[News] Coronavirus

A place to discuss the now-global coronavirus outbreak.

queue republican rage about how the federal government is making it hard for states to buy tests, etc.

staygold wrote:

Being poor is not a choice. It's a systematic failure at many levels of government, society, and culture. We need to have empathy and care for these people more than any others.

The fact of the matter is "living with Covid" is going to require huge changes at the government level in multiple societies. We can either make them or we can keep blaming the little guy for the failure of the wealthy and politicians to do the right thing.

I was hoping someone from Canada would weigh in on the Canada situation, because I'm not familiar with time off policies there. Here in America, finding someone for not getting the vaccine would definitely be a regressive penalty as we get so little time off here to even schedule the vaccine, much less recover from it. If Canada is struggling with this, I can only imagine what it will take for America. America literally needs to implement an entire social safety net at least as good as Canada's if we're ever going to be able to live with Covid.

Or we can just keep saying that's impossible, shrug and accept disruptions like this for the rest of our natural lives. Whichever is easier, I guess.

I was listening to a podcast the other day and Nora Loreto (Canadian independent journalist who is pretty far left) reckoned that of the 20% or so of Canadians who are still not vaccinated against covid, only some (maybe half?) are actually against getting the vaccine. The rest, she thinks, are likely people who aren't against it but are a little hesitant because they don't have good information or have systemic reasons (eg. work and family obligations, access and language barriers) that they have been avoiding it. She suggested that for those folks it would go a long way to have folks from public health literally go and knock on doors with vials.

I hadn't thought about this before, and maybe there are good reasons this wouldn't work, but...why not? Something approaching half of Canadians live in some sort of apartment buildings, and that is likely where most of the people who are not vaccinated for systemic reasons are living, so start there. There will be language barriers, but public health could take multi-language literature out and mark places to return to with someone who speaks the language. Has anywhere actually tried this?

farley3k wrote:

queue republican rage about how the federal government is making it hard for states to buy tests, etc.

Eh, even Gov. Walz of MN made that point and I think it's a fair one. It's not like 500M tests just magic'd into existence separate from existing supply chains.
I'm not necessarily against Biden's plan, but it's not without it's side effects.

lunchbox12682 wrote:

Eh, even Gov. Walz of MN made that point and I think it's a fair one. It's not like 500M tests just magic'd into existence separate from existing supply chains.
I'm not necessarily against Biden's plan, but it's not without it's side effects.

yes, and there is nothing that can be done without side effects. For republicans it will just be another excuse to hate democrats.

DSGamer wrote:
staygold wrote:

Being poor is not a choice. It's a systematic failure at many levels of government, society, and culture. We need to have empathy and care for these people more than any others.

The fact of the matter is "living with Covid" is going to require huge changes at the government level in multiple societies. We can either make them or we can keep blaming the little guy for the failure of the wealthy and politicians to do the right thing.

I was hoping someone from Canada would weigh in on the Canada situation, because I'm not familiar with time off policies there. Here in America, finding someone for not getting the vaccine would definitely be a regressive penalty as we get so little time off here to even schedule the vaccine, much less recover from it. If Canada is struggling with this, I can only imagine what it will take for America. America literally needs to implement an entire social safety net at least as good as Canada's if we're ever going to be able to live with Covid.

Or we can just keep saying that's impossible, shrug and accept disruptions like this for the rest of our natural lives. Whichever is easier, I guess.

So far, there has only been one province (that I am aware of) that is proposing fines (or some sort of financial penalty) for those who have not gotten vaccinated - Quebec.

Currently, the provincial government in Quebec is lead by the CAQ, who tend to lean very right-wing (for Quebec[1], which is one of the most "socialist" provinces). For any unionized job, there will undoubtedly be time off policies to get vaccinated. However, there are still a lot of places where if you can't go into work, too bad, so sad. And even some unionized places (like teachers in Quebec) have sh*tty time off.

My wife (a Quebec high school teacher) has 6 days off for the year. That's sick days and vacation days combined. If the vaccine f*cks her up, she needs to use one of those days or take unpaid leave. I have had 2 shots and a booster, and each time it knocked me on my butt for 2 days.

This is all exasperated in that while funding for health care is provided by the federal government, the management and control is at the provincial level.

In my town (Gatineau, about 300k people), if you don't have a vehicle, getting to the vaccination site is trivial if you are down town. But if you are in the suburbs? You are looking at up to 90 minutes on either side of your appointment.

[1] Also to be noted is that, for Quebec, until recently, political parties were not aligned on the traditional right/left axis, but rather a pro/anti separation axis. Now that separation is pretty much dead in the water, the parties are starting to align to traditional left/right, but even then, they are more scattered in their political positions due to the higher nature of socialism in Quebec society.

BushPilot wrote:

I hadn't thought about this before, and maybe there are good reasons this wouldn't work, but...why not? Something approaching half of Canadians live in some sort of apartment buildings, and that is likely where most of the people who are not vaccinated for systemic reasons are living, so start there. There will be language barriers, but public health could take multi-language literature out and mark places to return to with someone who speaks the language. Has anywhere actually tried this?

Ottawa Public Health did that I think at the beginning when they saw huge spikes in COVID cases concentrated in certain areas that was mostly high-rise/low rent apartment buildings. Literally on a cart from door to door to vaccinate people.

mudbunny wrote:
BushPilot wrote:

I hadn't thought about this before, and maybe there are good reasons this wouldn't work, but...why not? Something approaching half of Canadians live in some sort of apartment buildings, and that is likely where most of the people who are not vaccinated for systemic reasons are living, so start there. There will be language barriers, but public health could take multi-language literature out and mark places to return to with someone who speaks the language. Has anywhere actually tried this?

Ottawa Public Health did that I think at the beginning when they saw huge spikes in COVID cases concentrated in certain areas that was mostly high-rise/low rent apartment buildings. Literally on a cart from door to door to vaccinate people.


Well, I'll be
. Some more searching turns up programs in other Canadian cities that are focused on awareness and information rather than direct vaccination, so maybe Ottawa was the only place that actually put needles in arms on a door-to-door basis? This seems like a very good idea to me, and it should be expanded and applied to more buildings. I'm guessing they didn't get a ton more resources, though. I lived in a small apartment building in Ottawa at that time, and I know I didn't have anyone come to my door...

SCOTUS continues to try to murder us....

(CNN)The Supreme Court on Thursday blocked President Joe Biden's vaccine or testing requirement aimed at large businesses, but it allowed a vaccine mandate for certain health care workers to go into effect nationwide.

"Although Congress has indisputably given OSHA the power to regulate occupational dangers, it has not given that agency the power to regulate public health more broadly. Requiring the vaccination of 84 million Americans, selected simply because they work for employers with more than 100 employees, certainly falls in the latter category," the unsigned opinion in the businesses case says.

Liberal Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan issued a blistering dissent.

"When we are wise, we know not to displace the judgments of experts, acting within the sphere Congress marked out and under Presidential control, to deal with emergency conditions," they wrote. "Today, we are not wise. In the face of a still-raging pandemic, this Court tells the agency charged with protecting worker safety that it may not do so in all the workplaces needed. As disease and death continue to mount, this Court tells the agency that it cannot respond in the most effective way possible."

JC wrote:

SCOTUS continues to try to murder us....

(CNN)The Supreme Court on Thursday blocked President Joe Biden's vaccine or testing requirement aimed at large businesses, but it allowed a vaccine mandate for certain health care workers to go into effect nationwide.
JC wrote:

SCOTUS continues to try to murder us....

(CNN)The Supreme Court on Thursday blocked President Joe Biden's vaccine or testing requirement aimed at large businesses, but it allowed a vaccine mandate for certain health care workers to go into effect nationwide.

"Although Congress has indisputably given OSHA the power to regulate occupational dangers, it has not given that agency the power to regulate public health more broadly. Requiring the vaccination of 84 million Americans, selected simply because they work for employers with more than 100 employees, certainly falls in the latter category," the unsigned opinion in the businesses case says.

Liberal Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan issued a blistering dissent.

"When we are wise, we know not to displace the judgments of experts, acting within the sphere Congress marked out and under Presidential control, to deal with emergency conditions," they wrote. "Today, we are not wise. In the face of a still-raging pandemic, this Court tells the agency charged with protecting worker safety that it may not do so in all the workplaces needed. As disease and death continue to mount, this Court tells the agency that it cannot respond in the most effective way possible."

"Although Congress has indisputably given OSHA the power to regulate occupational dangers, it has not given that agency the power to regulate public health more broadly. Requiring the vaccination of 84 million Americans, selected simply because they work for employers with more than 100 employees, certainly falls in the latter category," the unsigned opinion in the businesses case says.

Liberal Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan issued a blistering dissent.

"When we are wise, we know not to displace the judgments of experts, acting within the sphere Congress marked out and under Presidential control, to deal with emergency conditions," they wrote. "Today, we are not wise. In the face of a still-raging pandemic, this Court tells the agency charged with protecting worker safety that it may not do so in all the workplaces needed. As disease and death continue to mount, this Court tells the agency that it cannot respond in the most effective way possible."

They're just doing their part to solve the test shortage by reducing demand. [/s]

The lawyers arguing this case in front of SCOTUS had to have a negative PCR test...

We should get a group of people to just sit in the SCOTUS gallery and just cough the word 'hack' every time one of these howler monkey pieces of trash open their stupid f*cking mouths.

Well, how far the mighty fall.

From being one of the few remaining land masses with nominal COVID infections to...outstripping the US in terms of positivity per million.

Regarding Biden's idea to buy 500M rapid antigen test kits? Learn from our broken and sick economy and buy them. Lots of them. Because we have a policy failure here where the idea is to test essential workers daily, but the government won't fund PCR tests as freely nor can they get access to the RATs with the result that we have mass unavoidable absenteeism while they try to slow down the rate of infection.

We're probably the poster child on what nations will have to do to live with COVID in a highly vaccinated population - millions upon millions of disposable RATs, and doing the best you can to avoid crashing your health system until the next variant/wave.

Bfgp wrote:

Well, how far the mighty fall.

From being one of the few remaining land masses with nominal COVID infections to...outstripping the US in terms of positivity per million.

Regarding Biden's idea to buy 500M rapid antigen test kits? Learn from our broken and sick economy and buy them. Lots of them. Because we have a policy failure here where the idea is to test essential workers daily, but the government won't fund PCR tests as freely nor can they get access to the RATs with the result that we have mass unavoidable absenteeism while they try to slow down the rate of infection.

We're probably the poster child on what nations will have to do to live with COVID in a highly vaccinated population - millions upon millions of disposable RATs, and doing the best you can to avoid crashing your health system until the next variant/wave.

Yep. There’s no other way. Just spend the money. Train lots of doctors. Train lots of nurses. Manufacture tons of tests, vaccines and therapeutics until we find a way out. There’s not an alternative.

Excessive testing just seems to encourage risky behavior. People are testing negative then going off to their parties, social gatherings etc. without taking other precautions. Assume that you or someone around you is infected at all times and always wear a mask and avoid crowded situations. Also engage in proper hygiene (hand washing, gargling).

Mr GT Chris wrote:

Excessive testing just seems to encourage risky behavior. People are testing negative then going off to their parties, social gatherings etc. without taking other precautions. Assume that you or someone around you is infected at all times and always wear a mask and avoid crowded situations. Also engage in proper hygiene (hand washing, gargling).

Most people aren’t going to follow that regimen, so we might need testing.

Australia is doing tons of testing (if you read past the headlines) and is 90% vaccinated. However, looking at the behavior of all my friends on social media, well all the testing in the world isn’t going to help them. That time in a bubble hasn’t curated good habits for “living with covid” it seems :-(.

Australia's cases are largely centered in the 20-29 age range. Guess the whole "we're going to open things back up and expect people to continue to choose to make smart choices regarding masking, distancing and stuff" just doesn't work with younger folks.

I feel bad for their aged population as they're the ones who end up in hospital and die. What's the hospital load looking like in Australia? I know its increased, clearly, but how close to capacity?

My social media timelines tell me it doesn't work for the 40-60s either :-(. I obviously care deeply for my family and friends in Australia and it's hard watching (many of) them shoot themselves in the foot right now.

Well, the "good" news is that the hospitalizations per million in Australia is below even the UK! And way, way below the US.

So, in that way, the Australia "experiment" is working. I still think it was maybe a bit of poor timing due to the transmibillity of Omicron that Australia decided to go this route, but I have a feeling that they're going to come out as the model for Western countries to follow in the future as they shut down just long enough to keep cases and deaths low while getting everyone vaccinated, then opening up. But there's still something to be said regarding flattening the curve and Australia's neck breaking policy switch kinda threw "flattening the curve" to the wolves.

We here in the US clearly need to get on top of comorbidities and bettering our healthcare system to focus on health instead of stamping out symptoms as they crop up or waiting for folks to get so sick they have to go to the ER. And, yeah, that's a thing in the US for a ton of reason, but a big one is money. /offtopic

garion333 wrote:

We here in the US clearly need to get on top of comorbidities and bettering our healthcare system to focus on health instead of stamping out symptoms as they crop up or waiting for folks to get so sick they have to go to the ER. And, yeah, that's a thing in the US for a ton of reason, but a big one is money. /offtopic

This does not appear to be off-topic to me.

DSGamer wrote:

Yep. There’s no other way. Just spend the money. Train lots of doctors. Train lots of nurses. Manufacture tons of tests, vaccines and therapeutics until we find a way out. There’s not an alternative.

I'm not disagreeing with you, but if we start doing that today, we get more nurses in 1-3 years and more doctors in 7-10.

Talking with my nurse friends, the more immediate issue is burnout. The reason there's such a shortage in medical staff is that so many have realized it's a punishing career and noped the f*ck out.

Re-recruitment is what needs to happen to cover the gap in the near term, and that's a tough nut to crack.

Spoiler:

So of course, we won't

Quebec tried that.

Rejoin the nursing field full-time, and you get $15k. Do it in some of the regions that are particularly hard hit by COVID, and you get $18k.

They are still having problems retaining people because, in Quebec at least, the healthcare system was already fragile pre-COVID. Covid just piled a bunch more stresses upon it that can't be fixed right now. Want ICUs? Well, a couple of years to design and build a new hospital. Nurses? Doctors? See what Jonman wrote above.

My wife is an RN and she sent me this. She says it describes accurately what her and her co-workers have been dealing with for two years.

https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2022/...

$1500/mo may not be enough.

Loved the juxtaposition of this thread and the headline on Bloomberg today about how Goldman's 400-person partner class (base ~$1mm) will be getting huge payouts this year of 7 or 8 figures.

Agent 86 wrote:

My wife is an RN and she sent me this. She says it describes accurately what her and her co-workers have been dealing with for two years.

https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2022/...

Ugh. That's gut wrenching and nearly made me cry. Thanks for sharing.

Yeah all those stories were really sad for a year. But then since April or May 2021 the vaccine has been freely available in the US with no wait times. Some stupid states threw away doses months ago.

Anybody going through that hell now didn't have to.

It truly is a shame we haven't been having a daily/weekly dose of these stories from the beginning. Here we are almost two years later and we're finally getting them with some frequency.

Here's the thing about that article. I don't give a sh*t about Bob, he made his stupid choice. What I care about is that Bob's stupid, pointless, selfishness is impacting not just my wife but her co-workers and everyone else working in medicine.

They aren't just burning out, they are getting PTSD from all of this. Not too long ago my wife came home wrecked because she had a patient, 34 year old mother of two, who she sent to the ICU to as she put it "die". Was she unvaxxed? Of course she was, but that isn't the salve you think it is. This sh*t is going to have long term consequences on health care.

Agent 86 wrote:

Here's the thing about that article. I don't give a sh*t about Bob, he made his stupid choice. What I care about is that Bob's stupid, pointless, selfishness is impacting not just my wife but her co-workers and everyone else working in medicine.

They aren't just burning out, they are getting PTSD from all of this. Not too long ago my wife came home wrecked because she had a patient, 34 year old mother of two, who she sent to the ICU to as she put it "die". Was she unvaxxed? Of course she was, but that isn't the salve you think it is. This sh*t is going to have long term consequences on health care.

You are 100% correct but at the same time this is just a long list of professions capitalism has turned into a hellscape over the last 40-50 years. They are just the current victim.

One thing Australia did well was the vaccine program for anyone over 12. But my country has screwed the under 12s because they abandoned science in favour of purported economics and decided to let Omnicron rip through everyone despite a significant cohort of the population (the under 12s) being unvaccinated. They'll continue the infections and reinfect the adult population because a virus strain this contagious in a school room will predictability spread at obnoxious rates.

On the economics point, the levels of sickness and broken down markets has led to levels of economic distress at similar levels to the lockdowns. So no payoff and all downside on reopening with no proper countermeasures. The retreat from PCR testing and failure to secure RATs to replace them is a disgrace.

As to whether testing is encouraging risk taking behaviour? I don't think so, I just think people are irresponsible. My neighbours have a multigenerational household of 6+ individuals, one of which is a retired registered nurse and another a nurse in training. They were all positive and going out doing who knows what, including shopping (I met the father in a grocery store where he told me he was infectious).

When there is such a degree of abandonment of social responsibility there can be no good outcomes because all your measures assume people follow them but really they don't.