Covid News Around the World One Year Later

[Aragorn243]

We are normalizing here. More restrictions end next week. Restaurants can go to 75% if they self certify they are compliant, 50% if they don't. Sporting venues can have fans in the stands at 25% capacity. A lot of school districts remain closed although most of the holdouts will open April 1. We have been eating out a couple times a week, not ordering out, dinning in the restaurant. Florida and Texas are now fully open from what I understand. NY, PA, NY, MI and CA governors are all under investigation now for the excessive deaths in nursing homes. NY's governor is soon going to be impeached and likely removed. His own party controls the state legislature and are the ones impeaching him. No such luck in the other four states so far.

This is what we are learning. States that locked down vs states that did not show virtually no difference in the outcome of the disease. The only significant difference is economic. States that did not shut down are fairing much better economically. Theaters will be opening soon.

Personal observation today, yard sales starting up. Massive crowd at the one I went to today, neighborhood type. So people are getting sick of being cooped up. 75% were wearing masks. Outside, plenty of room to social distance, perfect sunny weather, about zero chance of contracting the virus.

[Aragorn243]

The big news today is two of the US talking head doctors taking credit or placing blame Monday morning quarterbacking. Fauci is claiming credit for the vaccine and Birx is saying there shouldn't have been any deaths after the first 150,000 or so. Not sure what planet she's currently living on. They could have been reduced but they still would have occurred.

Vaccines are up, so are new cases.

They are once again saying Sweden got it right. US data seems to indicate the same thing. The shutdowns didn't accomplish much if anything other than destroying the economy. Florida has one of the highest if not the highest elderly population in the nation, did not shut down long, had less restrictions than other states and fully opened sooner than most and percentages are about the same if not less than California and NY, two states with complete shutdowns that haven't ended yet.

NY will implement vaccine passports starting April 2nd. Anyone else doing this yet? Lot of talk but they are the first in the US to actually do it. Looks like if you want to go to a game, the theater, or even shop, you will need to show proof of vaccine or negative test to get in.

Can't wait for the mark of the devil people to start up on this one.

[fjruple]

On Saturday, I got my first vaccine shot for COVID-19. The vaccine site was run by the Veterans Administration for the local veterans. I was actually surprised how well run the vaccine site was run. I was in and out in 30 minutes which included a 15 minute wait to see if I had any reaction to the vaccine. I have to go back in three weeks for the second one. The vaccine appears to be working since Saturday, my sense of smell is returning and the congestion in my sinus cavity as significantly decreased. These were lingering effects of the virus since December 2020. It will be nice to get back to normal again.

[Ovidio]

Starting Thursday, we (Alpini) will start helping out at the new Covid hub in my hometown.
It will be the second largest in the whole region.
They are discussing if giving us the vaccine or not.
Actually, seeing how many idiots point their fingers against those who get vaccinated because of the kind of job they have, I'd almost prefer not to be, but I'm excited to see how it will work. Friends of mine in Lombardy and other regions tell me that the organisation is impressive.
We'll get info today or tomorrow the latest.

[laurenince525]

our city was again closed for lockdown, public transport is still working, but with restrictions, only half of the seats, and this is already a problem. all establishments such as cinemas, bars, restaurants, shops, etc. are closed .... we already have 18k cases in the last day and this is quite a lot, we are similarly covered by the third wave of covid

update a few days later, the growth rate of covid-sick people has slightly decreased (by about 2 thousand per day), but I think that perhaps the information is simply being hidden, because such a drop literally out of nowhere can happen. the transport is still working, but rightly speaks of its closure

[browningautorifle]

the growth rate of covid-sick people has slightly decreased (by about 2 thousand per day), but I think that perhaps the information is simply being hidden

I think it was far over exaggerated to begin with. Far over exaggerated...

[Aragorn243]

I think it was far over exaggerated to begin with. Far over exaggerated...

That's what we are slowly seeing. Numbers are being adjusted. People are starting to ask why there was not a single death from the flu last year among other things.

This is definitely real. Some people try to discount it by pointing out that the flu deaths and other types of deaths have disappeared or been very low last year but the excess death numbers show pretty much what the media claims. 500,000 deaths above what is "normal".

What's really interesting now however is that while Covid deaths are still considered high, we are WAY below the average numbers of deaths now and have been since the last week of February and the numbers are 11,000 under as of the second week of March. Expected deaths for the week are 59,000, estimated are 47,000. At the peak of the Covid excess death levels there were 24,000 deaths per week over the average.

It's almost like it killed off those that were near death and now that they are gone, they aren't here to die on schedule.

[Ovidio]

Just arrived in Bern, Switzerland. Precautions, but no psychosis.
It can be done...

[Aragorn243]

Restaurants open to 75% capacity. Theaters open, museums open. Mask mandates going away. Biden of course is telling everyone to reinstate the mask mandates. He's being ignored. Vaccinations up to 1/3 the adult population and continuing to rise. CDC director still trying to induce panic. Was reading from a teleprompter and then said she was going off script and obviously continued to read off the teleprompter how concerned she was for herself and her family etc and started crying.

People are just getting sick and tired of this. The black plague killed 50% of the world population. The Spanish Flu nearly 3% of the worlds population. Covid is at .02% pf the worlds population. Less than AIDS.

[Aragorn243]

Happy Easter. Sad to say but I've become a Chreaster that didn't go to church on Christmas. I stopped going to church when this first hit because they shut churches down. Then when they opened up our minister was reluctant to hold in person services for personal fears not congregational. Then the district church leadership pretty much stopped local churches from holding services so he was in the good for a bit. Then they opened, then they closed, then they opened again. By that time it was summer and I don't go to church in the summer anyway as it's flea market season. With winter's arrival, I was long out of the habit and as I don't care for our current minister much it was easy enough to stay away to protect the elderly in our church. I'm one of the younger ones at 57. Not that we don't have a few young families, we do, but they stopped coming due to the pandemic also.

But today I ventured off to church. It is Easter after all. We had communion for the first time in over a year. As we went in, we picked up a small baggie with a little communion cup in it. The cup had two compartments, the bottom had a little piece of compressed bread or hard tack in it (kind of looked like a miniature hard tack and tasted like it also) and the upper had grape juice in it. So this is what communion looked like:



I hadn't given it a lot of thought prior to today as we've done communion at home a couple of times with things we had here watching services online but now i'm wondering what Catholics are doing who do it with every service, or did anyway.