all the open windows, I opened so many windows, and now I'm indoors/outdoors but the other night I felt like I had COVID and maybe I did, even before I'd opened the windows, but we are all asymptomatic now, did I spell that right?

it's better with her arms around me,

I bet that she's figured it out,

T and I got pretty good at avoiding crowds during the pandemic, socializing only within our restricted bubbles, until after we'd both been triple vaxxed, and then we both caught Omicron like so many other people did during that huge Christmas Omicron wave.  But after we recovered from Omicron, both of us steadily opened up our social lives and we ( Read more... )

On OkCupid, those who indicate that they have already received the vaccine are being liked at double the rate of users who say that they are not interested in getting the vaccine, according to a spokesman for the app, Michael Kaye.

“Basically, getting the vaccine is the hottest thing you could be doing on a dating app right now,” Mr. Kaye said, ( Read more... )

Various public health officials (including my Public Health Friend) have been saying stuff like "the worst is yet to come" with respect to COVID-19, but I think we've passed the peak, I think the peak for hospitalizations was January 6.  We're seeing the 7-day averages for cases, hospitalizations, and deaths start to trend down.  I expect this ( Read more... )

It's looking like the Christmas/New Year surge-on-top-of-surge may have peaked at 25% above the Thanksgiving surge, but I don't know whether we're going to have an additional back-to-work/school surge during the next two weeks -- of course for many people there is no workplace or classroom to go back to right now.

We're still at a very high level of ( Read more... )

As expected, the Christmas holiday season travel & socializing is punching up the death toll.

The annual rate, at 4,000 per day, would be 1.5 million deaths per year in the US.  Do we give a shit about that many deaths?  That's getting into Holocaust territory.

Between 1941 and 1945 Germany murdered six million Jews.  That was 1.5 million deaths per ( Read more... )

Overwhelmed by COVID-19 patients, LA County has issued guidelines for rationing care, including rationing oxygen and ambulance trips to the ER.  Yes, there's a shortage of oxygen.

Current advice from LA County Public Health:

Everyone needs to keep in mind that community transmission rates are so high that you run the risk of an exposure whenever you ( Read more... )

Four weeks later, after many families and friends gathered for Thanksgiving, what was the holiday's impact on COVID-19?

On the day before Thanksgiving, the 7-day average for COVID-19 deaths was 1,678/day.

Yesterday, the 7-day average for COVID-19 deaths was 2,682/day, and we've seen several days over 3,000.

So about a 60% increase post-Thanksgiving.  ( Read more... )

T is apparently having the first symptoms of a respiratory illness, immediately after returning from a "socially distanced" yoga weekend in the mountains with about 7 other people and some of their dogs -- he didn't realize he could've taken Dax along.  No fever yet, but he's feeling fatigue and nasal congestion.  He's being irritable and I'm ( Read more... )

Our mostly daily attempts at cheering up my sick brother via the family group chat went off the rails today.  I started it by sending a picture of the snow outside, my sister followed up with a picture of the rain -- she's on the other side of the rain/snow line.  Innocuous enough.  But then my sick brother (J) talked about how he's starting to ( Read more... )