Come to USA where most people don't wear them anymore.   Corona fatigue happened about a year ago and hardly anyone gives a fuck anymore.   Time to start living life instead of holed up in a bunker.

And that's why the death rate to Covid-19 is 3.4 times higher in the USA compared to Japan (normalized for population difference)
0.35 per million per day in Japan vs 1.2 per million per day in the USA.

Wearing a mask is not being holed up in a bunker, it's just common decency to your fellow human beings. I still wear them in stores and store owners here do still as well, although mask requirements have been dropped for most indoor settings here in Ontario. At least half the people here still use them, it's very common to see people walking around with a mask on.

A lot of things are still done online, I can do my banking through WebEx when needing to talk to a person. Better for the environment as well, no need to drive there!

To each their own but in USA mask will never be mainstream as in Asia. I'm not an antimasker or whatever. If you want to wear it then wear it. One should follow simple rule if sick then don't go to work or be out in public much but here in USA a lot of low income workers can't afford missing work or have paid time off to be able to miss it. So they show up to work sick.

The reason why USA has more death rates is probably because we are a sick nation. Sure some healthy people that caught it died but majority of deaths are older people and not in best condition of health.

I've probably had it in first few months of outbreak. I was then vaccinated twice with moderna. I was then exposed at work from coworker that showed up for a week coughing working side by side during delta wave. I tested negative after work made us all get tested. Tell me why should I care to wear a mask. I don't encroach on people's space even before pandemic at stores or whatever.

Like any successful virus it is meant to evolve and try spread without killing too many host. So Corona is getting more spreadable but less deadly.

Eventually there will be a compromise between always mask people, anti mask people, etc. If you want to wear a mask wear it. I won't shame you in public but I'll make fun of you to friends in private especially if I see you in a car by yourself wearing a mask.

The reason you should have to wear a mask is because the alternative is inadministratable. I recovered from Covid and should be exceedingly unlikely to get it again and pass it on to anyone at least for a few months. So, there's really no reason I should have to wear a mask on public transit. But, if we make a rule that people in my situation should not have to wear masks, then anyone without a mask will say "oh yeah I just got over Covid too". 

That's kind of just the way a lot of laws work. I'm never going to shoot a kid, but a law that says "you cannot have a gun in a school zone unless you're the kind of person who wouldn't shoot a kid" doesn't work. There are 17 year olds out there who would probably handle alcohol more maturely than 22 year olds, but a law that says "no buying alcohol under 21 unless you're very mature" doesn't work. It's simply impossible to laser target laws like that. We can't have laws that say "speed limit is 55 mph unless there's not alot of people on the road use your best judgment". Laws have to be clear enough to follow, so we have to draw lines that will always be imperfect. 

People are certainly less healthy in the USA, avg age of 38.5 vs 48.4 in Japan. (Could also be that Japan's population has been stagnating for longer, -0.3% pop growth in Japan vs +0.4% in the USA) Yet that only means more vulnerable people in Japan, corrected for that the death rate to Covid in the USA would look even worse. And indeed, sadly many people can't afford sick leave in the USA, have multiple jobs just to stay afloat, and thus multiple opportunities to spread a virus around.

I'll keep wearing a mask to protect my wife and to make other people feel more comfortable. I don't want to be the one to get her sick and I respect elderly people that still go out on their own. Anything to make them feel more comfortable going out. All the elderly people here still wear masks.

Numbers for here:

Health officials in Ontario say 1,684 people are in hospital with COVID-19 as another 23 deaths due to the disease were reported in the last 24 hours.

However half of those caught Covid in the hospital...

Fifty-four per cent of the patients currently receiving care were not admitted due to COVID-19, but have since tested positive. Forty-six per cent were admitted because of COVID-19.

In the ICU, two patients are no longer seeking care, bringing the total number of those in intensive care with COVID-19 down to 212.

Moreover, 66 per cent were admitted to intensive care due to their COVID-19 diagnosis, while 34 per cent were admitted for a different reason but are now testing positive.

Not safe to go the hospital :/ Stay healthy.

(We don't have regular tests anymore though, so it doesn't necessarily mean all that tested positive in the hospital weren't admitted with Covid)

I agree mask usage seems pointless if nobody else does it. Even outside, mask usage is extremely common here, to the point where I would stand out a lot if I did not have it with me. This also becomes a problem when humidity and temperatures hit high levels. I have seen a lot of women wearing masks even in cars, mostly because they don't want people seeing their face, not so much for the coronavirus.

Personally I think the US is too extreme on not wearing masks, while Japan can be too extreme on wearing them. People here can get a severe case of Covid and go to the hospital, and it won't cost them much, while in the US that could be the end of their financial life.

I think the question of mask wearing is one of: are multiple studies with a weak or neutral signal the evidence of a strong signal? Or is this the hallmark of pseudoscience instead?

I'll let you judge the studies for yourself if you're interested.

One thing that changed, I hardly ever see people openly sneezing or couching in public anymore. That was the main thing that wearing a mask helped contain.

New study here, or new correlation
https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/being-with-unvaccinated-people-increases-covid-19-risk-for-those-who-are-vaccinated-modelling-study-1.5874632

The research published Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal found that vaccinated people who mix with those who are not vaccinated have a significantly greater chance of being infected than those who stick with people who have received the shot.

In contrast, unvaccinated people's risk of contracting COVID-19 drops when they spend time with people who are vaccinated, because they serve as a buffer to transmission, according to the mathematical model used in the study.

Co-author David Fisman, of the University of Toronto's Dalla Lana school of public health, said the message of the study is that the choice to get vaccinated can't be thought of as merely personal.

"You may like to drive your car 200 kilometres an hour and think that's fun, but we don’t allow you to do that on a highway partly because you can kill and injure yourself, but also because you're creating risk for those around you," he said in a recent interview.

Fisman said the idea for study came a few months ago amid the debate around vaccine passports and vaccine mandates.

"We thought what was missing from that conversation was, what are the rights of vaccinated people to be protected from unvaccinated people?" he said.

The conclusion, he said, is that "public health is something you actually have to do collectively."

"What we kind of concluded is that the decision to not be vaccinated — you can't really regard it as a self-regarding risk (because) you're creating risk for other people around you by interacting with them," he said.

It's the same with masks, you protect others more than yourself. And effectiveness, if any, greatly diminishes the less people use them.

Adenovirus probable cause of mysterious child hepatitis

Scientists and clinicians are now investigating whether there has been a change in the genetic make-up of the virus that might trigger liver inflammation more easily.

Another possible explanation is that restrictions imposed in the pandemic may have led to young children being first exposed to adenovirus at a slightly later point in their lives, leading to a "more vigorous" immune response in some.

Prof Calum Semple, who is an expert in infectious diseases at Liverpool University, said: "Adenovirus virtually disappeared during the Covid outbreak when there was reduced mixing and it has come back in a surge now."

He said other hypotheses are also being explored, including whether a recent Covid infection might be a trigger for the liver problems along with adenovirus. There is no link to the Covid vaccine. None of the currently confirmed cases in under-10-year-olds in the UK are known to have been vaccinated.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-61220518

Some of the more shady practices to keep Covid out of NZ are coming to light now
https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/covid-19-quarantine-lottery-breached-rights-new-zealand-court-rules-1.5877954

High Court Justice Jillian Mallon ruled that forcing people to stay in quarantine hotels for two weeks initially, and later for one week, was reasonable given the circumstances of the pandemic. But she found that operating a lottery-style system for the beds was unreasonable, and did not take into account how long people had been waiting abroad, or whether they had a compelling need to return home.

“New Zealanders’ right to enter their country could be infringed in some instances in a manner that was not demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society,” the judge concluded.

The flaws in the system were highlighted earlier this year by the case of Charlotte Bellis, a pregnant New Zealand journalist who was temporarily stranded in Afghanistan due to New Zealand's strict border policies. The case quickly became an embarrassment to the New Zealand government, which backed down and offered Bellis a pathway home, which she accepted.



While Omicron leads to less hospitalizations:
https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/omicron-may-be-less-likely-to-cause-hospitalizations-but-severe-outcomes-were-comparable-to-delta-study-1.5876101

A study comparing the clinical outcomes of patients infected with either the Omicron or Delta variant of COVID-19 has found that those who were hospitalized with Omicron required a similar amount of intensive care and medical intervention as those hospitalized with Delta.

What researchers found was that Omicron did come with a significantly lower likelihood of hospitalization: only 3 per cent of those infected with Omicron required hospitalization, compared to nearly 14 per cent of those infected with Delta, regardless of vaccination level.

However, if patients did require hospitalization, the difference in care level needed was much closer.

There was a comparable need for supplemental oxygen and intensive care seen with hospitalized Omicron patients and hospitalized Delta patients. Around 68 per cent of patients hospitalized with Omicron required supplemental oxygen compared to 73 per cent of hospitalized Delta patients. When it came to intensive care, 17.6 per cent of hospitalized Omicron patients had to be taken to the ICU, compared to 25.4 per cent of hospitalized Delta patients.

The good news is, about a factor 5 difference in hospitalizations between Omicron and Delta.