Well, down-ish. Let’s not celebrate yet, other places are seeing yet another rebound. Only this time it’s not on the virus’s ability to mutate, it’s on our inability to learn from experience. Homo sapiens my ass.
Homo occasionally sapiens, and I think I need to include myself in those ranks.
In Ontario, Doug Ford is going to drop the mask requirement, even though wastewater testing shows that we’re going back up. (He wants things rosy for the election in June. 
) So I’ll keep my mask, and if any covidiot objects, I think I’ll say “I’ve done my own research, and it’s my freedom to wear it.”
Yeah, this will surely go well…
what are the odds that the recent uptick in flu cases is because of reduced masking and social distancing?
Odds? 100% I would estimate. No reason flu should be trending up in March.
Let me make a little PSA for my fellow HCW, if I may. I see a worrying trend developing both in my practice and in other settings. People want to believe that covid is over and everything can go back to how it was. And get very upset and angry when they find out that just isn’t how things actually are. Your healthcare providers have been through hell the last 2+ years, we are exhausted, burned out and fragile. Many have reached a breaking point and now that things are maybe not so desperate, some have decided that they can now, in good conscience, leave the field. We are currently hemorrhaging nurses, I have been sorely tempted on a few occasions to just walk out and not come back. I was accused of “obviously not caring about children, or I would get (this child) the mental health care they need.” There is no such option. The crumbling of the system was somewhat hidden by sheer willpower of HCW and decreased elective care needs. As that (both of those) go away, the wreckage that remains is becoming apparent. But the response we are seeing is not “this is terrible, what can we do,” but “You all suck!! Get back to work!!”
Please, have some care and consideration for your local healthcare workers. We truly are doing the best we can, with the smoldering remains of what was a mess of a system before and now has crumbled. And will continue to do so. But we are tired. There are no reinforcements coming, there are no real options on the horizon, and there is no sympathy or understanding either from upper management (who are still working from home because it “is too dangerous to come into their offices,” or from patients who are done with the whole situation and want to return to a before-time that is never coming back. I wish I could be hopeful or uplifting, but I cannot. I can just keep going, because I am too young to retire but too old to start over. But coming in to this grinder gets harder every damned day. Sigh
.
I am very, very sorry to hear that.
I feel you.
The same is happening under our eyes here.
Yesterday’s deaths: 269.
Yesterday’s new cases: 262593.
Incidence: 1607.1
Sum of reported cases since the beginning of the pandemic: 17695210.
That is an undercount, obviously - PCR positivity rate during the last week: 53.3 %.
ETA:
Just FTR, Oltermann got it wrong:
Over past seven days 262,593 cases have been recorded
No, Philip. YESTERDAY, 262,593 cases were recorded.
(ETA: ok, The Guardian has mail addresses based on firstname.lastname pattern. Well, let’s get this fixed. )
Bother… same here in Ontario 
but only just in the past week.
AFAIC you may… any time…
Hey… Btw if no one has said it this morning… Your fortitude is inspirational and thank you. We’ve been lucky to have your pov here on this blog.
*Fwiw my phone autocorrected “pov” to “love” and, well, that was awkward.
I have adopted this as my theme song:
I don’t think I ever truly understood the lyrics before, despite loving it for lo, these many decades.
The only really surprising thing was that they let him come back. What an ass.
“Finally… Florida is so far ahead of us.”
That’s what one of my kid’s high school teachers said when referring to mask requirements. 
This kid is at the same time desperate to go back, and really not wanting to go back to school, fearing long COVID would be the end of an already 100% in-pandemic high school journey. Discussions continue… we’re very lucky to be able to put all options on the table.
COVID is already, of course, ripping around the school…
I keep checking Google Scholar for papers on Omicron Long COVID rates, but it seems to be too early yet.
Just wait for Stealth Omicron, Deltacron and…
The trouble with dropping mask requirements is that it’ll be impossible to go back to requiring them later.
This. We have absolutely given up any attempt to exercise the minimal effort at public health. Millions will suffer and thousands will die because of this. And the assholes responsible will never face a single damned consequence for it.
So in Michigan positivity is finally under 3% but I noticed that the number of tests had gone up significantly.
The last week or so the number of tests was under 20,000 but this time the number was over 30,000.
I wonder if there are more people with flu like symptoms causing them to go right to the hospital or a testing site. And then I further wonder if they find out it’s not covid that they figure it’s not covid and then go back to work or school or wherever making the flu cases go up.
I get that some people have to work no matter what to survive but this also points out how screwed up our country is that people can’t take time off to recover.
And, there is always enough money for wars but never enough for health care or paid sick leave.
Agreed. And it’s all over North America and Europe at the same time (and over here, it looks very much like the start of a new wave even though I think the “low” we’ve managed to get to is still higher than anything pre-omicron).
In spite of that, Scotland is the only place I’ve seen yet that modified any restriction-loosening plans.
Another possible jigsaw piece to understand long COVID:
Since many patients complain of mental exhaustion, brain damage is often suspected as the cause
The findings her are more indicative of a chronic lung disease, as is also the case after other viral diseases.
The patients then often cannot adequately vent the alveoli during expiration. Air trapping occurs, which reduces gas exchange. If the changes only affect parts of the lungs, the effects are minimal. They may show up neither in a blood gas analysis, nor in spirometry. However, they could make patients feel weak and exhausted.
Air trapping can be visualized on a CT scan if the recording is made after expiration, rather than during inhalation, as is normally the case. This was done here, and findings are interesting, although I have to admit that I’d like to see more data from around the world to be more excited about lungs instead of brains causing the problems.
(Do I need to emphasize that damages to the lung are also complete and utter shit? )
As predicted, and expected
Can I just say “Fucking hell, people…”
Also, as a chaser, here is a pretty good summary for non-medical types of long covid, because I think we will need to know all we can.
