The End of Covid and Return to Normal Life

Tools    





Note to self: If/when International travel gets back to normal stay away from Pennsylvania as it appears to be populated by random adults



India's covid situation has been massively exacerbated by our egomaniac PM Narendra Modi . In order to boost his international standing he gifted 66 million vaccines to other countries and left his own country short of vaccines . Some say he thought his gesture of giving away vaccines would win him the nobel prize . Instead he now presides on a self created catastrophe whose intensity was increased by him holding huge election rallies without social distancing or masks and encouraging a big hindu religious congregation to be held without social distancing or masks this year by preponing it in order to increase hindu nationalism before elections even though it's actual date was supposed to be next year .


Result---Modi is now single handedly responsible for an estimated 1.6 million deaths due to coronavirus with more to come doubtlessly . Vaccines are in short supply even though they are desperately needed and all that he is doing is shedding crocodile tears on TV remembering the dead .



Yeah, we're still wearing ours out and about. People don't know we're vaccinated and it's not a big inconvenience. I wear the lightest mask I have (as opposed to the N95, which is safer but a lot less comfortable, particularly with a beard). I'm seeing a handful of people not wearing them now, though.

I just read that 70% of the adults in my state (Pennsylvania) had at least one dose and almost 53% were fully vaccinated. Pretty wild to think, selection/location issues aside, that any random adult I see is more likely than not to be vaccinated.
We are a bit behind here in Brazil. In my city just surpassed 50% of adults vaccinated with at least one dose yesterday. My dose is scheduled for next week (Astra-Zeneca).

I think over the next couple of months the situation should normalize as the US situation has normalized over the last few months.



We are a bit behind here in Brazil.
Reading the NY Times every day, one would think that Brazil is a total disaster.
__________________
I’m here only on Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays. That’s why I’m here now.



Reading the NY Times every day, one would think that Brazil is a total disaster.
That's because NY Times is leftwing and Brazil's government is rightwing, so they attack any rightwing government that they can (they just cannot attack the UK's government, which is similarly rightwing, because they had the world's best containment and vaccination campaign against Covid in the past 5 months).

Brazil's situation is similar to other Latin American countries and much better than in countries like Russia, Mexico, Hungary, and Peru. In my state, 40% of adults got their first shoot, in other Latin American countries the vaccination rate of adults it's 15-30%. It is true our vaccination effort is behind the efforts in Europe and the US but that is because we lack domestic production of vaccines so we have to import all the vaccines and the regions that produce vaccines focus their resources on their own populations first (US, Europe, India, and China).

A dispassionate look: Comparing mortality rates in major Brazilian cities like Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo with New York and London show very similar numbers.

Comparing Brazilian vaccination rates with other large countries that don't produce vaccines locally we have:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/s...OR~COL~THA~PHL

That's the vaccination counter of my state in Brazil, they are pretty organized:

https://vacina.saude.rs.gov.br/



If only Wuhan could leak a virus that only attacks narcissistic despots.



That's because NY Times is leftwing and Brazil's government is rightwing, so they attack any rightwing government that they can (they just cannot attack the UK's government, which is similarly rightwing, because they had the world's containment and vaccination campaign against covid in the past 5 months).
Okay, good to know.

If only Wuhan could leak a virus that only attacks narcissistic despots.
I rather think the world doesn’t need another virus at this stage.



That's because NY Times is leftwing and Brazil's government is rightwing, so they attack any rightwing government that they can (they just cannot attack the UK's government, which is similarly rightwing, because they had the world's containment and vaccination campaign against covid in the past 5 months)
I think perhaps it's more that Brazil was in genuinely awful shape just a couple of months ago, but that things have evened out in most places (relative to their affluence and region and all that, at least). For example, from late March:

The country is now widely viewed as the epicenter of the pandemic, with the highest number of daily deaths of any nation. On Tuesday, that number topped 3,000 for the first time, with 3,251 deaths recorded.

And this week, Brazil's registered COVID-19 deaths are likely to rise above 300,000 — a toll exceeded only by the United States.



I think perhaps it's more that Brazil was in genuinely awful shape just a couple of months ago, but that things have evened out in most places (relative to their affluence and region and all that, at least). For example, from late March:
That was the Beta variant wave. It was truly awful, the ex-husband of my grandfather's girlfriend died of covid back in April (I didn't know him, my dad informed me).

But the US, EU and the UK also had their bad waves in the winter. In terms of how bad it was, it was similar in scale to those waves. Now the situation in Argentina and Colombia is much worse.



I rather think the world doesn’t need another virus at this stage.
How foolish I was to make such a serious wish.



Gee, I hope the despots are OK after all.



Realized 3/4 of my way through a manicure this morning that everyone was wearing a mask except me. Felt awkward for a minute, but nobody said anything.



As of today in my state in Brazil, more than 50% of adults have had at least one dose of the vaccine.

Had my own shoot 10 days ago, I though I would get astra-zeneca but I got pfizer, lucky me since it has fewer side effects.



Getting back to normal will feel weird. Almost don’t want to be around ppl again lol. On the plus side I’ve had a lot of time to watch movies and read over the past year and a half, so have probably learned a lot over that time period.



"How tall is King Kong ?"
To me it feels like there never was a pandemic. Of course I was out and about like normal the entire time anyway.
Oddly, it was the same for me, for opposite reasons. My life had been carpet-bombed by so many unrelated horrible dramas that I barely noticed the pandemic outside (there was an outside ?).



To me it feels like there never was a pandemic. Of course I was out and about like normal the entire time anyway.
I survived the pandemic without a single symptom. But reading all the horror stories in the paper every day was & is traumatic. (My middle bro told me to cancel my subscription.) And these horror stories continue to this day & will continue for a very long time.