Omicron Check: Are you still hiring?

[Alex93108]

Update :  Going to Brazil for a week next week and probably not going to hire . I looked at what’s offer on RM and nothing jumped out at me . Nothing to do with Omicron - my heart and mind are somewhere else 

Of course a visit to the sauna might change my mind , we’ll see 

 

 

Edited December 30, 2021 by jetlow

[Guest]

3 hours ago, Pensant said:

I’m stunned by the number of people I know who have tested positive in the past week. Most of those who were vaxxed had mild symptoms and some were asymptomatic. A few who are anti-vaxxers, but under 40, had most unpleasant home bound experiences.

I’m now triple-vexed, and in excellent health, so I plan to go ahead with an overnight late next week. Perhaps I should be more worried than I am.

I'm not grasping what's worrying you. You know a "stunning" number of people who had mild, if any, symptoms. This doesn't even count the probably stunning number of people you know who had it, did not have symptoms, and weren't tested. The only times I've tested myself was when required for travel, or prior to Christmas due to meeting with one relative in her 90s and another who's taking powerful immune-suppressing meds. I haven't heard of a single report of a healthy vaxxed person getting seriously ill with the current variant. Even with Delta it's extremely rare. There are tons of things to worry about in life. And with hiring. This isn't one of them. 

[+ Pensant]

9 minutes ago, Unicorn said:

I'm not grasping what's worrying you. You know a "stunning" number of people who had mild, if any, symptoms. This doesn't even count the probably stunning number of people you know who had it, did not have symptoms, and weren't tested. The only times I've tested myself was when required for travel, or prior to Christmas due to meeting with one relative in her 90s and another who's taking powerful immune-suppressing meds. I haven't heard of a single report of a healthy vaxxed person getting seriously ill with the current variant. Even with Delta it's extremely rare. There are tons of things to worry about in life. And with hiring. This isn't one of them. 

You’ll notice that I’m still planning to hire. One of my friends who tested positive only has the sniffles, so I’m largely in agreement with your assessment of risk.

[Guest]

13 hours ago, Unicorn said:

Just test yourself immediately prior to the onset of the appointment. It takes 15 minutes. 

The hold up is that for some reason we don't have rapid tests widely available here. 

[CheckCar]

7 hours ago, Pensant said:

I’m stunned by the number of people I know who have tested positive in the past week. Most of those who were vaxxed had mild symptoms and some were asymptomatic. A few who are anti-vaxxers, but under 40, had most unpleasant home bound experiences.

I’m now triple-vexed, and in excellent health, so I plan to go ahead with an overnight late next week. Perhaps I should be more worried than I am.

Do you plan to take any precautions—e.g., pre-encounter covid tests for you and your provider? That might lessen any worry that may develop as the overnight gets closer.

[+ nycman]

16 hours ago, Unicorn said:

the virus has mutated to a form which leaves the vaccinated unscathed

That’s not 100% true. Lots of mild, some moderately, ill people. Yes, even among the vaccinated.
And the occasional very sick vaccinated person. Usually older with some type of immunosuppression, 
but they are not all “unscathed".

At this point, I don’t really care what happens to the unvaccinated. Who am I to fuck with Darwin?

16 hours ago, Unicorn said:

We are not where we were a year ago.

This is very true. Compared to last year this is paradise. Even 2 months ago this was a different ballgame.
If we’re lucky this will be a bright flame that burns quickly and does little real damage. I do agree that this
is something we’re going to have to learn to live with and the testing hysteria that’s going on is doing little
to nothing. 

I feel a little caution and common sense to keep our emergency and primary care providers from getting
overwhelmed is warranted. Unfortunately, our media and the CDC isn’t very good at messaging either 
of those things

Vaccinate. Mask up. Avoid gatherings. Stay home when your sick. This really isn’t rocket science people. 

[Guest]

In my decades practicing medicine, I saw a whole lot of stuff a lot scarier than Covid-19 now is, and one might think that those things would scare me off. One has to put things into perspective...

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/cms/asset/8f866a99-cbde-4e20-a328-be25b352c201/ccr33021-fig-0001-m.jpg

https://www.dr-bull.at/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/20171122_091147-300x169.jpg

https://static-01.hindawi.com/articles/criu/volume-2016/4347821/figures/4347821.fig.001a.svgz

https://www.documentingreality.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=281431&d=1308338518

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSbnW3Ru4s1Fmh8M2dN477zVLyFmf-L1buQP2PAsz5riUPJpVDMm69XtSTO8EqTKucNFNk&usqp=CAU

[Guest]

8 minutes ago, nycman said:

...Lots of mild, some moderately, ill people. Yes, even among the vaccinated.
And the occasional very sick vaccinated person....

Inaccurate. One is less likely to get seriously ill with omicron if vaccinated than to get seriously ill with a common cold. The only reports I've seen/heard of are in the very ill/elderly (who would have fared the same with a cold). To say "lots" is misleading at best. Millions have contracted omicron. Except in very rare circumstances, only the unimmunized have gotten into trouble. And the rare circumstances have been seen in a predictable population. 

[Luv2play]

Well, the province of Quebec just imposed a lockdown including a 10pm to 5am curfew taking effect at 5pm tomorrow, New Year's Eve. During the curfew, no-one can go out of their homes and invite anyone not of their household to their homes.

All restaurants and bars are closed except for takeout and all non essential businesses like gyms are closed. This in the face of 14,000 daily cases which is about the same percapita rate as the US is now experiencing, if not lower. 

Hospitalization rates are approaching capacity limits and will be overwhelmed in less than 3 weeks on the current trajectory unless these measures are taken, according to the government.

This will kill the escort business for the time being in Montreal unless you do day time engagements. I'm wondering what is going to happen in Ontario, where I live. Rates are accelerating but not to the level of Quebec's, yet.

[+ Pensant]

1 hour ago, Luv2play said:

Well, the province of Quebec just imposed a lockdown including a 10pm to 5am curfew taking effect at 5pm tomorrow, New Year's Eve. During the curfew, no-one can go out of their homes and invite anyone not of their household to their homes.

All restaurants and bars are closed except for takeout and all non essential businesses like gyms are closed. This in the face of 14,000 daily cases which is about the same percapita rate as the US is now experiencing, if not lower. 

Hospitalization rates are approaching capacity limits and will be overwhelmed in less than 3 weeks on the current trajectory unless these measures are taken, according to the government.

This will kill the escort business for the time being in Montreal unless you do day time engagements. I'm wondering what is going to happen in Ontario, where I live. Rates are accelerating but not to the level of Quebec's, yet.

Grim.

[+ Pensant]

5 hours ago, CheckCar said:

Do you plan to take any precautions—e.g., pre-encounter covid tests for you and your provider? That might lessen any worry that may develop as the overnight gets closer.

New development: he came down with Covid yesterday but is doing ok, so we’ll postpone out of an “abundance of caution”.

[+ WilliamM]

13 hours ago, Pensant said:

I’m stunned by the number of people I know who have tested positive in the past week. Most of those who were vaxxed had mild symptoms and some were asymptomatic. A few who are anti-vaxxers, but under 40, had most unpleasant home bound experiences.

I’m now triple-vexed, and in excellent health, so I plan to go ahead with an overnight late next week. Perhaps I should be more worried than I am.

I have cancelled all plans to visit New York City, which is only 90 miles away. The number of New York actors/ actresses with covid19 is frightening.

[Guest]

I heard on the news today that there were 500,000 people diagnosed (and that's just those being tested) with the virus in just one day. Over 3 million in one week. Yes, if one in 1000 ends up in the hospital, that's 3000, which will be difficult for our system to handle, but they're all unvaxxed, so just let them wait outside if needed. Is there a point at which the madness will stop? They also showed the lines for testing. Ridiculous.

 

Appropriate place for unvaxxed to be treated if hospitals are full:

[+ WilliamM]

4 minutes ago, Unicorn said:

I heard on the news today that there were 500,000 people diagnosed (and that's just those being tested) with the virus in just one day. Over 3 million in one week. Yes, if one in 1000 ends up in the hospital, that's 3000, which will be difficult for our system to handle, but they're all unvaxxed, so just let them wait outside if needed. Is there a point at which the madness will stop? They also showed the lines for testing. Ridiculous.

 

Appropriate place for unvaxxed to be treated if hospitals are full:

Blacks have legitimate reasons not to trust vaccines. I have argued with several Black woman about this and it was a draw.

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, WilliamM said:

Blacks have legitimate reasons not to trust vaccines....

No, they don't. An aberrant experiment in Alabama that was stopped half a century ago is not a "legitimate" reason. It's about as preposterous a "reason" as one can imagine. Also, you're factually wrong in insinuating that blacks are vaccinated less than whites in the US. The rates are about the same (multiple prior references in other strings, which you've seen). The division in the US is mainly Democrat/Republican. 

[+ WilliamM]

1 hour ago, Unicorn said:

No, they don't. An aberrant experiment in Alabama that was stopped half a century ago is not a "legitimate" reason. It's about as preposterous a "reason" as one can imagine. Also, you're factually wrong in insinuating that blacks are vaccinated less than whites in the US. The rates are about the same (multiple prior references in other strings, which you've seen). The division in the US is mainly Democrat/Republican. 

Try telling that to older  Black women and men. You keep repeating the Democrats/Republican devide Mostly true, but as a Democrat (with two degrees in political science) I know it isn't that simple

Edited December 31, 2021 by WilliamM

[mike carey]

There has been overturning of tables, slaughtering of sacred cows and general voltes-face here over the last few days. Two weeks ago four states and one territory required negative PCR test results for travellers arriving from the other three jurisdictions. The three had no restrictions on travel within or between them, and WA has since doubled down and closed its border to all the rest of the country, tested or not, vaccinated or not. (Exemptions are available, but only in the most compelling circumstances and require 14 days of supervised quarantine)

Then the whole edifice began to crumble. One by one the border control jurisdictions switched to requiring only a RA test, and today the SA government abandoned any test requirement. This as in part been driven by an explosion in case numbers (the magnitude of what constitutes 'explosion' is relative, in the US or Europe what they had would be a change from nothing to eff all) leading them to conclude that the chance of a traveller from Sydney, Canberra or Melbourne having the virus were not much different to the chances of a random person from Adelaide having it. The new rule comes into force at 2359 CDT tonight (or 0829 US EST), what better way to ring in the New Year. The others are probably not far behind.

Also, from today the definition of close contact has been changed nationally (a rare thing for the first ministers all to agree on something) to include only household-like contact with a confirmed case. Any other contacts have been told not to clog the testing queues by seeking a PCR test unless they develop symptoms, and in SA workers have been going along the queues asking people why they were there and turning away asymptomatic people who weren't close contacts.

Predictably both the expert community and the commentariat is divided about this, with responses ranging from it being wildly reckless, through 'not a good idea but unavoidable in the circumstances' to 'about time'. The AMA has come out on the 'dangerous' half of the continuum, but not at the 'this is crazy' extreme. Some of the 'about time' mob were the same people who railed against all restrictions for the whole 22 months, so I'm happy to ignore them on that basis alone, but the reality is they aren't advocating for any more so they are irrelevant.

[+ tassojunior]

On 12/29/2021 at 9:20 AM, mike carey said:

There was an interesting set of numbers presented by the ABC's stats guru yesterday on hospital admissions here. It's not authoritative analysis, but it provides some clues. There has been a huge surge in case numbers in NSW and Victoria over the last fortnight, but the percentage of cases ending up in hospital, while raw numbers have risen sharply, has dropped significantly. At the end of October, 10% of cases in NSW were ending up in hospital, now it's 1%. In Victoria, it has only dropped to 1.5%, but like NSW the total number of cases going to hospital has increased.

In Victoria there has continued to be 6-8 deaths a day, while in NSW it's typically been one or two. One difference between the two states is that in NSW at least 80% of all cases are now Omicron, but the proportion in Victoria is much more skewed to Delta. It's not unreasonable to conclude that both the higher death rate and higher hospitalisation rate in Victoria can be attributed to a higher proportion of Delta. The NSW figures show that almost all of the hospitalised cases that have ended up in an ICU have been Delta patients, as have almost all of the deaths. There has been one case of a triple vaxed patient with Omicron dying, but he was a man in his eighties with co-morbidities, so it may be the case that he died with the disease rather than from it (of course it's difficult to be certain that Covid wasn't just the straw that broke the camel's back, as it were, rather than its presence being unrelated to his death).

That last parenthetic point is a hint at a complication in the analysis of Covid trends in the future. People will be admitted to hospitals after heart attacks or traffic accidents who will be tested and found to have asymptomatic Covid. They need to be tested because even without symptoms, an undetected Covid case presents an infection risk, but their inclusion in the statistics adds a wrinkle to the analytical process.

The numbers here appear to confirm that Omicron is resulting in fewer hospitalisations and fewer deaths per case, but also that the sheer numbers of cases could result in increased stress on the hospital system. I'm not eligible for my third jab for another 10 days, and while I'll avoid unnecessary contact with other people, I'm becoming more confident in venturing out when I need to, and that might even include a trip to Sydney with an, ahem, liaison while I'm there.

Certainly will be nice if the very early indications of less harshness hold. My main concern now is that most of the early infections in any surge or new variant are the young where serious cases are rare,  and it takes a while to reach to the more sequestered elderly. But as quickly as Omicron spreads, we should know it's effect on the elderly soon. 

Hospitals are going to get full from shear numbers I fear, however mild it is. 

[mike carey]

One thing I had intended to include, but seems to be better in its own post, is that one of the features of the Covid regime in NSW that was conspicuously dropped on 15 Dec has been reinstated, and that is QR code check ins. Other places didn't drop them but the emergence of Omicron has caused authorities to re-emphasise their use. The way they are being used by the authorities is changing, though. They are only being used to enable alert texts to people rather than to issue instruction to test or isolate.

I had been tiring of going to the service desk to check in at shops and took the opportunity of a substantial credit card statement credit to buy a new phone (a Samsung Galaxy S21 5G in case anyone's interested). Went to my phone company's shop front to get a new SIM (this phone needed a nano) and it turned out I had just needed to pop the centre out of my existing SIM and that was it. Bonus for me was the person that helped me in the shop exported all my contacts to the SIM before swapping it over to my new phone, something I wouldn't have thought of being able to do.

I had already downloaded the Check In Canberra app so I have now been able to do my first unassisted check-in.

[+ WilliamM]

1 hour ago, Unicorn said:

No, they don't. An aberrant experiment in Alabama that was stopped half a century ago is not a "legitimate" reason. It's about as preposterous a "reason" as one can imagine. Also, you're factually wrong in insinuating that blacks are vaccinated less than whites in the US. The rates are about the same (multiple prior references in other strings, which you've seen). The division in the US is mainly Democrat/Republican. 

You do know not everyone trusts the government. Please don't tell me what I  have read.

[+ Pensant]

8 hours ago, Unicorn said:

The division in the US is mainly Democrat/Republican. 

This seems to be the case.

[+ DrownedBoy]

I haven't hired since around Halloween.

If I were back in Chicago, I would be hiring. However, my office (which is in downtown Chicago) just closed back up again until at least mid-January, and I bet they'll be closed all month (after the latest surge dies down).

Practically every branch of my family, and whole clusters of my co-workers, have gotten sick with Covid (apparently) Omicron, and it's only been causing minor, if any, symptoms among everyone I know. However, when my office is closed due to Covid, I stay in my vacation place in rural Wisconsin, and there's no (desired) providers available here unless I travel to a larger city. But I've spent most of 2021 abstaining from the hobby, so I can wait until returning to Chicago.

[+ WilliamM]

New York state reports 85,00 people tested positive for covid19 on December 31, 2021 (yesterday,l.

The worst day since the beginning of covid19 for the state.

[+ tassojunior]

wow- It struck hard quickly. Today I called for a doc visit at Kaiser with anyone on duty for a recurring bite or allergy or something popping up several times head to toe. They agreed I need to see someone but 1st appointment with any medic is 2 weeks. I didn't dare ask about a dermatologist appointment with my life expectancy. In better times it took a month. 

and then today this pops up on Twitter that Baltimore is already out of ambulance crews and fire trucks have to transport people. 

don't get sick for the next couple months !

 

 

 

Edited January 2, 2022 by tassojunior

[+ tassojunior]

11 hours ago, Unicorn said:

All of this mess because of all of these anti-vaxxers. Instead of admitting them to the hospital maybe we could find another way to take care of anti-vaxxers? 

 

Just kidding... 😏

I'm afraid it's the opposite: The vaccines don't stop one from catching Omicron and the emergency staffs and walk-in doctors offices are at skeleton staff from ex-employees refusing to take the vaccine on top of those who catch Omicron themselves in spite of vaccination. I guess so long as emergency rooms and urgent care stay staffed during the surge we'll get through this. (The "Great Resignation" plays a big part too. ) There's a reason the National Guard is being called out for this surge. 

What concerns many now is that even though Omicron seems mild in most people, the two major antibody treatments for those hospitalized with it are not effective on it while the third is but is in short supply. The Pill to cure is just getting out. Big article in The Economist this week on it. Totally paywalled and too long to reprint but summed up here.

  As The Economist explained, “once someone is so sick as to require hospital treatment, doctors may have fewer options available for Omicron than for its antecedents. Previous strains could often be treated with drugs called monoclonal antibodies. Omicron seems oblivious to most of these, and supplies of those that do affect it, newly developed versions made by GlaxoSmithKline and Vir Biotechnology, are limited.”

Indeed, a recent study from researchers at Columbia University suggests the omicron variant of COVID-19 can evade COVID-19 vaccines, antibody treatments and booster shots, making the virus more transmissible,""

Someone better be awfully good-looking to tempt me in January. 

Edited January 2, 2022 by tassojunior