As posted yesterday, Ontario Premier Doug Ford has declared the pandemic over, just in time for the election and against the advice of his science panel.
Just for the record, we surpassed 250k new cases per day for the first time. PCR positivity ratio is at 0.5, so we can safely say we have a massive undercount. Officially, yesterdayâs RT is 1.04.
Hospitalisation is going slightly upwards, patients in ICU of course is still stable.
And we are giving up many measures as of March 20th.
My employer sent out the memo that by the end of the month, we will be required to return to work in the office for at least two days a week. I havenât read the full memo, because I am angry enough to reply to it.
Also, my nephew has COVID-19. His mother, and immunocompromised sister are quarantined together.
You would think that if the government is committed to sticking with the strict lockdown strategy over two years into this pandemic, they would at least have got a good system in place by now to provide people with the basic necessities.
Because trusting the unvaccinated is a good strategy.
give yourself some grace - as my therapist would say - that these are difficult times, and that you should probably be more worried if you were completely calm and rational than if - as you are - showing normal human reactions.
thereâs no right way to respond to any of this stuff. we just have to do the best we can. ( edit: and sometimes that means being a complete and utter mess. see also: me. )
on a selfish and very trivial note, i was trying to convince myself into going to see the batdude movie this weekend⊠and, then i heard this morning the end of the mask mandate was moved up to⊠tomorrow. so that seems off the table. sigh
Thank you for your kind words.
I am a mess myself. I feel you. And while I personally have the feeling that going to watch a film is in the distant future for me, I feel sorry for you.
We need all the treats we can give ourselves.
Today, after a particularly messed up video call with passive-aggressive mobbing, I took my bike and tried to go fast.
Then, I sat down at the waterfront, and sanded a piece of driftwood in the evening sun. I didnât manage to completely withdraw from the hamster wheel, since I tried to reach out to the family of my niece.
She tested positive today, too.
But at least for some time, I was just sanding a piece of driftwood. A moment, just for me.
Covid is weird. Also WDKS. Also, take care of yourself. The world well and truly sucks right now, and nobody will take care of you if you wonât.
I learned, just now, on our local Facebook group, that the virus that doesnât exist is being spread in the bubble wrap in Amazon packages from China.
Good news, everyone. Ok, nearly everyone.
Ok, those who received the BioNtech/Pfizer booster.
From the results, interpreted: boosting with BNT162b2 reduced the cumulative incidence of symptomatic Omicron infections from 4.5% to 2.4%. Efficacy was about 49%.
Boosting with mRNA1273 reduced the cumulative incidence of symptomatic omicron infections from 1.9% to 1%. This resulted in an efficacy of about 47%.
Conclusion: With both vaccines, the booster improved the vaccination protection equally well compared to a basic immunization. It remains unclear why people who received mRNA1273 had an overall increased risk of infection, in comparison.
The dataset is large enough to be fairly confident about the results, I think.
Stephen Colbert looking back at 2 years of the pandemic in the USâŠa tragicomic report: 
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04569-5
I sometimes think that COVID must have been around before 2019.
That would explain so much.
ETA:
Given the numbers, we need to remember that the first patients in Wuhan were treated under difficult conditions in some provisional clinics.
It remains an open question whether other countries will see the same. We may see increase in dementia in the next few years. Or not. Let us hope for the latter.
4th jab coming right up?
In search for votes, Bolsonaro had to change his mind and now is a vaccine champion.
According to the Folha de SĂŁo Paulo newspaper, allies showed councilor Carlos Bolsonaro, son of the president and one of those responsible for his fatherâs social networks, that anti-vaccination statements take away votes. Carlos endorsed Bolsonaroâs new speech on vaccine seeking re-election.
Donât know if this belongs here or in the Odd Stuff thread, but what the fuck?
Apparently this devâs patch notes are known for containing super shitty takes on various things. Good to know!
Especially now that a cabal of pro-covid doctors (the false âurgency of normalâ pushers) have successfully pushed for the end of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) such as community masking and working at home on the presumption that we have effective treatments for Covid, completely ignoring that those treatments have side effects, have limited efficacy and are predicated on early diagnosis and quick administration of the treatments, something we donât have now that weâve undone our testing regimens.
It seems unlikely that theyâll ever backtrack on their current stance, and weâll probably hear them spout something designed to avoid culpability whenever cases and/or deaths spike in the future.
