Shanghai Disneyland will close in effort to contain coronavirus

Regarding the “vaccine passports” to even eat, yeah, that’s a thing in some places. I was on a business trip in the Seattle area when they implemented that rule. When I was walking into a hotel restaurant before flying out, I had to show my proof of vaccination in order to be allowed to eat in the restaurant.

Things like that are why I tire of red-blue state comparisons. There’s dumb stuff taking place no matter where you go.

The most dangerous thing you can do in any situation is “something”, which unfortunately is really the only thing politicians know to do.
This is why my 24-hour grocery stores close at 10pm…because last summer some politician thought COVID only comes out at night and Did Something about it. Now the restriction is gone but with no guarantee that it won’t return, the store still closes early.

Which means instead of shopping after Midnight with the stock clerks and five other customers I have to crowd in with a hundred other people to buy groceries. If we assume that one particular non-pharmaceutical intervention—the application of reduced time and increased distance—is demonstrably effective then why do we make that one difficult?

—Dave Althoff, Jr.

That's a pretty ridiculous argument when we have an entire planet of varied outcomes tied mostly to how they reacted.

I’d opine that arguing for status quo restrictions is the “ridiculous argument”…given they haven’t worked by most observational standards…

At this very moment, the “varied outcomes” have higher confirmed cases per capita than the USA in Ireland, Greece, Iceland, Denmark, France, UK, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Switzerland, and even Australia. All countries with greater “restrictions” than the USA. I think we all know how draconian Australia has acted throughout this ordeal.

Now we could have a nuanced discussion about whether “cases” are the correct measurement to view Covid…but the very experts who have argued more restrictions the past 2 years have assured us that “cases” are worthy of panic. We have some 500,000 plus kids out of school today in this country precisely because we are still panicking over “Omicron” cases in select pockets.

I’m way more concerned about those 500,000 kids being out of school than I am from the “head-cold” variant. I realize there is room to disagree about where one should place their “concern.” But as a member of the “Vaxxed and Done” regime…that’s where my concern lays.

I mean, if you have to asterisk your argument, you don't have an argument.

Is there a written rule of debate concerning the asterisk? I haven’t seen this rebuttal in an intellectual discussion before…

The most dangerous thing you can do in any situation is “something”, which unfortunately is really the only thing politicians know to do.
This is why my 24-hour grocery stores close at 10pm…because last summer some politician thought COVID only comes out at night and Did Something about it. Now the restriction is gone but with no guarantee that it won’t return, the store still closes early.

This would be another good example of a “restriction” that if removed…not a damn thing would happen… Groceries could easily stay open 24 hours like Casino’s do…

I'm genuinely think the discussion, that Andy started would be more constructive and informative if we asked those in the “Vaxxed and STILL Cautious” crowd to provide us with a list of the non-pharmaceutical restrictions they think works…?

I ask that in all sincerity. Over here in the world I live in…almost everyone mocks the non-pharmaceutical stuff…

Maybe there is something I’m honestly missing that has convinced a large swath of the population that Australia did it better than the USA, New York did it better than Florida, etc. What objective measurements are you using to convince yourself these ”restrictions” worked?

Or is it just “the experts said so?”

Well the next time you have surgery, be sure to tell the surgeon he doesn't need his mask, and that you're mocking him.

You don't care about what's measurable or observable, you just don't want anyone to ask anything of you.

It appears you might be unaware that the use of surgical masks in surgery is actually controversial…

…there are studies to suggest that they fail to protect surgeons from potentially hazardous sub-micrometre contaminants.21 This corresponds roughly to the size range of infectious bacteria while viruses are even smaller. Therefore, the protection that masks confer in the form of macroscopic facial contamination may not necessarily extend towards any microscopic infectious agents present within that contamination.

Proponents of the surgical facemask may argue that even if they fail to completely negate the risks of infection they are likely to reduce exposure in a dose-dependent manner. While this field has not been extensively investigated, preliminary work suggests that facemasks fail to confer any degree of protection from infection due to streptococcal and staphylococcal bacterial species22 or hepatitis B virus.23Furthermore, a facemask splash may promote a false sense of security, as surgeons may be less likely to report these as an occupational exposure to bodily fluid compared to frank facial contamination.

It is precisely because I care about what is “measurable and observable” that I question those who site absolutes without providing evidence for their opinions…

Statistical analysis of the extracted data revealed no statistically significant association between mask usage and the incidence of surgical site infection.

I expect the surgeon should probably wear a mask so he doesn't accidentally sneeze directly on my exposed guts during surgery. I don't expect that kind of effort from people I encounter out in public while I am mostly clothed with my guts tucked nicely where they belong.

Aamijl: The difference between you and everyone else here is that you completely avoid critical thinking. You're presented with evidence and you ignore it, find something you think is evidence through your bias filter, and then move on to the next thing even when it's challenged. You are willfully ignorant, and I'm done with you.

Unrelated to the carousel of ongoing debate, I'm going through take 2 of COVID. I tested positive one year to the day after I returned to work from round 1. I got a booster 5 days before I started my symptoms. Overall, they're pretty mild and I'm just ready to get through a few more days of boredom in the house.

I'm trying to make sense of "policy", be it school, local, or county-wide, or whatever. See if you can even follow this story, the details are kind of all over the place, but somewhat important...

As I mentioned earlier, I got a call the Tuesday before Christmas from my 11 year old daughter's school nurse; I had to go pick her up because she had been exposed to a friend the day before (Monday, two days after her first vaccine shot) who had tested positive with COVID. We were told by her middle school that she needed to wait until Christmas day (Saturday) to get tested, and she must get tested at a facility (at-home test not good enough), and obviously have a negative result before she'd be able to go back to school. My wife called her pediatrician to see if that was accurate (hoping to get her tested earlier so we could meet family on Christmas eve, provided she tested negative). Pediatrician actually advised to wait until Sunday (the day after Christmas) to get tested. I think I mentioned we sat outside the urgent care place Sunday afternoon, called the posted number to get the test, and they informed us of a 3-hour wait. Nope, we came back the next morning and she tested negative within an hour. We sent her to school that Tuesday with the negative COVID test attached to her absence note.

This past Thursday evening, my daughter's friend's mom called us to tell us her daughter had COVID, whom my daughter had been exposed to both Wednesday and Thursday at school (side note: her daughter was fully vaccinated, had also been exposed to the first friend, but didn't get COVID from him...go figure). Another side note: this was, almost fittingly, the day before my daughter was scheduled for vaccine shot #2. We kept her home Friday, and took her to get her second shot.

Anyway, we weren't sure if her school was informed of all this yet, but after we got a call from our county school system's Pandemic Response Nurse (that's a thing apparently) over the weekend informing us that our daughter can't go back to school until this Wednesday (again, if she tests negative), we assumed contact tracing had been done when her friend was tested. That said, we found out last night her friend would going back to school TODAY. Yes, the friend who tested positive on Thursday. But my daughter who has no symptoms has to wait until Wednesday. This prompted my wife to call the school nurse who, after hearing the details, said it was ok for our daughter to go back to school tomorrow. And, no test results needed. What?

We'll be testing her tonight with a home kit anyway.

This is the kind of stuff that makes me sort of understand why there are people who believe this is all a conspiracy. Not saying I believe it, but to say that the glaring inconsistencies, at least at our local level, are confusing, is a colossal understatement. It does give me a little insight into why the pandemic continues to drag on, however...

Who has school the Tuesday between Christmas and New Years?

Oops. I meant we sent her back the following week. We got her tested as early as we could primarily so we could visit family for the holidays...but we still needed a negative test result to send her back to school the next week.

Our school has/is doing stupid things too, not the least of which is planning to send home an entire class and keep them remote until everyone tests negative. That wouldn't be logical even if you could reliably get tests right now.

I'm not surprised. For the first year there was no federal leadership responding to the pandemic, then it was a little better but terrible at communication, governors contradict everything for political points, local officials just want to do the right thing (or option to do the right thing). There should have been a plan long before all this, and dating back to the Bush administration there was strong desire to make sure we had one.

I love the Right's position on all of this. Spend months fighting Covid protocols: No mask mandates; no vaccine mandates; no closures; "don't tell us what to do". And now, leading headlines on Fox Entertainment's website: "Biden's Covid response put on notice for failed strategy".

They are making efforts to take away every tool available to get this under control...and then are criticizing the Administration for not getting this under control.

If we politicized our response to an invasion by a foreign government the way we are politicizing this invasion of a virus we would all be furiously buying subscriptions to Rosetta Stone.

The trailing death rate in cities that first saw omicron is unfortunately catching up, three weeks later. I interpret this as the sheer volume of cases causing the spike, but I'm not sure if that even matters if the result is the same.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/01/09/us/omicron-cities-ca...TietvViQMq

If it's unvaccinated people, then it still doesn't matter. (at least to me individually - please don't bother making the argument the other direction, I get it)

That said, we found out last night her friend would going back to school TODAY. Yes, the friend who tested positive on Thursday. But my daughter who has no symptoms has to wait until Wednesday.

Crazy is the new normal…

My 16-year old basketball playing nephew has tested positive in Ohio. His parents are being told by the school district district via the local health department that he needs to stay home 10 (ten) days… “because he’s an athlete!”

If he was just a regular student he would be allowed back in 5 days…

At this point it appears everyone is just making the rules up as they go along.

CDC changed guidance for whatever cases to 5 days instead of 10 after lots of pressure from various industries having staffing shortages.

So 5 because we need you to show up, somehow Covid is magically shortened to 5 days transmissible if you are needed to perform your job.

Aamilj said:

Anyone can see that Sweden is no worse than Austria…etc. We can see New York City, LA County, et al…fared no better than Bismarck.

Apples to apples-like, as of October, Sweden with a population of 10 million had had 15,000 Covid deaths, whereas Norway with a population of 5.5 million had had 965 Covid deaths. So, somewhat less than twice the population, more than 16 times as many dead.

https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-europe-health-publi...8d3c127960

I have no real desire to debate policy with you, but don't just make things up.

It feels like after almost two years in this thread nothing has been accomplished except making me want to visit Shanghai Disneyland.

It’s convinced me to stop eating bats.