outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

in the UK the new baseline for calculating excess deaths over and above the baseline is the average of 2016, 17, 18, 19 and 21. Until recently it was 2015-19.
Some debate over whether it's reasonable to include 2021.

Why, if they’re they’re including 2021, would they omit 2020?

There was a positive case this week in my son's class at school. The sick kid was already at home, but had been in school the day before. The one unvaccinated kid in the class was sent home to quarantine, but otherwise life basically went on as usual. Seems like a reasonable way forward.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10397797/Man-claims-lost-1-5-inches-length-penis-Covid-vascular-damage.html

otm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koro_%28medicine%29

xps I think the intention was always to omit 2020 as a pandemic year skewing the average. I don't know why you would include 2021 unless it's worse to use old data than it is to use likely atypical data.

By any measure 2021 was also "a pandemic year skewing the data".

well yeah of course

maybe it's the new normal

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5QErPDNcj4

smoke weed every day

https://news.ohsu.edu/2022/01/13/study-shows-hemp-compounds-prevent-coronavirus-from-entering-human-cells

https://i.imgur.com/cawTD5I.jpeg

I feel the same way

holy shit

Some with recent Covid diagnoses are finding that contracting the illness they worked so hard to dodge for so long has brought them an unexpected reprieve from anxiety — instead of compounding it further. https://t.co/zjs7ppIO7J

— NBC News (@NBCNews) January 17, 2022

Not unfamiliar! A couple friends down for the holidays, in part facetiously, were like PLEASE GET IT OVER WITH ALREADY.

They have no children and are not immunocompromised.

Knowing myself, I would also probably vacillate from disappointment to the mildest of relief.

blundering straight into the path of the ratio is praxis

Some soldiers are surprised to find they experience a sense of relief when, during a battle in which others around them were killed or wounded, they receive a minor wound and are able to leave the front line for a while.

When I did a rapid test at my sister's on Christmas Eve day, I absolutely had mixed feelings: I wanted a negative, simply so I could stay, but--knowing how relatively mild my symptoms had been the past week--part of me wanted a positive.

The twitter reaction as usual has been weird -- no one quoted "sought out" the virus. The people I know who've gotten omicron after three vaccinations aren't going to bars or restaurants and fucking hated missing Noche Buena and/or NYE. But this sense of ugh can co-exist with "Well, this anxiety's over for a while."

Not unfamiliar! A couple friends down for the holidays, in part facetiously, were like PLEASE GET IT OVER WITH ALREADY.

we absolutely thought this during the holidays, and i suspect a lot of parents did. getting it now would would be much much more disruptive and upsetting for all of us.

Yeah I don't think that sounds weird at all, I'm sure I'd feel some relief too and I'm not even sure why one would consider this "unexpected." Doesn't mean I'd seek it out.

i assume milo's point is that feeling this way is a privilege, which yes.

yes

-- bachelorhood

-- no children or dependents

-- flexible job

-- a tolerance for three-hour cinema should the need arise

I know a couple of families (double vaxxed kids/boosted adults) where one member got it and everyone hoped the rest would just get it right away as it would decrease the overall impact by serving their isolation periods concurrently instead of consecutively. In the end it was only the one person who got it anyway.

I don't think it's hard to understand those kinds of feelings. I was kind of freaked out why kids tested positive last spring, but they were both fine — one with mild symptoms, one none at all — and I was able to relax a lot more after that about them doing various social things. Now they're both vaxxed, boosted AND prior infected, which makes me even more relaxed. I would never have deliberately tried to get them infected, but knowing that they were and were fine has made the succeeding months that much less stressful.

Sorry, was freaked out when my kids tested positive ...

i assume milo's point is that feeling this way is a privilege, which yes.

Less about people feeling one way or the other more about the media taking this tack as Omicron rages and we’re essentially being abandoned by the government.

-- bachelorhood
-- no children or dependents
-- flexible job

Ditto--plus the timing of the positive, Dec. 24, would not have impacted my availability to work at all.

It just comes down to spending almost two years fearing this thing (which has, I realize, mutated more than once), thinking I had contracted the latest variant, and wanting to be able to say "Okay, that wasn't that bad, and maybe my immune system is such that any future infections will be comparable."

So, even though I believe I tested right at the very end of an Omicron infection, I was negative, so I still don't know for sure.

I think I mentioned it on this or probably another thread, but I have a good friend who was absolutely relieved when he and his whole family got it, despite their (relative) precautions. After so many months/years of literal fear for their lives, once faced with the most mild of symptoms they were thankful for the vaccine and for the chance to just (at least this time) get through it all unscathed.

At the booster clinic I worked over the weekend, we (staff and fellow volunteers) were discussing our own personal experiences, and how we'd all been fortunate that everyone we knew who caught it had mild or next to no symptoms. Then another volunteer offered that she had just gone to a funeral. For covid? we asked. She shook her head yes. Were they vaccinated? She frowned and shook her head no.

to paraphrase dorothy parker, i hate suffering through a contagious disease but I love the presumed resistance to reinfection

Hmm:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/17/all-covid-restrictions-in-england-could-end-in-march-under-no-10-plans

Don't see why not.

Attn. US posters: https://special.usps.com/testkits

Thanks, now I'll see if it works.

It puts you on an FBI watchlist

I'm glad it wasn't worse (Russians draining my bank accounts).

The FBI is now owned by Russian gangsters so...

At my place of employ, the key stats are now:

Total Number of Positive Patients: 65

Unvaccinated: 19
Primary vaccine series (2 doses): 33
Boosted: 13
COVID-positive but not admitted for COVID: 16
ICU: 10

The authorities have suggested that the first Omicron case in Beijing may have come from a package in Canada. They have since called on people across China to use caution when opening mail from overseas. In Beijing, mail is being subjected to at least four rounds of disinfection, even though experts say the risk of contracting the virus from surfaces, especially paper or cardboard, is very low.

Kinda hard to believe this is from January 2022 and not March 2020.

At that time though, we were really paranoid about the surface touching. Most agree now it was mostly a waste of time to disinfect everything compulsively (though washing hands probably still good)

I think that's jon's point

ohhh right

Yeah, Tracer's right. I just didn't realize people were still really even focusing on disinfecting mail, much less blaming it for transmission.

I don’t think “people” are

Don't see why not.

things like this prob

and this

https://news.yahoo.com/omicron-survives-longer-plastic-skin-184539113.html

ladies and gentlemen. . . . the new york times

Feast your peepers on this . . . this magisterial To-Be-Sure sequences pic.twitter.com/Qtn6Lx67Xc

— Jacob Bacharach (@jakebackpack) January 25, 2022