Quick recover for you and your knucklehead family member Ryuu96!

Kids seem to shake off this virus pretty quickly with hardly any symptoms. Yesterday my younger son tested positive too. My wife and I are yet to catch it.

Brings a tear to the eyes. The cold, cold free weather that is.

Whole lotta freedom about to be spread in Ottawa.

Those people interviewed don't sound like anti-vaxxers and surely they have a right to protest against vaccination rules. Unless you mean those right-wing extremists mentioned looking to cause trouble, then yeah.

At this point everyone will be exposed. I probably caught it spring 2020 then I got vaccinated early 2021 which then I was exposed to coworker that came down with I believe delta variant was going around then and tested negative even after he working right next to him and coughing near me throughout the week. I'm done listening to news bs about it and don't care. Always talking about heard immunity through vaccination or exposure etc. If you look at the test results which I guarantee not everyone in USA gets tested even if sick because health care system here is shit then we should be well over 70% exposed. We've all been exposed. So bring on the roaring 20s just like 1920s. Inflated stock prices and people not giving a shit because they survived H1N1. Fuck it all. I wear a mask to work not because I'm scared of covid it is because there are plastic and fiber glass shit particles floating around. Good luck to you all.

Yet another year of quarantine lol... You know how much of pussy you sound like now?

~User was moderated for this post - Hiku

I find it odd too, in denmark we have so much spread of omikron right now (upto 50,000 daily cases).
However our PM is basically dropping nearly all restrictions, starting monday.

I think we're one of the countries in the world, that does most testing relative to our population.
So it looks bad.... we find plenty of daily infections.
(part of that is we are good at going to be tested, most people have it as a rutine, and get tested atleast twice a week (not just when you have symptoms)).

The point however is, its not stressing our hospitals.
People apparently dont get that sick with it anymore.

(I've heard from people that had it, its like a soar throat for a day or two, and a day with a mild headache, and gone next day type of deal... Some people dont even realise it was Covid, they had, they just like "yeah I had abit of a headache, yesterday" type of thing).

That said, its gonna be weird, not haveing to wear a mask again.
You got used to it, whenever you went out and about.

I used to be very much on the "lets all be really carefull" side of things.
But at this point, maybe our PM is right, time to open everything up again.
With the first corona wave, and delta, things were differnt than now, with Omikron.
Also we bought time to get our vaccinations (~83% vaccinated, 61% have gotten 3rd jab).

Theres a cost to haveing restrictions, and I guess, at this point our PM thinks its not worth it anymore.
Theres a balance to all things, which is why we handled the pandemic so well (economically).
We were quick to lockdown hard, when needed.
Now when its not, we're amoung the first to open everything back up again.

Trudeau was around someone with covid on Thursday, and because he may potentially have been infected, even though he's been testing negative since, he's coincidentally quarantining for at least 5 days now, just to be extra safe.

Right before the trucker protest arrives in Ottawa... how convenient...

Wouldn't want to be around those germ ridden good for nothing truckers anyway, who were earlier praised like the nurses, all now deplorables.

Weekly update. Omicron continues to spread West to East through Europe.

In total 23.4 million new cases were reported last week (up from 22.6 million) to a total of 370,241,734
Also another 64,527 more deaths were reported (up from 55,699) to a total of 5,667,627

The USA looks to have peaked while Europe is still climbing.
Deaths are still rising in the USA though while Europe seems to be balancing the increase from Omicron with the decrease of Delta.

The continents

Europe reported 10.8 million new cases (up from 9.09 million) and 20,781 more deaths (20,779 last week)
North America reported 4.51 million new cases (down from 5.91 million) and 22,260 more deaths (up from 18,621)
Asia reported 4.80 million new cases (up from 4.33 million) and 10,499 more deaths (up from 7,772)
South America reported 2.70 million new cases (up from 2.48 million) and 8,973 more deaths (up from 5,593)
Oceania reported 402K new cases (down from 559K) and 620 more deaths (459 last week)
Africa reported 256K new cases (down from 266K) and 2,430 more deaths (2,475 last week)

Corners of the world

USA reported 3.88 million new cases (down from 5.19 million) and 18,018 more deaths (up from 15,557)
India reported 1.95 million new cases (slightly down from 2.05 million) and 4,307 more deaths (up from 3,131)
Brazil reported 1.28 million new cases (up from 831K) and 3,301 more deaths (up from 1,800)
Japan reported 404K new cases (up from 209K) and 173 deaths (55 last week)
Australia reported 394K new cases (down from 554K) and 547 deaths (411 last week)
Canada reported 125K new cases (down from 171K) and 1,144 more deaths (up from 1,052)
South Korea reported 74.3K new cases (up from 35.7K) and 177 deaths (242 last week)
Iran reported 68.6K new cases (up from 24.5K) and 184 deaths (146 last week)
South Africa reported 21.9K new cases (down from 24.3K) and 835 deaths (832 last week)

Europe in detail

Russia is currently spiking up, UK staying level, France seems to have reached a plateau as well. I wonder what Ireland is doing to get the numbers down so fast. Most countries seem to choose to have a plateau instead of decreasing the cases, opening up as soon as the peak has been reached.

Global vaccination rate is now 52.35% (+0.58%)

South America 66.98% (+0.65%)
Europe 63.04% (+0.32%)
Asia 60.51% (+0.70%)
North America 60.13% (+0.39%)
Oceania 59.39% (+0.23%)
Africa 10.52% (+0.39%)

To me it looks like governments don't see it possible to stop Omicron and chose to open up early this time, turn the peak into a plateau letting the virus work its way through the population while keeping the hospitals from over flooding. The current number of deaths will still rise a bit then likely stay level for a while.

We can't keep the kids home any longer, asynchronous learning is a joke plus they need interaction and a regular schedule. But it will suck: My wife will likely catch it through the kids from school. She's still not well enough to even get the booster shot. Between a rock and a hard place. We hope it is/was Omicron which she is still dealing with (it's in her lungs) and if it isn't, hopefully Omicron will be mild. Next week our youngest gets his second shot and I'll get a booster is available. Then we're all vaxxed to the max :/

Hospitalizations have reached a plateau here, not climbing further, not declining either, but expected to start to go down.

Yeah Omicron really isn't that bad. We haven't even peaked yet but the ICU beds are getting emptier by the day. Still "filled" from the last Delta wave which peaked in late November / early December.

Hopefully this holds out all week. It may be -15C now, but mid week it'll be closer to 0C. Plus the other convoys are still on their way.