according to NIOSH.
Maybe I would have risked it with on or two out of three, but after thinking about it (and after paying and walking out the store) that was too much for me even though I have a flu shot and 3 covid shots. The kind of things that made me uncomfortable probably happen behind the scenes and worse all the time at the same store. So dunno.
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…but I feel like an asshole all day because cashier at the grocery store isn’t an awesome job and I made it worse.
Well, hang out with me for a bit and you’ll feel like a saint. 
We had the same problem at a car dealership last month and were fairly direct. “Your mask has slipped.”
6’8", bald, inscrutable stare… 
…in the words of a car salesperson many years ago “I thought you were some kind of hit man.” Every now and then comes in handy…
My wife and I were saying last night that there are days we feel like the anti-anti-vaxxers.
Friends say “wow Uncle XXX’s BIL is out of the ICU, he lived!” um, not yet, 50/50 he dies in the next year. “Omicron is milder”, um, no, (we communicate what @docosc said). “But we’re double vaccinated so Vegas is a go”, um, no, your vaccines don’t work as well now. … and then there’s Long COVID, and possible long-term brain damage effects. All said as nicely as possible but disinformation is something neither of us can let just sit there.
The actively “bright side of life” flavour to the media over 
and New Year’s has, IMHO, been unhelpful during the Omicron wave here. We’ll start finding out how deadly it all is next week…
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I actually understand and agree with @ClutchLinkey’s point about not being a dick to low paid service workers, though. Because our entire society treats service workers like trash. I agree that we should not do that.
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Someone needs to send this one to the CDC:
- DJ, on a flight UK → Doha → Auckland. Would have had to get a test before departure.
- I’ll take the research on COVID transmission on aircraft as an indicator that risk is low, but that’s all pre-Omicron.
- He had 7 days in Managed Isolation Quarantine in
(which members of my family have experienced as quite thorough and by now, is well practiced.) - Two COVID tests came back negative during MIQ.
- He isolated for the remaining 3 days.
- Day 10 he took a COVID PCR test, but did not wait for the results.
- Day 12 he discovered he was positive for Omicron after spending two days all over Auckland.
Worst-case interpretation here is ~12 days asymptomatic, negative test. Best plausible case is he caught it at the airport in the UK, so ~10 days asymptomatic with a negative test.
MIQ in is back to 10 days now. If they escape an Omicron outbreak after this I’ll be astounded.
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Gizmodo, quoting an NiH study which isn’t linked, so bear that in mind
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Someone i’ve been following on social media for a long time documented this happening to her today when she went in to get tested after losing her sense of taste and smell and her brother in law testing positive for omicron (slight repost because this ended up in the wrong thread)
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Federally funded cruise ships are getting sick again…
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That sucks… At this point, though, I don’t think I can be shocked any more at how cruel some people can be. Cruel seems to be becoming the baseline behavior by far too many people, and that isn’t even restricted to the Trumpian hardcore anymore. It’s just how far too many people believe we should act now.
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This, this and tis again. I have a very hard time with folks whose entire threat matrix is dead/not dead. Kidney failure, cardiac arrhythmias, pulmonary compromise, chronic fatigue and exercise intolerance, cognitive decline and psychiatric symptoms are just the beginning of the fun ride facing survivors. And, I can’t say this often enough, WDKS. We are just entering the third year of this pandemic. 3 years is not enough time to even begin to talk about long term, chronic, unending bodily and neurologic compromise. We know it is there, but how common, how severe and how to help are HUGE unknowns.
And then we get into the fact that access to medical care will be more difficult for years to come just because whole lots of us are quitting or dying, and not being replaced.
But the fucking ghouls cannot tolerate the slightest inconvenience to abate this disaster.
Oh, well. Next patient…
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And then this is the lead on our local station
Do I think this will have any impact on the maskholes around here? Not a bit, but they can’t say they were never told.
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The hospital at which my wife works is seeing quite a surge in kids with COVID too. Yet the myth that “it doesn’t affect kids” persists
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Thanks! I’m taking all the precautions I can. Been boosted for a month now; got lucky to have a pharmacist that knew my medication(s) allowed me to get it earlier, just as Omicron was entering the scene. Much more difficult to get now here.
Also just bought a 20-pack of genuine 3M N-95 masks for the very rare outing. I’m lucky to be a basement-dwelling computer nerd type, so this stay-at-home thing is easy-peasy.
Seems to me (and I probably read it here), the only early Omicron reporting that seems to be sticking is “it’s just a cold”. Which might be true for Africa, but we’re not them. And like you’ve said, WDNS.
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I’ve been thinking about what to do if I get those symptoms, I have a few at home tests but if I’ve been around someone positive and I get those symptoms I think I just assume I have it and contact my doctor.
I don’t think I’d wait in in line for a test unless I needed to be at work or be around people but loss of taste and smell after being around a known positive is probablly also a positive.
What a messed up situation we’ve all been put in.
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This is going to be interesting.
To explain why this is interesting: we are two years into the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, and warnings that triage would at some point need to happen were discussed over and over again, from the very beginning.
That parliament did not address this issue is unforgivable. That’s refusal to do their work, plain and simple.
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