Hahaha. I was talking with friends in Boston and upper NE about this week and it’s at levels that just don’t make sense. My old boss in New Hampshire is saying it’s projected to have a wind chill of -70. Even straight vodka will be frozen at that temperature.
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Wind chill doesn’t work that way, it will just feel like vodka would freeze. That said, vodka outdoors will freeze this Friday evening.
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wouldn’t this be a “climate catastophe” if vodka freezes? 
Yes! Yes it would 
Omicron now at 85% here in Switzerland. 32k cases plus per day, but that’s just the emerged part of the iceberg imo. I know a lot of people who have had colds in the last couple of weeks, but the wait for testing oneself was too long and it was hardly anything anyway in terms of symptoms, so they isolated a few days without being tested. I wouldn’t be surprised if we had around 100k cases per day to be honest.
Hospital situation is ok though (under 30% of intensive stations are filled with Covid cases, compared to 40% two weeks ago), but the pressure is still on because the personnel are being tested on a daily base, and thus, a lot have to isolate themselves when they catch it, which leaves big holes in the personnel structure of hospitals.
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I think, hope this looks encouraging. It is what I was hoping the Omicron curves would look like but there may be several mitigating factors including the impact of restrictions and testing volumes etc.
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Very encouraging to see that pattern playing out in many different places. With our federal and provincial governments’ failure to build or even maintain testing capacity, we don’t have a direct measurement for that. But the ‘poo signal’ is suggesting very similar in quite a few cities.
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I can see the ‘poo signal’ developing into a very useful meme.
For example, “the ‘poo signal’ tells me that Man City are excreting in a bovine like nature, again”
Anyhow, sadly the US and EU as a whole are still on the upcurve it seems. Also, what is difficult to judge here is the effect of any restrictions are having on the numbers. The UK is a mixed bag on that front.
What the hell is happening in Austria?
Why does he stick at it? The personal attacks, the very real danger to him and his family, just why? Most people would have moved on ages ago.
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Credit to him. Moving on allows idiocy to prevail.
Doesn’t it always?/Hasn’t it already? Cruz and Rand are the moderate crazies/leaders…
Sadly, you’re probably right. I think if more emphasis was put into calling out idiocy for what it was a long time ago we’d be better off. Instead, people have walked away and been ‘bigger’ people and over time it seems the lunatics have taken over the asylum. I’m not confining this to just the US, btw, moderate people with sensible views generally get shouted down as I’ve come to realise. On a personal level I’ve had enough and if someone has been an idiot I don’t hesitate to tell them straight (my wife thinks I’m courting trouble).
I remember a clip posted on one of our forums here, not sure if it was on TIA or here, where a journo in a press conference in New Zealand asking conspiracy/daft questions was shut down immediately and basically told he was an arse in no uncertain terms. I loved that.
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I remember that. Pretty recent too I think.
I came across a fascinating video yesterday from a former Flat Earth believer. He was saying that to be a true “believer” you generally had your head buried in pretty much every conspiracy going. Nature of the beast if you like, where to maintain one belief you basically had to believe them all. These were normal people that had been lead astray.
Then you had the non Flat Earthers that weren’t “pure” but sat at the top of the tree and continued to push the Flat Earth message. The con men if you like, the people that unsurprisingly gained financially from it.
It was not wholly surprising but a fascinating insight given the source. The guy also mentioned that 5-6 so Flat Earthers lost their lives in the last year. He didn’t say how but did say that their conspiracy beliefs lead them to pay the ultimate price. It doesn’t take much to think how that happened sadly. For examplen I’d bet the con men are vaccinated in this instance.
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Even as one of the highest paid employees in the Federal government, at any time in the last 35 years he could have maybe quadrupled his salary (not to mention the investment opportunities) had he left the NIH to go to work in industry. I think that gives some insight into how this is more than a job for him, but a way to follow a mission of making advancements in clinical science.
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Puzzling, and a little disturbing
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More than a little disturbing I’d say… where is that coming from? You probably started at a very low level, but still… 
It is not the Canada data that is troubling - our cases are so far above any previous levels, it is hardly a surprise that deaths are trending upward. As a percentage of cases, it is small (though we have a very poor idea of total cases now). But until December, the Ottawa area had never had more than 400 cases in a day, we were at 1400 when PCR testing became heavily restricted. Deaths lag, so terrible as it is, about what is expected.
What is more troubling to me is South Africa, because their reported cases are heading downward, and have been for a month. Deaths are a lagging indicator (hospitalization at +/- 10 days, death +/- 8 days has been the most common assumption), so they should have been heading down for at least a week now - and with a fairly aggressive slope.
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Ah right, I missed the SA curve… yeah, that’s strange indeed. Do you have access to hospitalization rate? Is it going upwards too?
Hospitalization looks like this - no data for Canada, but ours is bad right now. If we had the per capita rate of the US, our system would have already collapsed. But South Africa is headed down.
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Hold on… hospitalization rate goes down but mortality rate goes up? That must be an error, no? Or a statistical anomaly?