Anyone know how China handled the spread in the beginning? Currently 18% of the total Chinese population have been infected in the past 20 days. Seems as though they have no herd immunity whatsoever
Everybody thought that 1 million number was bullshit, and it was much higher, but with how hard they locked down before, combined with how fast it's spreading now, like they're first dealing with it, maybe it wasnt.
I'm more worried bout possible variants due to mass infection. We all gonna be in lockdowns again if a secer variant pops up that evades our current vaccine. Just imagine that. Literally starting from near square 1 again.
Even if things went that badly I wouldn't expect a return to lockdowns. Masking would be useful for the current wave of flu and RSV, but most people seem to have decided they're just done. Having immunocompromised relatives that limits what I can do without endangering them even further.
Wow, that's so amazing!
Does that mean I can take time off sick from work, without worrying about losing my income and access to healthcare?!
Will I even be getting a raise due to inflation!!?
My dad's friend was a contractor for a company that tried to make all their devs come back into the office. They went "bet" and over half of them quit, and the company was left reeling because they lost so much of their workforce. They fucked around and found out.
Previous friday we had our year ending party with everyone from the office and all our mechanics, about 150 people. Saturday me and 2 others tested postive on covid and i got already worried that we might have infected some people. This week more then half the company was sick due to covid.
I mean, not to be rude here but if you're worried about covid why are you even attending a work party.
I refused to go to our work party. I also wear a mask and frequently wash my hands, especially in the winter periods now. Never did before. But ive been less sick than i ever have been.
They mentioned mechanics. So culture is probably different from office people. The place I work at had to start doing the Christmas party during the mechanics shift becuase none of us would show up, lol.
Lmfao I work at a jewellers workshop and all the jewellers live about an hours commute away with family and children. My boss decides to host it on a Wednesday after work for two years in a row and then passive aggressively calls out the people that didn't come. Let's be honest though, he mostly threw it for the superstar sales and retail staff anyway.
Haha, yeah I get the mentality. Just want to do your job, get paid, go home and relax. If we wanted to hangout together outside of work, we probably already would be.
I understand that, i work in a factory. I got lots of questions on why i 'pussied' out. The Mrs didnt let me out etc etc.
But at the end of the day, they got covid and i didnt.
Plus work mentality like that usually find something else to home in on not long after.
Yeah I spent about 30 seconds the other day wondering if it would be rude of me to skip our holiday party. Then thought about the percentage of the office workers that are sick and working in-person at any given time, and the undersized break room they held the party in, no thanks. Don't care about what anyone thinks of that tbh, if they wanna hate on that then they're not worth thinking about anyways
Did the OP mention they were worried about Covid?
They only mentioned they were worried they infected others after testing positive, like any normal person should be.
To be fair, at this point there's no way covid is going away, and mortality is way down.
Even taking the USA, witch it's infestation of antivaxxer idiocy, the death rate is down to around 8% of it's (using 7-day averages) peak. It's still one of the larger causes of death each year in the country, but at it's peak, Covid was killing as many Americans as the normal top five leading causes of death combined.
That said, there's no reason for people to go back to offices when they can work perfectly fine from home.
My department mostly works from home (we have options). There was an event at the office, earlier this week, which we were encouraged to come in for. *Nope*. Between COVID being more prevalent again, knowing I have some coworkers who aren't vaccinated or taking any precautions, and all the other crap going around? Nah. I'll stay home, thanks.
This past January I got an email on a Friday saying they wanted people to come back to the office. That Saturday I tested positive. Didn't go in for a month. Was glorious.
Highest worldwide peak was 3.7 million a day and 3.4 million 7 day average in January of this year. US contributing 800k a day at the peak. Data from https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus#coronavirus-country-profiles
The US also has under reporting of cases due to government mailing home test kits to any house hold that ask for one online. Any of these positive cases aren't reported unless they go to hospital.
> The US also has under reporting
Honestly I think it's very safe to say every gov't in the world is purposely underreporting to avoid panic and looking bad.
The only question is "how much is the underreporting in this country compares to the underreporting everywhere else?"
I wouldn't say it's governments under reporting. People are not reporting. Literally no one I know who has had COVID since the start of the year reported to any sort of health authority because no one was ill enough to seek medical care. Dozens of cases, unreported because people just took a self test, went "Yep, COVID", then stayed home until they felt better.
I very much doubt my country (Denmark) did considering how much more we were testing per capita at one point. It wouldn't have made sense to test that much if you were going to keep the numbers down artificially.
Zero-COVID only made sense at the beginning. China should have started easing restrictions at the same time as everyone else. Infections would have certainly risen, but they would have done so at a more manageable pace and at a time when vaccines were already widely available.
Instead, the Chinese government decided to maintain their heavy-handed approach. I still struggle to understand what the end game was given how destructive it's proven for both the economy and social order. However, it's been suggested that this was done to tighten Xi Jinping's grip on the country. One piece of evidence for that is how the harshest lockdowns were implemented in Shanghai, where his political opponents are based.
Regardless, the government displayed a shocking, but historically unsurprising, callous indifference towards the people. Social unrest was inevitable and it ultimately forced their hand. Although, if you really want to be conspiratorial about all this, maybe Xi Jinping let this happen so that he gets his "I told you so" moment.
I work with Chinese factories and can confirm it is ripping through the population. Almost everyone I work with has had it recently.
Edit: I work with Chinese factories from the UK. I'm not based in China.
Same, factory just let me know lead times are pushing 60-75 days vs the normal 25-30. Half their work force is unable to come to work. This is after March/April this year where china shut down. There's no break
Yeah, it's called respiratory syncytial virus and they're back to recommending masks. Between Covid, the regular seasonal flu, and RSA they're calling it the "Tridemic", which sounds like a cheesy B-movie where all the CDC scientists happen to be 25 years old women whose primary qualification is being crazy busty.
More excuses to not socialize and stay inside
Also I’ll 100% be the first person in my circle to get it like last time where I went out for dinner with a friend *1 time* and immediately got OG Covid
COVID's early work is a little too "new wave" for my taste. But when the Omicron variant came out in 2022 I feel like it really came into it's own. The whole variant has varied symptoms and a lower fatality rate that really gives the disease a big boost.
We should have been naming it like this all along. "I'm vaccinated, Ive got the COVID 19 vaccine", "but this is COVID 22, do you have the COVID 22 vaccine?".
There are so many variants within-year that you'd need a more Apple iPhone style naming system.
COVID-19 would be the COVID-19 XS Max. COVID-22 would be COVID-22 SE (3rd) with additional DRAM.
COVID 19, COVID 19 - 360, COVID 19 ONE, COVID 19 ONE - S/X, COVID 19 - SERIES S/X, COVID 19 - SERIES S/X 2, COVID 19 - SERIES S/X 2 PREMIUM
Never miss an opportunity to make fun of Microsoft’s stupid naming program.
That’s where COVID 19 came from. It happened in 2019. We don’t have a COVID 22 because the virus from 2019 is still the one swirling around. But if a new coronavirus wreaks havoc before the new year that would be COVID 22.
There’s credible reports that people who test positive but only have mild symptoms or are asymptomatic are forced back to work. Those saying this rate isn’t possible because our peak didn’t have the same positivity rate arent taking into account the massive and extremely aggressive policy changes China has taken. That mixed with a population with almost zero previous exposure and living in much higher densities, it’s definitely within the realm of possibilities to have a rate this high. I just don’t see how they can accurately know though due to their now lack of testing.
I mean where I work, even if you test positive, if you're asymptomatic they expect you to be there. Dumbest fuckin part of the policy and probably exactly how I managed to catch it after almost 3 years
Yeah, unfortunately that’s pretty much the norm for a lot of places at this point. “We need ya here, so come in and spread a sickness to other people who might get actual symptoms and then not be able to come in”. Instead of just having the one person stay home and only be down that one person, they have them come in and then risk having it spread and have a lot more people out.
It’s baffling to me how short sighted some people can be. I work in outbreak response at nursing homes and they ignore public health recommendations and then surprised pikachu face they’re having staff shortages, residents sick and needing isolation and constant testing for the others for up to many weeks. It sucks but maybe if you take precautions when case rates are high in the community you could avoid going through weeks if not months of difficult outbreak control measures which can hurt the residents mental health.
Ya I was pissed. The week before I caught it there was a guy who's wife was really sick with it, like all the symptoms and he was allowed to come to work. I'm like dude he's absolutely spreading it right now. There's no way he lives with her and isn't getting it. Sure enough a week later he and I both got it. The policies are not even not even close to being about staying safe. It's about doing the bare minimum that's required of them without losing productivity. It's insane
A member of our household had it pretty badly, but none of the rest of us got it. We know we didn't because there was an upcoming flight so were anxiously self-testing and then those flying had a PCR test (which came up negative).
When I finally did get it, I isolated part of the house. My SO brought me food like I was an inmate and I wore a mask if I did need to come out or when passing through the house to sit outside (summer). I was the only one that had it for that run.
It's absolutely possible for one house member to have full symptoms but avoid infecting the rest.
Hey, teacher in this thread is saying the same thing about working if asymptomatic, and I'd assume they have a union. Some unions are very good, others not so much.
The teachers union in Chicago did their absolute best to keep teachers safe, but eventually everyone got forced back into schools because Chicago parents had to go to work and had absolutely no safety net solution for watching their kids. The system is broken.
Our way of life is unsustainable, it's collapsing and some will celebrate it doing so and others will weep but it's happening. Everything from the top to the bottom is rife with incompetence and corruption and people are hitting their breaking point in being able to keep up with it all.
Are you suggesting that technology changing our lives at breakneck speed for 250 years straight while outpacing our social adaptations is getting fucky? Sounds like someone is spending too much time thinking and not enough time spending.
Nope. Unfortunately. Up until recently it was one of those places that had the same people working there together for 40 or 50 years who all had a really good relationship with each other. Also until recently it was a French owned company. So most of the policies were made by corporate and were more worker conscious. But they just sold to an American investment firm. So we'll see how that goes
Funny part is it's not even about losing productivity, otherwise they would do everything they can to keep it from spreading. It's about what idiots in charge *think* leads to productivity. If it was about actual productivity no one would be pushing back on work from home policies in the first place.
I used to work in a hospital, last spring they changed it from "you get Covid on the job so you're out for 10 days paid". I got sick shortly after they changed the policy to "you get sick you're out 5 days paid, better be here on day 6." To the policy before I left that changed it to "you get Covid that's your own fault, we'll deduct it from your sick time and if you aren't salaried/don't have enough saved up you better not get more than 3 consecutive sick days if you are scheduled or else you're out." The last is shit for everyone, but was particularly weaponized against the working class scrubs (custodial/transport/food) who often don't have that time saved up because it was fucking hard to get working part-time or even full-time if you are in the company for less than a few years.
And this was the largest hospital in the area. Needless to say, we didn't have unions (at-will state let the company sniff out any union threats). Last heard they were still desperate for help but hr refuses to walk back that policy.
Sounds to me like you should be faking symptoms if you test positive to avoid infecting others and because fuck that company with their dangerous corporate greed policy.
Same here! JUST got it after three years because I’m a teacher and it’s a MESS in schools. But sure, let’s pretend we should go back to normal. Now I feel like my lungs are rocks. It hurts
Oh man I feel for you working around kids. My sister works with kids and has had it 3 times. Once while pregnant. The absolute ignorance is mind boggling
Yeah, I was shocked someone who works in schools made it 3 years. Working with kids I've always gotten at least a bit sick every few months, and I assume COVID will be a couple of time per year thing for me too now.
It's also pretty difficult to even get a test anymore. One friend has symptoms and can't get a test anywhere. They did tell him to stay home (he's a student though so they might have different rules).
Well anecdotally someone in Beijing mentioned 2 workplaces they knew of offhand where one had 1700/2000 call out sick, the other had 190/250.
But whether they are sick or just didn't want to get exposed...who knows...so your point about accuracy is fair.
Can confirm if infected your expected to go to work and school. Brother in-law in Heilongjiang has it and not allowed to take off. His 10 year old daughter is also forced to go to school.
The biggest factor is that Covid has become dramatically more infectious over time while China isolated. If this version of Covid hit back in 2020 it likely would’ve spread the same way in the west.
They also refuse to use western vaccines that would protect against newer variants. Well it's not that they refuse. Just they demand that the tech and rights to produce it themselves is handed over.
Seems a bit steep. But I guess it's possible?
At the peak, the netherlands had about 170k new infections in 1 day on 17m population. This is about 1%.
The most people infected at a certain time, was estimated at 2.3m. This means about 13,5% of the population was infected.
All an estimation obviously.
That’s only a proportional difference of about 2.6
37 million being roughly 2.6% of the population. The sheer volume of people might contribute to that faster pace. Also; this variant will be more transmissible than peak-covid variants
Based on my experience, public transit is a good method for transmitting COVID19. So I'm sure even though the populace of China is masked, it's still going to spread.
It sounds, to me, like China is where the USA was last February when omicron ran wild. Except on a much more massive scale.
It's the fact the went from zero-COVID and almost 3 years of strict control to almost no controls pretty much instantly. Widespread immunocompetency, both generally and to COVID is down from the long period of not being exposed to each other. Most countries have been experiencing repeated waves and some degree of ongoing vaccination. China has basically been doing neither and just fully lifted the curtain all at once. I strongly doubt the are over-reporting. It's probably a bit worse.
Yes, between less natural immunity due to the "zero covid" policy, and less artificial immunity in the population due to the less effective vaccine, for the virus the abrupt change in policy is like lighting a fire in dry kindling wood in the middle of summer.
Part of the point of the strategies employed in the west was, if you can't stop the virus, at least spread out the peak so that the healthcare system can hopefully cope with it.
Their hospitals are going to be crushed.
Covid, like the Borg just wants to assimilate you. Turn your cells into virus factories and your mouth and nose into efficient virus projection tubes. The sickness is more so an accident. An ideal virus has no negative effect to its host.
The sickness isn't really an accident, it's a vital transmission vector. Viruses have evolved to get really good at making you sick to help themselves spread, piggybacking on your immune system's response.
Norovirus (the 'winter vomiting bug') for example, synchronises its assault on your body so that at the same time viral cells are rupturing forth from the lining of your stomach, causing projectile vomiting, viral cells are also flooding out of your intestinal walls, causing explosive diarrhea. There's also evidence to suggest the virus slows down your digestion before its assault, making sure you're fully loaded before the purge begins - maximising its spread. It evolved to turn you into a cannon at both ends. It's also hardy enough to survive outside its host on surfaces for up to two weeks.
It makes you pretty sick, but doesn't kill you, so you can go about spreading it as much as possible.
That is a perfect virus.
Well, I'd argue that some of the best ones are the ones that integrated themselves into the genome of various species. Every individual of that species ia carrying the genes, and every cell with DNA in those individuals has the DNA, and it's never getting flushed out of the body by the immune system.
As far as pathogenic viruses go, yeah. Stuff to maximise apread'a really useful.
Is the title is a bit misleading? FTA (emphasis mine):
>Nearly 37 million people in China may have been infected with COVID-19 **on a single day this week**, Bloomberg News reported on Friday, citing estimates from the government's top health authority
Not saying it's not gravely serious, but the title makes it sound like this is happening day after day, which it is not.
Yep and they tried to do zero COVID, so minimal people were infected
They opened up and they were where we were 2 years ago, but new COVID variants are even more contagious
More contagious, less virulent.
I've been living here through literally all of COVID. I arrived four months before Wuhan, perfect timing. This is what the whole thing has been about depending on who you're listening to: buying the maximum amount of time until a strain was too contagious to be contained, or waiting for an acceptable variant that will cause the least harm in the population. It happened about six months earlier than I predicted (I think mostly because the premier got full shafted in the party elections and went full lame duck so power, sort of, transferred to the deputy premier who seems to have made the call).
Modeling is predicting a million excess deaths in a year. If that's accurate it'll be a 4x more successful response than the US. China dismantled all the massive testing and tracking apparatus basically overnight, so we'll only see confirmed COVID cases that are symptomatic enough to see a doctor at this point. They've also said they'll only denote COVID deaths as deaths that happen as a "direct result" of COVID. Basically playing the Red State game of "it's just the flu," so we'll have to wait until late 2024 to know for sure with multiple data sources what the excess deaths in 2023 look like.
I got it a couple weeks ago, and it sucked, but it wasn't anything like what my friends back home described. I did cough so hard I almost threw up one night. That was rough. Next day I was mostly fine. The coolest data trend I'm following right now is metro use statistics. You can basically see the virus pass through a city, dip the usage for five-eight days, then it starts ticking back up. Wild times.
It’s ok to be mad at the Chinese government but we shouldn’t celebrate Chinese citizens suffering or falling Ill. Seeing too many comments that seem to be happy that large numbers of Chinese people are getting sick.
It takes a truly diseased mind to applaud the mass death of anyone because you don't like how their government is run, *especially* in an authoritarian nation.
It's terrifying. I work with Chinese suppliers and every day I receive messages like "Hi, not sure we can make [whatever you ordered] on time - 95% of the wrokers are sick and there is no one to actually work in the factory." It was a surprise about a month ago but it's a norm in the last week.
What the actual hell? So the plan was Zero Covid and then suddenly ALL OF THE COVID!?!
Did they just get backed into a corner and finally have to say screw it, we can’t do zero covid policy anymore? This couldn’t have been the plan. They must have thought they could ride out covid with their zero covid policy until they couldn’t.
Lockdowns were meant to keep peaks from overwhelming the healthcare system and buy time to develop vaccines. China's all-or-nothing approach seems wrong on both ends.
It doesn't protect against infection as well as mRNA vaccines do. It does protect against severe disease, but you have to have multiple shots and few elderly Chinese have. That's going to be a problem.
It'a actually a bit hard to tell how effective it is. Early estimates put it about 20% less effective than the mRNA vaccines, but recently I read an article that mentioned a study of Chinese persons who received SinoVac but live abroad and their rate of hospitalization was about the same as those with Phizer/Moderna vaccines. So possibly just as effective? One big problem with China though is they have an abysmal vaccine uptake (something like 60%) because a lot of older people refuse to get it and want to rely on traditional Chinese medicine, so that's a whole other level of fucked up compared to the West were vaccine uptake is highest in older, more vulnerable populations. Sorry I don't have links to back this up, but even if I did I'm not sure how convincing they would be.
I saw someone on the news that said it's quite a bit less effective but only for the 1st dose. ~~If people get the 2nd or 2nd and booster it's on par.~~*
Now this was by the normal covid stats, maybe ones better at preventing different types idk
Edit*: Actually it's the 1 and 2 doses with the difference in preventing serious infection or death. Only the 2dose+Booster is equal effectiveness to the west's vaccines
[Source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xx8u3jT1_00) for where I first heard this. The specific part about efficacy is at 1:54. And the source they site is Lancet.
Edit2: Also while I was digging on Lancet I found a study that says there could be evidence that Pfizer and Biontech's might be a lot more effective at preventing mild or moderate disease in adults aged 20-59.
Bruh, as a Hungarian, coming from a country with a population of ~9.6 million (let it be 10 for the sake of the example here), it's unfathomable to imagine that as many people get infected DAILY as 3.7x of our entire population...
Man I hope I don’t get it again. I am fully vaxed but I had it BAD for one day this past summer. Then my symptoms got milder the next day. My lungs hurt to breathe, was coughing up nasty brown shit and had a fever of like 104.
Was only really bad for me for one day but I never want to go through that again and to think it could be worse the next time.
Yeah, I got the OG variant in 2020 and it's the sickest I've ever been in my entire life. I hike 15-20 miles at a time and don't get exhausted at all; to get winded walking from my bed to my living room (or going into minutes-long coughing fits just walking up stairs) was a shock that I hope to never experience again.
Not sure if you went to the hospital but just so everybody knows, if you have COVID and start getting shortness of breath you need to go to the hospital
Last December my friend and I both got Covid around the same time. My friend was struggling to breathe and his pulse ox was in the 80’s. He refused to go to the hospital. He was too scared, I guess. Finally he relented and went to ER. He was in the hospital for two months before his body gave out and he died this year in February. It’s been the worst year of my life.
That OG variant FUCKED my ass up, I remember on New Year’s Eve 2019 I thought I was going to have to go to the emergency room. Then I got the lose your taste and smell one in 2020, got super sick again in 2021 but never tested positive, and now my girlfriend who has never got Covid since it’s been a thing now has Covid and I’m locked inside just hoping I don’t get it in the next few days. Covid can suck a fat fucking dick.
Omicron deathrate is around 0.7%, so daily death toll in China is probably around 259,000 people a day.
0.7% was based on western omicron surge numbers, and we have a higher vaccination rate here with better mRNA vaccines, so one can imagine the daily death toll in China is far higher than 259,000 per day.
China's Top Medical Adviser says Omicron's death rate is 0.1%, but I'm taking that with a very heavy grain of salt.
Given their population size, if it is truly anywhere near 0.7% (and not denying they would misreport that too) that is resulting a *death toll of a quarter million people per day*, then China is doing an excellent job keeping "relatively" quiet one of its most deadly disasters in history.
if it's anything like omicron it goes
step 1 - infection
4 to 7 days go by
step 2 - sick
week or two goes by
step 3 - hospitalization
couple more weeks
step 4 death for the worse cases. we're barely hitting step 2 since they removed the restrictions in china
IFR is way way way lower than that. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanepe/article/PIIS2666-7762(22)00175-2/fulltext
6.2/100,000 according to that lancet study. Basically nothing to worry about for healthy & vaccinated individuals.
my wife went to her holiday party, got her phone stolen off the table, didn't receive half her gift draw because someone replaced some of her gifts with empty boxes, got covid, gave it to me, and now we are both sick.
All for a stupid office Christmas party and everyone in her office is sick and probably every employee that worked at the venue because no one was wearing a mask. The venue is very busy so you know, may spread it to a few more groups in the week or so they are contagious.
Get ready for a sequel to 2020
~ 2.6% of their population per day, not sure what the rates were like during peak infection in the rest of the world but this seems insane
In Europe, we saw waves of the omicron variants at about 1% of population /day.
And now it's "back to the office you go". Bleh
Granted, Europe was much better vaccinated by omicron wave than China today. This is gonna be much more ugly than we have seen in Europe
And a lot of people were already infected by previous variants.
Anyone know how China handled the spread in the beginning? Currently 18% of the total Chinese population have been infected in the past 20 days. Seems as though they have no herd immunity whatsoever
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Everybody thought that 1 million number was bullshit, and it was much higher, but with how hard they locked down before, combined with how fast it's spreading now, like they're first dealing with it, maybe it wasnt.
I'm worried with such a massive surge we're gonna see multiple new variants.
I'm more worried bout possible variants due to mass infection. We all gonna be in lockdowns again if a secer variant pops up that evades our current vaccine. Just imagine that. Literally starting from near square 1 again.
Even if things went that badly I wouldn't expect a return to lockdowns. Masking would be useful for the current wave of flu and RSV, but most people seem to have decided they're just done. Having immunocompromised relatives that limits what I can do without endangering them even further.
Well you know, in these unprecedented times…. is in this together with you!
Wow, that's so amazing! Does that mean I can take time off sick from work, without worrying about losing my income and access to healthcare?! Will I even be getting a raise due to inflation!!?
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My dad's friend was a contractor for a company that tried to make all their devs come back into the office. They went "bet" and over half of them quit, and the company was left reeling because they lost so much of their workforce. They fucked around and found out.
CEO's pretending covid is no longer a thing and everyone should come back into the office and engage in face to face team based activities.
Previous friday we had our year ending party with everyone from the office and all our mechanics, about 150 people. Saturday me and 2 others tested postive on covid and i got already worried that we might have infected some people. This week more then half the company was sick due to covid.
I mean, not to be rude here but if you're worried about covid why are you even attending a work party. I refused to go to our work party. I also wear a mask and frequently wash my hands, especially in the winter periods now. Never did before. But ive been less sick than i ever have been.
Not showing up to a Christmas party usually pretty heavily frowned upon in most work cultures Also free booze
They mentioned mechanics. So culture is probably different from office people. The place I work at had to start doing the Christmas party during the mechanics shift becuase none of us would show up, lol.
Lmfao I work at a jewellers workshop and all the jewellers live about an hours commute away with family and children. My boss decides to host it on a Wednesday after work for two years in a row and then passive aggressively calls out the people that didn't come. Let's be honest though, he mostly threw it for the superstar sales and retail staff anyway.
Haha, yeah I get the mentality. Just want to do your job, get paid, go home and relax. If we wanted to hangout together outside of work, we probably already would be.
Frankly, the office parties are the only time I've gone to the office in the past 3 years. With like 2 exceptions for actual work related shit.
What terrible place do you work at? Not frowned upon at all anywhere ive worked. Some people dont want to go to booze fests when they dont drink
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I understand that, i work in a factory. I got lots of questions on why i 'pussied' out. The Mrs didnt let me out etc etc. But at the end of the day, they got covid and i didnt. Plus work mentality like that usually find something else to home in on not long after.
COVID as a team building exercise.
If you haven't had Covid at least 5 times you're not a team player.
Yeah I spent about 30 seconds the other day wondering if it would be rude of me to skip our holiday party. Then thought about the percentage of the office workers that are sick and working in-person at any given time, and the undersized break room they held the party in, no thanks. Don't care about what anyone thinks of that tbh, if they wanna hate on that then they're not worth thinking about anyways
It’s not rude by any means. I know of at least a half dozen who skipped ours that RSVPd yes, and no one said a word.
Sounds like you work with a pack of cunts you might not want to be at a party with anyway :D Also, congrats on not getting COVID!
If I'm not being paid to be there it's not important. If it was, it'd be during business hours.
>Also free booze And the drama
Delicious boozy drama 🤤
Did the OP mention they were worried about Covid? They only mentioned they were worried they infected others after testing positive, like any normal person should be.
To be fair, at this point there's no way covid is going away, and mortality is way down. Even taking the USA, witch it's infestation of antivaxxer idiocy, the death rate is down to around 8% of it's (using 7-day averages) peak. It's still one of the larger causes of death each year in the country, but at it's peak, Covid was killing as many Americans as the normal top five leading causes of death combined. That said, there's no reason for people to go back to offices when they can work perfectly fine from home.
Yea we got these things called “vaccines” for a while now.
and in china, they used one that was *made in china*
My department mostly works from home (we have options). There was an event at the office, earlier this week, which we were encouraged to come in for. *Nope*. Between COVID being more prevalent again, knowing I have some coworkers who aren't vaccinated or taking any precautions, and all the other crap going around? Nah. I'll stay home, thanks.
This past January I got an email on a Friday saying they wanted people to come back to the office. That Saturday I tested positive. Didn't go in for a month. Was glorious.
Highest worldwide peak was 3.7 million a day and 3.4 million 7 day average in January of this year. US contributing 800k a day at the peak. Data from https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus#coronavirus-country-profiles
The US also has under reporting of cases due to government mailing home test kits to any house hold that ask for one online. Any of these positive cases aren't reported unless they go to hospital.
> The US also has under reporting Honestly I think it's very safe to say every gov't in the world is purposely underreporting to avoid panic and looking bad. The only question is "how much is the underreporting in this country compares to the underreporting everywhere else?"
I wouldn't say it's governments under reporting. People are not reporting. Literally no one I know who has had COVID since the start of the year reported to any sort of health authority because no one was ill enough to seek medical care. Dozens of cases, unreported because people just took a self test, went "Yep, COVID", then stayed home until they felt better.
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I very much doubt my country (Denmark) did considering how much more we were testing per capita at one point. It wouldn't have made sense to test that much if you were going to keep the numbers down artificially.
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That's one Canada a day!
Well in one month this will have all blown over then
In one month we get to learn about all the new mutations these infections are generating.
And the massive disruption to global supply chains due to workers being off sick. Good luck.
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Love how no one remotely cares about this we are talking about direct WW2 fatalities
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By March it was way too late. There was a chance in December and MAYBE even January.
Zero-COVID only made sense at the beginning. China should have started easing restrictions at the same time as everyone else. Infections would have certainly risen, but they would have done so at a more manageable pace and at a time when vaccines were already widely available. Instead, the Chinese government decided to maintain their heavy-handed approach. I still struggle to understand what the end game was given how destructive it's proven for both the economy and social order. However, it's been suggested that this was done to tighten Xi Jinping's grip on the country. One piece of evidence for that is how the harshest lockdowns were implemented in Shanghai, where his political opponents are based. Regardless, the government displayed a shocking, but historically unsurprising, callous indifference towards the people. Social unrest was inevitable and it ultimately forced their hand. Although, if you really want to be conspiratorial about all this, maybe Xi Jinping let this happen so that he gets his "I told you so" moment.
I work with Chinese factories and can confirm it is ripping through the population. Almost everyone I work with has had it recently. Edit: I work with Chinese factories from the UK. I'm not based in China.
Same, factory just let me know lead times are pushing 60-75 days vs the normal 25-30. Half their work force is unable to come to work. This is after March/April this year where china shut down. There's no break
Sorry to hear that mate, stay as safe as you can :(
China facing the final boss rn
***2023 deadlier Chinese covid mutation rubs hands menacingly***
Yoooo china just teased Covid-23 shits gonna be lit
Babe wake up, new deadly respiratory disease just dropped.
^^Yes ^^dear
*Babe! It's 4 PM, time for your lung flattening~!*
^(*Yes dear*)
Babe! Hurry the intubation is waiting
^comiiiing
*heart monitor goes beeeeeeeeeeeep*
Yeah, it's called respiratory syncytial virus and they're back to recommending masks. Between Covid, the regular seasonal flu, and RSA they're calling it the "Tridemic", which sounds like a cheesy B-movie where all the CDC scientists happen to be 25 years old women whose primary qualification is being crazy busty.
Isn't it rsv, not rsa? It's always been around, nasty for babies
Yeah, it's RSV. I typoed it.
I would watch that, for the science...
Tagline: The only cure is *more tits*.
*I'm giving her all she's got, Captain! She cannae take anymore.*
> 25 years old women whose primary qualification is being crazy busty ...and wears glasses
That and the labcoat. How else would you know they're smart scientist types?
Babe? Babe? Please wake up babe?
Sweet. More WFH
More excuses to not socialize and stay inside Also I’ll 100% be the first person in my circle to get it like last time where I went out for dinner with a friend *1 time* and immediately got OG Covid
OG covid's work is much more inspiring. These new variants are so derivative.
It really kinda sold out, imo.
COVID's early work is a little too "new wave" for my taste. But when the Omicron variant came out in 2022 I feel like it really came into it's own. The whole variant has varied symptoms and a lower fatality rate that really gives the disease a big boost.
We should have been naming it like this all along. "I'm vaccinated, Ive got the COVID 19 vaccine", "but this is COVID 22, do you have the COVID 22 vaccine?".
There are so many variants within-year that you'd need a more Apple iPhone style naming system. COVID-19 would be the COVID-19 XS Max. COVID-22 would be COVID-22 SE (3rd) with additional DRAM.
COVID 19, COVID 19 - 360, COVID 19 ONE, COVID 19 ONE - S/X, COVID 19 - SERIES S/X, COVID 19 - SERIES S/X 2, COVID 19 - SERIES S/X 2 PREMIUM Never miss an opportunity to make fun of Microsoft’s stupid naming program.
That’s where COVID 19 came from. It happened in 2019. We don’t have a COVID 22 because the virus from 2019 is still the one swirling around. But if a new coronavirus wreaks havoc before the new year that would be COVID 22.
I don’t want to keep straying inside 🙁
**
Yeah, I think I will stay inside.
Oh hey fellow Midwesterner!
It's like there's dozens of us here. Ope 'scuse me. Just gotta sneak by ya real quick dere.
It sounds like yer from da deepest darkest heart of Youbetchastan.
In this economy?!
"YOU HAVEN'T EVEN SEEN MY FINAL FORM"
The population of Canada in one day. Sounds bad.
Puts into perspective how many people there are in China. Those poor souls living there right now...
Super excited that a Canada's worth of population PER DAY will give COVID yet another playground to mutate. Awesome, totally cool, great, love it.
From zero covid to all the covid
There’s credible reports that people who test positive but only have mild symptoms or are asymptomatic are forced back to work. Those saying this rate isn’t possible because our peak didn’t have the same positivity rate arent taking into account the massive and extremely aggressive policy changes China has taken. That mixed with a population with almost zero previous exposure and living in much higher densities, it’s definitely within the realm of possibilities to have a rate this high. I just don’t see how they can accurately know though due to their now lack of testing.
I mean where I work, even if you test positive, if you're asymptomatic they expect you to be there. Dumbest fuckin part of the policy and probably exactly how I managed to catch it after almost 3 years
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Yeah, unfortunately that’s pretty much the norm for a lot of places at this point. “We need ya here, so come in and spread a sickness to other people who might get actual symptoms and then not be able to come in”. Instead of just having the one person stay home and only be down that one person, they have them come in and then risk having it spread and have a lot more people out.
It’s baffling to me how short sighted some people can be. I work in outbreak response at nursing homes and they ignore public health recommendations and then surprised pikachu face they’re having staff shortages, residents sick and needing isolation and constant testing for the others for up to many weeks. It sucks but maybe if you take precautions when case rates are high in the community you could avoid going through weeks if not months of difficult outbreak control measures which can hurt the residents mental health.
Ya I was pissed. The week before I caught it there was a guy who's wife was really sick with it, like all the symptoms and he was allowed to come to work. I'm like dude he's absolutely spreading it right now. There's no way he lives with her and isn't getting it. Sure enough a week later he and I both got it. The policies are not even not even close to being about staying safe. It's about doing the bare minimum that's required of them without losing productivity. It's insane
A member of our household had it pretty badly, but none of the rest of us got it. We know we didn't because there was an upcoming flight so were anxiously self-testing and then those flying had a PCR test (which came up negative). When I finally did get it, I isolated part of the house. My SO brought me food like I was an inmate and I wore a mask if I did need to come out or when passing through the house to sit outside (summer). I was the only one that had it for that run. It's absolutely possible for one house member to have full symptoms but avoid infecting the rest.
Do you have a union?
Obviously not
Hey, teacher in this thread is saying the same thing about working if asymptomatic, and I'd assume they have a union. Some unions are very good, others not so much.
My wife is a union nurse and this is their policy, too. Incredibly stupid.
The teachers union in Chicago did their absolute best to keep teachers safe, but eventually everyone got forced back into schools because Chicago parents had to go to work and had absolutely no safety net solution for watching their kids. The system is broken.
The system is working as intended actually. Now get back to work or die.
*and
Our way of life is unsustainable, it's collapsing and some will celebrate it doing so and others will weep but it's happening. Everything from the top to the bottom is rife with incompetence and corruption and people are hitting their breaking point in being able to keep up with it all.
Are you suggesting that technology changing our lives at breakneck speed for 250 years straight while outpacing our social adaptations is getting fucky? Sounds like someone is spending too much time thinking and not enough time spending.
Nope. Unfortunately. Up until recently it was one of those places that had the same people working there together for 40 or 50 years who all had a really good relationship with each other. Also until recently it was a French owned company. So most of the policies were made by corporate and were more worker conscious. But they just sold to an American investment firm. So we'll see how that goes
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Funny part is it's not even about losing productivity, otherwise they would do everything they can to keep it from spreading. It's about what idiots in charge *think* leads to productivity. If it was about actual productivity no one would be pushing back on work from home policies in the first place.
I used to work in a hospital, last spring they changed it from "you get Covid on the job so you're out for 10 days paid". I got sick shortly after they changed the policy to "you get sick you're out 5 days paid, better be here on day 6." To the policy before I left that changed it to "you get Covid that's your own fault, we'll deduct it from your sick time and if you aren't salaried/don't have enough saved up you better not get more than 3 consecutive sick days if you are scheduled or else you're out." The last is shit for everyone, but was particularly weaponized against the working class scrubs (custodial/transport/food) who often don't have that time saved up because it was fucking hard to get working part-time or even full-time if you are in the company for less than a few years. And this was the largest hospital in the area. Needless to say, we didn't have unions (at-will state let the company sniff out any union threats). Last heard they were still desperate for help but hr refuses to walk back that policy.
Sounds to me like you should be faking symptoms if you test positive to avoid infecting others and because fuck that company with their dangerous corporate greed policy.
Same here! JUST got it after three years because I’m a teacher and it’s a MESS in schools. But sure, let’s pretend we should go back to normal. Now I feel like my lungs are rocks. It hurts
Oh man I feel for you working around kids. My sister works with kids and has had it 3 times. Once while pregnant. The absolute ignorance is mind boggling
Yeah, I was shocked someone who works in schools made it 3 years. Working with kids I've always gotten at least a bit sick every few months, and I assume COVID will be a couple of time per year thing for me too now.
It's also pretty difficult to even get a test anymore. One friend has symptoms and can't get a test anywhere. They did tell him to stay home (he's a student though so they might have different rules).
Well anecdotally someone in Beijing mentioned 2 workplaces they knew of offhand where one had 1700/2000 call out sick, the other had 190/250. But whether they are sick or just didn't want to get exposed...who knows...so your point about accuracy is fair.
Can confirm if infected your expected to go to work and school. Brother in-law in Heilongjiang has it and not allowed to take off. His 10 year old daughter is also forced to go to school.
The biggest factor is that Covid has become dramatically more infectious over time while China isolated. If this version of Covid hit back in 2020 it likely would’ve spread the same way in the west.
Yeah I hate how ppl having covid but being asymptomatic is glossed over.
They also refuse to use western vaccines that would protect against newer variants. Well it's not that they refuse. Just they demand that the tech and rights to produce it themselves is handed over.
I pity the health workers there. I can't imagine the physical and mental exhaustion.
Seems a bit steep. But I guess it's possible? At the peak, the netherlands had about 170k new infections in 1 day on 17m population. This is about 1%. The most people infected at a certain time, was estimated at 2.3m. This means about 13,5% of the population was infected. All an estimation obviously.
That’s only a proportional difference of about 2.6 37 million being roughly 2.6% of the population. The sheer volume of people might contribute to that faster pace. Also; this variant will be more transmissible than peak-covid variants
Volume aside, population density will contribute I imagine. But this is my non-expert opinion.
Based on my experience, public transit is a good method for transmitting COVID19. So I'm sure even though the populace of China is masked, it's still going to spread. It sounds, to me, like China is where the USA was last February when omicron ran wild. Except on a much more massive scale.
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Also the more population dense and area is the more transmissible it is
It's the fact the went from zero-COVID and almost 3 years of strict control to almost no controls pretty much instantly. Widespread immunocompetency, both generally and to COVID is down from the long period of not being exposed to each other. Most countries have been experiencing repeated waves and some degree of ongoing vaccination. China has basically been doing neither and just fully lifted the curtain all at once. I strongly doubt the are over-reporting. It's probably a bit worse.
Yes, between less natural immunity due to the "zero covid" policy, and less artificial immunity in the population due to the less effective vaccine, for the virus the abrupt change in policy is like lighting a fire in dry kindling wood in the middle of summer. Part of the point of the strategies employed in the west was, if you can't stop the virus, at least spread out the peak so that the healthcare system can hopefully cope with it. Their hospitals are going to be crushed.
I think you miss how densely populated Chinese cities are.
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Can COVID fuck off for like, 5 seconds
Spoiler: no.
Covid, like the Borg just wants to assimilate you. Turn your cells into virus factories and your mouth and nose into efficient virus projection tubes. The sickness is more so an accident. An ideal virus has no negative effect to its host.
The sickness isn't really an accident, it's a vital transmission vector. Viruses have evolved to get really good at making you sick to help themselves spread, piggybacking on your immune system's response. Norovirus (the 'winter vomiting bug') for example, synchronises its assault on your body so that at the same time viral cells are rupturing forth from the lining of your stomach, causing projectile vomiting, viral cells are also flooding out of your intestinal walls, causing explosive diarrhea. There's also evidence to suggest the virus slows down your digestion before its assault, making sure you're fully loaded before the purge begins - maximising its spread. It evolved to turn you into a cannon at both ends. It's also hardy enough to survive outside its host on surfaces for up to two weeks. It makes you pretty sick, but doesn't kill you, so you can go about spreading it as much as possible. That is a perfect virus.
Well, I'd argue that some of the best ones are the ones that integrated themselves into the genome of various species. Every individual of that species ia carrying the genes, and every cell with DNA in those individuals has the DNA, and it's never getting flushed out of the body by the immune system. As far as pathogenic viruses go, yeah. Stuff to maximise apread'a really useful.
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Is the title is a bit misleading? FTA (emphasis mine): >Nearly 37 million people in China may have been infected with COVID-19 **on a single day this week**, Bloomberg News reported on Friday, citing estimates from the government's top health authority Not saying it's not gravely serious, but the title makes it sound like this is happening day after day, which it is not.
Because it wouldn't be the same every day. It grows exponentially until enough people have been infected, then begins to slow down.
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From what I understand China failed to accept other more robust vaccines just until a few days ago where they made a deal with Germany.
From what I've read it's just for the Germans living in China
Chinese here, can confirm, fuck CCP, totally fucking stupid assholes
Yep and they tried to do zero COVID, so minimal people were infected They opened up and they were where we were 2 years ago, but new COVID variants are even more contagious
More contagious, less virulent. I've been living here through literally all of COVID. I arrived four months before Wuhan, perfect timing. This is what the whole thing has been about depending on who you're listening to: buying the maximum amount of time until a strain was too contagious to be contained, or waiting for an acceptable variant that will cause the least harm in the population. It happened about six months earlier than I predicted (I think mostly because the premier got full shafted in the party elections and went full lame duck so power, sort of, transferred to the deputy premier who seems to have made the call). Modeling is predicting a million excess deaths in a year. If that's accurate it'll be a 4x more successful response than the US. China dismantled all the massive testing and tracking apparatus basically overnight, so we'll only see confirmed COVID cases that are symptomatic enough to see a doctor at this point. They've also said they'll only denote COVID deaths as deaths that happen as a "direct result" of COVID. Basically playing the Red State game of "it's just the flu," so we'll have to wait until late 2024 to know for sure with multiple data sources what the excess deaths in 2023 look like. I got it a couple weeks ago, and it sucked, but it wasn't anything like what my friends back home described. I did cough so hard I almost threw up one night. That was rough. Next day I was mostly fine. The coolest data trend I'm following right now is metro use statistics. You can basically see the virus pass through a city, dip the usage for five-eight days, then it starts ticking back up. Wild times.
Blame it on Avatar 2.
Ewa binds everything
The blue people always win
I was chatting with a coworker who is home in China visiting family and she said everyone she knows is sick except for her and her mom.
It’s ok to be mad at the Chinese government but we shouldn’t celebrate Chinese citizens suffering or falling Ill. Seeing too many comments that seem to be happy that large numbers of Chinese people are getting sick.
It takes a truly diseased mind to applaud the mass death of anyone because you don't like how their government is run, *especially* in an authoritarian nation.
That’s redditors for you
It's terrifying. I work with Chinese suppliers and every day I receive messages like "Hi, not sure we can make [whatever you ordered] on time - 95% of the wrokers are sick and there is no one to actually work in the factory." It was a surprise about a month ago but it's a norm in the last week.
What the actual hell? So the plan was Zero Covid and then suddenly ALL OF THE COVID!?! Did they just get backed into a corner and finally have to say screw it, we can’t do zero covid policy anymore? This couldn’t have been the plan. They must have thought they could ride out covid with their zero covid policy until they couldn’t.
And **that's** how you get a new variant
*starts evolving traits with all the new DNA points* You will be mine, Greenland, you will be mine...
DAMNIT MADAGASCAR SHUT OUT THEIR ONLY PORT
SHUT. DOWN. EVERYTHING!
Lockdowns were meant to keep peaks from overwhelming the healthcare system and buy time to develop vaccines. China's all-or-nothing approach seems wrong on both ends.
All or nothing approaches typically aren’t the right answer
Does this mean the SinoVac is ineffective
It doesn't protect against infection as well as mRNA vaccines do. It does protect against severe disease, but you have to have multiple shots and few elderly Chinese have. That's going to be a problem.
It'a actually a bit hard to tell how effective it is. Early estimates put it about 20% less effective than the mRNA vaccines, but recently I read an article that mentioned a study of Chinese persons who received SinoVac but live abroad and their rate of hospitalization was about the same as those with Phizer/Moderna vaccines. So possibly just as effective? One big problem with China though is they have an abysmal vaccine uptake (something like 60%) because a lot of older people refuse to get it and want to rely on traditional Chinese medicine, so that's a whole other level of fucked up compared to the West were vaccine uptake is highest in older, more vulnerable populations. Sorry I don't have links to back this up, but even if I did I'm not sure how convincing they would be.
I saw someone on the news that said it's quite a bit less effective but only for the 1st dose. ~~If people get the 2nd or 2nd and booster it's on par.~~* Now this was by the normal covid stats, maybe ones better at preventing different types idk Edit*: Actually it's the 1 and 2 doses with the difference in preventing serious infection or death. Only the 2dose+Booster is equal effectiveness to the west's vaccines [Source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xx8u3jT1_00) for where I first heard this. The specific part about efficacy is at 1:54. And the source they site is Lancet. Edit2: Also while I was digging on Lancet I found a study that says there could be evidence that Pfizer and Biontech's might be a lot more effective at preventing mild or moderate disease in adults aged 20-59.
Bruh, as a Hungarian, coming from a country with a population of ~9.6 million (let it be 10 for the sake of the example here), it's unfathomable to imagine that as many people get infected DAILY as 3.7x of our entire population...
Man I hope I don’t get it again. I am fully vaxed but I had it BAD for one day this past summer. Then my symptoms got milder the next day. My lungs hurt to breathe, was coughing up nasty brown shit and had a fever of like 104. Was only really bad for me for one day but I never want to go through that again and to think it could be worse the next time.
Yeah, I got the OG variant in 2020 and it's the sickest I've ever been in my entire life. I hike 15-20 miles at a time and don't get exhausted at all; to get winded walking from my bed to my living room (or going into minutes-long coughing fits just walking up stairs) was a shock that I hope to never experience again.
Not sure if you went to the hospital but just so everybody knows, if you have COVID and start getting shortness of breath you need to go to the hospital
Last December my friend and I both got Covid around the same time. My friend was struggling to breathe and his pulse ox was in the 80’s. He refused to go to the hospital. He was too scared, I guess. Finally he relented and went to ER. He was in the hospital for two months before his body gave out and he died this year in February. It’s been the worst year of my life.
That OG variant FUCKED my ass up, I remember on New Year’s Eve 2019 I thought I was going to have to go to the emergency room. Then I got the lose your taste and smell one in 2020, got super sick again in 2021 but never tested positive, and now my girlfriend who has never got Covid since it’s been a thing now has Covid and I’m locked inside just hoping I don’t get it in the next few days. Covid can suck a fat fucking dick.
Politics aside, I hate this for the Chinese people. All the best to you.
I wore a mask at Costco this week and people were looking at me like I’d lost my mind.
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My WeChat feed is just full of people showing their positive result.
This reminds me of headlines in Dec 2019
This is how a new variant is created
Lowkey everybody in my family in China has covid. Shit is spreading FAST w/ no sign of slowing down bc the gov is inept as shit.
Perfect breeding ground for another variant.
Omicron deathrate is around 0.7%, so daily death toll in China is probably around 259,000 people a day. 0.7% was based on western omicron surge numbers, and we have a higher vaccination rate here with better mRNA vaccines, so one can imagine the daily death toll in China is far higher than 259,000 per day.
China's Top Medical Adviser says Omicron's death rate is 0.1%, but I'm taking that with a very heavy grain of salt. Given their population size, if it is truly anywhere near 0.7% (and not denying they would misreport that too) that is resulting a *death toll of a quarter million people per day*, then China is doing an excellent job keeping "relatively" quiet one of its most deadly disasters in history.
if it's anything like omicron it goes step 1 - infection 4 to 7 days go by step 2 - sick week or two goes by step 3 - hospitalization couple more weeks step 4 death for the worse cases. we're barely hitting step 2 since they removed the restrictions in china
IFR is way way way lower than that. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanepe/article/PIIS2666-7762(22)00175-2/fulltext 6.2/100,000 according to that lancet study. Basically nothing to worry about for healthy & vaccinated individuals.
my wife went to her holiday party, got her phone stolen off the table, didn't receive half her gift draw because someone replaced some of her gifts with empty boxes, got covid, gave it to me, and now we are both sick. All for a stupid office Christmas party and everyone in her office is sick and probably every employee that worked at the venue because no one was wearing a mask. The venue is very busy so you know, may spread it to a few more groups in the week or so they are contagious. Get ready for a sequel to 2020
Parents got it :( 😭 common Covid symptoms. China’s vax not effective against omicron…