Wear Your Mask - COVID-19 Thread II

[robkelk]

Welcome to Morrisburg, the town that COVID-19 has (mostly) left alone

The small community on the St. Lawrence has zero active cases, but locals aren't letting down their guard down

For folks not familiar with the geography, Morrisburg is on the main highway between Toronto and Montreal, less than an hour from Ottawa, and between two border crossings with the USA. And they still have zero active cases.

So, what are they doing right? I'm probably preaching to the choir here:

• they wear masks
  
• they maintain physical distancing
  
• they disinfect common-use surfaces after every use
  
• they've closed the local theatre and other gathering places
  
• they shop locally, not going into the big cities with the big illness counts
  

In short, they work together and accept the financial losses.

[DHBirr]

Welcome to Morrisburg, the town that COVID-19 has (mostly) left alone

The small community on the St. Lawrence has zero active cases, but locals aren't letting down their guard down

For folks not familiar with the geography, Morrisburg is on the main highway between Toronto and Montreal, less than an hour from Ottawa, and between two border crossings with the USA. And they still have zero active cases.

So, what are they doing right? I'm probably preaching to the choir here:

• they wear masks
  
• they maintain physical distancing
  
• they disinfect common-use surfaces after every use
  
• they've closed the local theatre and other gathering places
  
• they shop locally, not going into the big cities with the big illness counts
  

In short, they work together and accept the financial losses.

But that ... that ... that's un-'MuriKKKan!

[hazard]

Well, of course it's un'murikkan. They're Canadian.

[Labster]

Toilet paper is getting impossible to find again. One step closer to civil war. Rolls for the head, or heads will roll!

[robkelk]

Putting a human face on the pandemic: She survived the Holocaust and died of COVID-19.

[robkelk]

Canada Post is saying that they've been dealing with "Christmas rush" levels of packages since the lockdowns started in March, because everybody's been shopping online. And now they're expecting an actual Christmas surge.

I think I'll be doing my Christmas cards this weekend, just to be sure they get there in time. (No, I won't be going out to buy a box of new cards. Reruns from previous years, this time around...)

[robkelk]

Passover, Rosh Hashanah, Diwali, Eid — some of the most celebrated holidays for cultural communities in Quebec have been observed in alternative ways this year in order to follow public health guidelines.

So, as cases hit what Premier François Legault himself called a "high plateau" in the second wave of the pandemic, some are asking why, in a secular state, make the exception for Christmas?

Read the rest of the article here

[LynnInDenver]

Given the way the positivity number here have only just stabilized (with the attendant lag in the hospitalization rates that are still increasing), much less dropped to an appreciable enough degree, and being on the cusp of American Thanksgiving, I'm afraid that we're not really at the plateau here, even on the rolling average of positivity, I expect that to happen about 4-6 weeks after Christmas, with a return to all-over increases within 2 weeks of each holiday. Yes, we've personally cancelled in-person Thanksgiving and Christmas for ourselves.

I'm expecting a lockdown, if not after Thanksgiving, but definitely after Christmas... and if it's the former, I expect they'll have to say, "if we catch you out on Christmas Eve/Christmas Day, you'd better be heading to/from work and not going to a gathering, because we will stop you, may or may not ticket you, and send you right the hell home, regardless of what other isolation you're doing or previous COVID-19 status."

Also, Colorado added another tier to the system in an effort to keep some things open and limping along... no more dining indoors at restaurants (outdoors with single household only), but a number of them have decided to throw in the towel at this point because of the ratcheting restrictions because it's just become too much to handle. It's what I was thinking... the threat of complete lockdown, and indeed the slide back towards it, is causing more economic destruction as places have decided it's just not worth trying to keep it going because there's no path to doing anything but losing money.

[robkelk]

How Australia succeeded in lowering COVID-19 cases to near-zero

The approach has largely worked. The nation's recorded cases peaked at 739 on Aug. 5, but since then the count has dwindled steadily and most Australian cities have gone weeks without a single new case.

It has come at the cost of a million jobs nationwide and thousands of now-failed businesses. But it was worth it, says Dr. Nancy Baxter, who runs the University of Melbourne's School of Population and Global Health.

"You can't have a well-functioning economy with a raging pandemic. It's not an economy versus lives," she told CBC News.

Baxter is a Canadian who moved to Melbourne just before that city entered its first lockdown. She now worries about her friends in Canada, where the approach to the pandemic has been very different.

"Hearing what's happening in Ontario, it's pretty shocking … It just seems like what's happening is the public health officials are telling the government one thing, it's not what they want to hear, so they just kind of have changed the policy to just basically admit defeat and say they're going to let the epidemic just run wild in Ontario."

[Labster]

White House Thanksgiving proclamation calls for Americans to 'gather' even as Covid-19 surges

The final line of the proclamation, issued by the White House press secretary's office Wednesday evening, reads: "I encourage all Americans to gather, in homes and places of worship, to offer a prayer of thanks to God for our many blessings."

I wonder what it's like to live in a country where the government encourages social distancing.

[robkelk]

I wonder what it's like to live in a country where the government encourages social distancing.

How to immigrate to Canada

[nocarename]

But maybe not Alberta.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/...-1.5814877

[LynnInDenver]

https://www.9news.com/article/news/healt...4dd6f7acf1

So, after asking that people NOT gather outside their household for Thanksgiving, the Mayor of Denver has gone out to see his daughter in another state, ON A PLANE. This seriously undermines the message, and is a slap in the face to those of us who have been doing EXACTLY as asked. We switched to curbside only for anything locally purchased in the past month, and cancelled any potential in-person Thanksgiving plans in favor of video, our RPG has already been held over video for over nine months, and we've put a moratorium on having singles over since the numbers started rocketing up, and will be maintaining that until the things like the positivity are down around 2-3% again, assuming the CDC doesn't just recommend that we not have that at all.

I'm really done with all this. We'll still be sacrificing, but if people start griping about restrictions have killed all the places they used to go to, I'm going to ask them POINT BLANK if they followed all the recommendations at the maximum when they came up, and point out that, even if they didn't get sick, they contributed to the very economic bloodbath of which they complain about. And we're probably going to make changes to our lifestyle so that this garbage doesn't impact us as heavily in the future. Read: events will be rated on the likelihood we'd lose them, possibly permanently, in another pandemic, and weighed against any other benefits we get.

[Norgarth]

yeah, my local Mayor was caught taking part in a large get together even though he and city council had banned then.  Politicians pulling the "Do as I say, not as I do" routine is nothing new even in the pandemic.

[robkelk]

https://www.9news.com/article/news/healt...4dd6f7acf1

So, after asking that people NOT gather outside their household for Thanksgiving, the Mayor of Denver has gone out to see his daughter in another state, ON A PLANE. This seriously undermines the message, and is a slap in the face to those of us who have been doing EXACTLY as asked. ...

Point him at this page and then tell him to self-isolate for 14 days before he comes back.

If we can do it, so can you.

[Star Ranger4]

This surprises you HOW? In California, even as the Governor issued orders to shut down all outdoor dining again, he himself went out to a particularly famous french restaraunt with 100 ish of his closes supporters for a $100 a plate fundraiser.

[Labster]

Yeah, but that was at the French Laundry, right? I mean, I would have broken quarantine to get into that restaurant!

Also, it's hardly 100 people. It's just 12, including two execs of the California Medical Association. And it wasn't a fundraiser. https://twitter.com/BillFOXLA/status/132...0169561090

[robkelk]

What transporting ice cream across Canada tells us about vaccine logistics

[Star Ranger4]

-70? Yeesh. gives the one that only needs -20 a leg up, IMO

[hazard]

Nesting the storage systems is an option. And there's the question of whether or not enough can be produced of either to meet demand in a reasonable time frame.

[DHBirr]

Real Life Adventures for 1 December has an ... evocative ... description of the COVID test:  "Like a nose colonoscopy."

-----
Considering that one dictionary definition of "carry on" is to "behave or speak in a foolish, excited, or improper manner," the designers of that famous poster, "Keep Calm and Carry On," need to make up their flippin' minds!

[robkelk]

1976 U.S. swine flu vaccination program may offer lessons for COVID-19 pandemic

Complete with publicity photo of the President getting a vaccination... which shows how old this is.

[robkelk]

It's winter. It's cold. How do I deal with a mask that freezes?

[robkelk]

Not saying these are related to COVID or each other, but... yeah, these are related to COVID and each other.

Warner Bros. to stream all 2021 films in U.S.

ByTowne Cinema to close after more than 30 years

The ByTowne is... was... the local "art house" theater, and a regular venue for showings during the Ottawa International Animation Festival. (I saw Nausicaä on the big screen there, as part of an audience who knew not to talk during the screening.)

[robkelk]

Choices have consequences...

On Friday afternoon, the Vancouver Sun reported that Mark Donnelly had agreed to perform at a Saturday event in Vancouver protesting COVID-19 restrictions.

Not long after, hockey team owner Francesco Aquilini tweeted at the newspaper to request a change in the headline from "Canucks anthem singer" to "former Canucks anthem singer."