Coronavirus (transporting, home, to live in)

[JGC97]

Great idea and will you be paying the owners of these restaurants for what they lose in income? Oh that's right. You don't care about anyone else's livelihood.

smh

[ThinkingOutsideTheBox]

Originally Posted by goodheathen

People very much can be forced to not eat out, if courts agree circumstances warrant that. I think that's what LA needs to do now, maybe a 10-day restaurant shutdown. Plus, at least a week's delay for the next public school semester. Because this.
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/...024342182.html
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/la...?ocid=msedgntp

Systems can't function close to properly with that level of illness, and it's even worse with the safe assumption that at least a small percentage of people infected with Omicron will develop long-COVID. Maybe the government could have avoided tactics like that if it had imposed capacity limits and emphasized cocooning weeks ago.

Only those who were already Covid-risk adverse would heed those warnings anyway. Most people did take Covid seriously in Spring of 2020 but once summer hit the BLM protests large mega crowds were given the total green light and even encouraged by the government, a lot of people saw through the agenda.That's why last winter (2020-2021) had a lot more businesses operating underground and home gatherings during the second SIP (plus it's plain government crueltly to expect people who live alone be in solitary confinement over the holidays as California forbade all social gatherings while at least Europe allowed social bubbles) Why punish hard working restaurant owners when people will still gather and eat together anyway? Advise at risk people to do take out if two young low risk people want to meet at a restaurant for an in-person date, let them. Public Schools have become pretty much useless indoctrination camps anyway. I'd say just cancel public schools permanently and give families vouchers for private ones where they might actually learn something more useful than CRT but that's admittedly off topic. Virtual school is pretty much useless for kids under 10 unless there's a parent right next to them to help.

[goodheathen]

Originally Posted by HereOnMars

Great idea and will you be paying the owners of these restaurants for what they lose in income? Oh that's right. You don't care about anyone else's livelihood.

smh

1) No business that's not doomed is likely to fail due to a ten-day incomplete shutdown.
2) Los Angeles government has put together assistance funds during this pandemic, sometimes privately funded. It can do that again. But there's no time to wait for that, and even if the funds are left over from past efforts, distribution takes time. Eateries can be compensated later.

[CA4Now]

Originally Posted by HereOnMars

How many deaths have occurred with this new omnicron variant? Anyone venture to take a guess? I suspect not many since I haven't heard any of those numbers reported in the news.

The only reported death from Omicron that I can find is an unvaccinated man in TX who had previously been infected with COVID-19.

https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/2021...as-reinfection

Originally Posted by HereOnMars

I would hate to think the experts are keeping this information under wraps in order to keep people living in fear.

I don't think they can keep up with the rapidly changing nature of the virus.

With Delta, many Americans observed a miraculously light British wave and effectively ignored the real carnage that followed here — 100,000 Americans dead, and September and October was the deadliest two-month phase of the pandemic outside of last winter’s horrific surge....the U.S. began this wave on a Delta plateau 50 percent as high as our previous peak of daily deaths.

To this point in the Omicron surge, at least, American fatalities have not grown dramatically from that plateau, and the small rise we have observed is as likely to be the result of ongoing Delta cases as Omicron infections (that is how fast this surge has come upon us — our data are still telling a story about the last one).

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022...n-europes.html

[goodheathen]

Here's what's wrong in LA and other places, the attitude.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/fed-pande...130018175.html

The experts quoted are closer to correct.

Tun-Hou Lee, professor emeritus of virology at Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health, notes that the mortality rate of SARS-CoV-2 (254 deaths per 100,000 people) is still far higher than that of influenza (1.8 deaths per 100,000 people).

"Even if one believes that the mortality rate of 254 per 100,000 will be lower once most of the U.S. population is 'fully' vaccinated, my bias is that SARS-CoV-2 infection will have a higher mortality rate than flu," he said.

To further reduce the risk of hospitalizations and deaths from the coronavirus, Chi said he'd like to see new vaccines become available that are better at preventing infections and provide longer-lasting immunity, as well as more effective drug treatments for those who are infected. Both are already in the works, he said. The widespread immunity that will likely be imparted by Omicron will also help — even if it’s fleeting.

What's unsaid is that might be years and any major mutation might quickly cause effectiveness of those medical interventions to fall greatly.

People adjusting their lifestyles remains the necessary message, and nobody really is publicly making it. Meanwhile, everyone forgot that it was always predicted that some areas would have outbreaks for years and likely would need restrictions then.

[JGC97]

I got an answer to a previous question about the severity and whether it's as deadly as previous variants.

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/o...185604164.html

"We’re staying very, very calm,” Northwell Health CEO Michael Dowling said on Yahoo Finance Live (video above). “And there is some very, very good news that I think is worth noticing. One is that, while our numbers have increased — [on Jan. 5], I have 1,570 cases, a big increase over about two weeks ago — it seems to be flattening a little bit over the last couple of days. The good news is that people aren’t as sick as they were before.”

[CA4Now]

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- With new coronavirus cases surging across the state, Gov. Gavin Newsom's administration on Saturday proposed spending another $2.7 billion to expand testing and boost hospital staffing, while calling for a new law to give workers more paid time off if they get sick.

https://abc7.com/california-gavin-ne...ting/11442796/

[joosoon]

Testing has never taken longer and never been more necessary to keep things moving. I know staff who have waited over a week for PCR results. Remember that new testing facility in Valencia Newsom dumped all that money into over a year ago?



Meanwhile, the lab has consistently struggled to meet its mandate of processing 150,000 tests a day and turning results around quickly. According to the most recent state data, the Valencia Branch Lab processed less than 195,000 tests for the week ending Oct. 23 and returned only 40% of test results within 24 hours — one of the lowest rates in the state. The lab also has a history of high rates of invalid, lost or cancelled test results. According to CBS Sacramento, 1 out of every 42 tests processed at Valencia as of August did not return a clear positive or negative result.


Total, top-down failure of state government. Dumping another $3B into something doesn't inspire any confidence.

[goodheathen]

The British government expects the virus to last 6 more years as a major issue

[2sleepy]

Originally Posted by joosoon

Testing has never taken longer and never been more necessary to keep things moving. I know staff who have waited over a week for PCR results. Remember that new testing facility in Valencia Newsom dumped all that money into over a year ago?



Meanwhile, the lab has consistently struggled to meet its mandate of processing 150,000 tests a day and turning results around quickly. According to the most recent state data, the Valencia Branch Lab processed less than 195,000 tests for the week ending Oct. 23 and returned only 40% of test results within 24 hours — one of the lowest rates in the state. The lab also has a history of high rates of invalid, lost or cancelled test results. According to CBS Sacramento, 1 out of every 42 tests processed at Valencia as of August did not return a clear positive or negative result.


Total, top-down failure of state government. Dumping another $3B into something doesn't inspire any confidence.

It might be better for hospitals to process PCR tests, UC Davis has around a 10 hour turn around on them, one of the doctors there told me that the actual time to process is around 5 or 6 hours. A friend of mine needed one so that she could schedule her surgery, the doctor told her to go to Walgreens, the only available appointment was 4 days out. She finally went to some pop-up testing facility that you have to pay in advance then send the receipt in to your health care provider for reimbursement, it cost her $150 and took a little less than a day.