Coronavirus

The lockdown is sensible and is reassuring news, and I think it will be at least two months as BoJo mentioned that schools would reconvene after Feb half term which is at the very end of the month. Interesting discussion going on right now on the Beeb where they are considering whether or not the rollout can get anywhere close to 2M a week to hit the governments aspirational targets. I’m expecting this remote lifestyle to continue throughout the year.

A local friend of mine likes to crunch numbers. At least 3 times a week, he posts a lengthy update on Facebook along with a chart showing Minnesota cases and deaths. From his latest post, "The updated [Minnesota] Vaccinations data has 606/day in the first week, 5,148/day in the second week, and 5,444/day in the third week. Official total is now 78,400, or 1.3% of the population."

John Hopkins virologists expect things to return to normal at the beginning of 2024 end of 2023. I think the logistics of vaccine rollout are much more tricky than people believe and herd immunity takes a long time. We are talking the entire planet, after all.

He also mentioned that 2024 will be very much like the end of Prohibition in terms of partytime etc

Keep in mind, they have accurately predicted the spread of this virus from the beginning of last January so it isn't just randos guessing a time.

As I mentioned up thread, AZ has teachers in a super high priority group (with the 75 year olds) and it looks like they finally did decide professors were teachers... and they opened the fucking signup with no fanfare on a fucking *eventbrite* first come, first served website. Which immediately slowed down from all the logins and I had to do like 20 tries to get an appt. I got one for the end of January, my wife still hasn't been able to, it boggles my fucking mind they are fucking up the rollout *this* badly. Insane shit.

In Utah Professors aren't teachers, THINK OF THE CHILDREN, and my wife who is an adjunct is teaching f2f at 7:00 a.m. 2x a week, which is a stupid move by her chair, but we need the money and after the first week only four kids will show up.

People in my neighborhood are now starting to get it.

My daughter is living is Safford, Arizona. Nobody believes in the virus. She's an LDS missionary. In September, there were no signs of the virus. Last week or so three people in her congregation died. Now the church members are starting to suspect that the missionaries are perhaps spreaders. But wait, they don't believe in the virus. Some pictures of all the missionaries at a conference of 150 people went up on Facebook and nobody was wearing masks, at least during the photos. A bunch of parents rage-called. Problem solved.

She will probably be confined to her apartment soon.

My nephew is a bartender, deemed essential and high priority for the vaccine in the fine Commonwealth of Virginia.

I miss my bartender.

hotseatgames wrote: I miss my bartender.

And they miss you.

Sagrilarus wrote: My nephew is a bartender, deemed essential and high priority for the vaccine in the fine Commonwealth of Virginia.

I have two diametrically opposed reactions to this.

I'm sitting in a hotel just outside LAX. Not going out except to do a COVID test to allow me on the flight to China tomorrow night. On one hand I understand why they are not accepting tests done from the original departure point (for me DC), on the other hand LA is a hotspot and we are adding multiple potential points of infection (shuttle x 2, extra time in LAX, hotel). But the restrictions are in the people's best interests and not mine, so it makes sense and is a reasonable requirement. We are going to do the prudent thing and only leave the room for the test and perhaps food.

Afterwards two weeks in a quarantine hotel in Guangzhou. Hopefully they will have a suite available and we will all be together, otherwise rather than splitting the boys up it'll be my wife and two kids in one room, me alone in the other for two week. I will be really unhappy if my VPN is blocked at that hotel, although I do have Deus Ex human revolution installed to kill time, I really hope to burn through a lot of Discovery+. Probably do a weeklong fast since there will be no exercise except bodyweight. I heard a three day fast every year is beneficial. The kicker is they just added a new requirement of a third week of self quarantine instead of imposed quarantine. Hopefully we will get to do that in our apartment.

Ah friends, I'm feeling blue about the spike in deaths from this pandemic and the cold, cynical way that the government here in Ontario Canada is handling things. There have been big announcements and touch talk about a massive "lockdown", but it's all just a change in messaging, with very little change in people's day to day lives. There's big talk that there is a difference between "essential" and "non-essential" services, but that's just labeling difference between those stores that have no restrictions on the hours of operation, and those that must close by 8pm. That's it. Also, no monies are being released to where it is desperately needed: paid sick days, rent relief, hazard pay for folks working long weeks to fight the pandemic, etc. Meanwhile we have weekly plague parades by local death cult Q loonies. Super worried about any who get sick or need to go to hospital for whatever reason. xx

Yeah, all the urgency is gone around here and the hospitals are just a place people go to die that we don't hear a lot about (or don't try to hear about, which may be more likely). I feel you.

According to this: www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

yesterday was the highest yet death toll here in the USA: 4489. And motherfuckers still won't wear masks.

AZ highest new cases per capita in the world today iirc

For those who are interested in the experience of going to China I have an update.

The trip to LA was fairly uneventful. There was a group with Trump shirts standing at the gate being loud without masks, but nothing came of it. The flight was packed (DC to LA) and we got a bag with pretzels, caramel wafers, and a small bottle of water.

In LA we only left the hotel room for food and the tests. We got really freaked out when one of the tests came back with a false positive. For only one of my kids the IgG test came back positive, everything else was negative. Since the IgG tests for antibodies and only pops hot (properly) 7-10 days after an infection. Basically impossible for that to be positive and the rest of the family to be negative for everything. So we submitted the test results to the Chinese Embassy and they sat on it for hours. We ended up having main State start a dialog with the Chinese Embassy to get it approved. The hotel staff was nice and let us stay in the room after check out time to await the results.

The plane ride LA->Guangzhou was literally the worst flight without turbulence I have every experienced. Walked into the plan and there was a sack of basically candy in each seat. Small packs of Oreo, Kit Kat, desert congee (rice soup the type at Chinese weddings), bread, muffin, peach yogurt, two more cookie types, two small bottles of water, an orange and mini-apple. The flight staff provided no services at all and were dressed in full body suits. Every couple of hours they would walk through and take everyone's temperature.

Upon landing everyone remained seated and they called all the diplomats off the plane first. I assume they de-boarded very slowly one row at a time. At that time we met an expediter hired by the FAO (foreign affairs office, basically our state department). He took us to a special station for us and helped us fill out the mandatory form using WeChat. It uses a mini-app that perhaps is okay in Chinese but the English version is barely functional. We then were taken to a small room and the children were given throat swabs and the adults were given throat and nasal swabs. Then border control and baggage claim. We were at the baggage claim for probably two hours (so total 3.5 hours by the time we all got our bags) and they were all soaked. People from our flight were arriving in baggage claim until we left, so it seems the COVID tests were taking quite a while. It seems like they doused all the bags with some kind of disinfectant. After we passed the customs declarations there was a long line of people queued up to get on busses. Since we were going to a specific "nice" hotel we jumped to the front and took the next available bus.

When we got there they told us we had a two bedroom unit. That was just a miscommunication what they meant to say is they booked us a room with two twin beds and a a shaped concrete floor, for four people. I ended up complaining and they gave us a second room (with a king sized bed so everyone can fit on that) so I am locked in a room by myself and my wife is in a room with both the boys. The room is most like a motel six room except for the beds there is a 6 by 10 area. The only towels provided were these small 1 foot by 2 foot ones, no bathroom towels. They said if we wanted more from the hotel they would be $10 each. The refrigerator is a mini bar size but not really that cool. Hotel TV has 40 channels in Chinese + CNN. At least I can get my VPN working so I am able to function on the Internet. Can't drink the water out of the tap and there are plenty of poor engineering choices, but that is typical to China.

We get a person who stops by the door and takes our temperature twice a day. I didn't get forced to take another nasal swab the second day which means that no one nearby us on the plane (or bus ride to the hotel) got a positive test. The other plus is they do allow delivery here. So we had someone drop off full sized towel along with other basic things you would expect in a normal hotel.