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COVID-19 Impacts- No Conspiracy Theories

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Robotaz
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COVID-19 Impacts- No Conspiracy Theories

Post by Robotaz »

vta_watch wrote:
Robotaz wrote:
vta_watch wrote:I was fully vaccinated with Pfizer, but got the Moderna booster at the same time I got my annual flu shot. Interestingly, I had a brief but strong reaction to the first vaccine (plus SIRVA*, which is another story), a very mild reaction to the second, and zero reaction to the booster.

I keep hearing conflicting information about the severity of Omicron, but since I never really stopped masking and social distancing, don't plan to anytime soon, and am now permanently working remotely, I don't expect much will change in my daily life regardless.

*Shoulder Injury Related to Vaccine Administration

Tap. Talk. Buy another watch. Repeat.
How has remote work affected you? I am probably taking a job with Xcel Energy in Denver and they are mostly remote. Even though I’m used to managing projects remotely, I’m scared of two things, 1.) trying to start at a new company with lots of stakeholders that I cannot meet and that whom I’m responsible for, and 2.) having my damn projects down the hall all the time.

How do you put the work down when it’s personal time and your desk is right there?
I try to keep regular hours (8-5ish), and make it clear that I'm not available 24/7. I'm just old-fashioned enough to believe in a 40-hour week and work-life balance. As someone said, I can always be replaced at work, but I can't be replaced at home, so it's clear what my priorities are.

Work will be there in the morning, and it's not like I'm doing brain surgery. The world won't collapse if I eat dinner and watch TV in the evening, and I'll be a bigger asset to the company if I'm not exhausted and stressed out.

Tap. Talk. Buy another watch. Repeat.
I’ve hijacked this thread enough. If any of you are consultants who are used to your customers destroying you, putting their world of crap on you during the holidays so that they get a vacation, etc., I’d be curious to hear how you’ve dealt with working from home and keeping work and home separate. So far I can’t do it. I worked 25 years and being part owner of an international engineering company, and I’m not embarrassed to say I can’t do it anymore. Pandemic hammered it home. Somehow I have to learn to work at home and turn it off when I walk out of the office that’s next to my bedroom. I don’t see how people do it.
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Re: COVID-19 Impacts- No Conspiracy Theories

Post by TheJohnP »

Robotaz wrote: Sat Dec 18, 2021 6:23 pm
vta_watch wrote:
Robotaz wrote: How has remote work affected you? I am probably taking a job with Xcel Energy in Denver and they are mostly remote. Even though I’m used to managing projects remotely, I’m scared of two things, 1.) trying to start at a new company with lots of stakeholders that I cannot meet and that whom I’m responsible for, and 2.) having my damn projects down the hall all the time.

How do you put the work down when it’s personal time and your desk is right there?
I try to keep regular hours (8-5ish), and make it clear that I'm not available 24/7. I'm just old-fashioned enough to believe in a 40-hour week and work-life balance. As someone said, I can always be replaced at work, but I can't be replaced at home, so it's clear what my priorities are.

Work will be there in the morning, and it's not like I'm doing brain surgery. The world won't collapse if I eat dinner and watch TV in the evening, and I'll be a bigger asset to the company if I'm not exhausted and stressed out.

Tap. Talk. Buy another watch. Repeat.
I’ve hijacked this thread enough. If any of you are consultants who are used to your customers destroying you, putting their world of crap on you during the holidays so that they get a vacation, etc., I’d be curious to hear how you’ve dealt with working from home and keeping work and home separate. So far I can’t do it. I worked 25 years and being part owner of an international engineering company, and I’m not embarrassed to say I can’t do it anymore. Pandemic hammered it home. Somehow I have to learn to work at home and turn it off when I walk out of the office that’s next to my bedroom. I don’t see how people do it.
I did start this thread, the MoT Business Resource Group.
Might be a good thread to continue this conversation.

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Re: COVID-19 Impacts- No Conspiracy Theories

Post by BostonCharlie »

Omicron a fast mover alright. The numbers from South Africa and the UK are still indicating lower rates of hospitalization, ICU and death compared to earlier waves at this stage (by my armchair reckoning).

From WSJ (paywall):
Omicron Variant Accounts for 73% of U.S. Covid-19 Cases, CDC Says;
A week ago, the CDC’s data showed that the variant had caused some 3% of recent infections in the nation
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Re: COVID-19 Impacts- No Conspiracy Theories

Post by The Sultan of SoWhat »

The New York Times

BREAKING NEWS

Omicron is now the most common variant among new Covid cases in the U.S., accounting for nearly three-quarters of new infections, the C.D.C. said.

Monday, December 20, 2021 6:54 PM EST

Omicron, discovered thanks to its distinctive combination of more than 50 mutations, has turned out to be highly transmissible — two to three times as likely to spread as Delta — and less susceptible to vaccines than other variants. Early cases raised hopes that it may cause milder disease than other variants, but scientists say more research is needed.
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Re: COVID-19 Impacts- No Conspiracy Theories

Post by Spirit of the Watch »

NHL to pause season Wednesday, resume as scheduled after Christmas break, amid COVID-19 cases

More than 15% of the league's players were in virus protocols as of Monday night.

https://www.espn.com/nhl/story/_/id/329 ... atform=amp

Get your boosters everyone, the NHL was near 100% vaccinated and that didn't stop the new variant
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Post by BostonCharlie »

I like the reporting on coronavirus by this Health Policy Watch.

This was written on the 10th, so it's not current, but until we have more information (which is being hampered by the holidays, it seems), it's what we have. The note about patient vacc status, which I emphasized below, is disconcerting. The rest of the information is encouraging.

The vaccination rate in SA is 26% fully vacc'ed, while 31% have at least one shot according to Google's chart. Saying 70% in hospital aren't vaccinated means 30% are vaccinated, which suggests the risk of getting hospitalized for omicron aren't improved with the old, two-shot course. Note that booster shots have only recently been approved in SA, so probably none of these patients were boosted.
The virus reproduction number of the Omicron variant in Gauteng province – the epicentre of South Africa’s pandemic – is 3 – meaning that one infected person will infect three others on average. That is the highest seen so far in the country’s COVID-19 pandemic history – and testimony to the highly infectious nature of the new SARS-CoV2 variant.

South Africa’s health minister, Dr Joe Phaahla, described this reproductive number as “something we have never seen” at a Friday media briefing.

During the country’s Delta-driven third wave, the number remained below 2. However, in some other countries, Delta’s reproduction number breached five, according to a Lancet study.

On the more positive side, Phaahla said that early data from the department’s national hospital surveillance showed that hospitalised COVID-19 patients had shorter stays, and fewer had severe disease, as compared to patients admitted in a similar time frame in the second and third waves.

Moreover, some 70% of those hospitalised for COVID-19 were not vaccinated, he added.

He defined severity as any patient who developed acute respiratory distress syndrome, received oxygen, ventilation, was treated in high care or ICU or died.

However, he cautioned that severity data “has several limitations at the early phase of the wave when numbers are small”.

“Patients with mild symptoms are more likely to be admitted as a precaution, patients are diagnosed with COVID-19 incidentally when admitted for other reasons, and because there has not been sufficient follow-up time for severity and outcomes to have accumulated, which is typically up to 3 weeks after diagnosis,” explained Phaahla.
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COVID-19 Impacts- No Conspiracy Theories

Post by Robotaz »

Got my Pfizer booster yesterday and just barely feel it in my arm. So far the 3 shots I’ve had have been very uneventful.

My wife thought she was dying for about 6 hours in the middle of the first night after getting her 3rd Moderna.

I get my shots because I feel like it’s the right thing to do in keeping small businesses open. I don’t know anybody else who uses the same logic. To each his own.

It’ll be interesting to see how quickly Omicron burns through communities. I’m hearing people already have it around me and they say it’s like a cold. But I think the ones I’ve talked to are vaccinated. Whether our vaccines do much with Omicron I guess is still debatable.
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Post by BostonCharlie »

Good news reported in the WSJ here (paywall):
The Edinburgh study, drawing on the health records of 5.4 million people in Scotland, found the risk of hospitalization with Covid-19 was two-thirds lower with Omicron than with Delta.

A separate study published online by researchers at South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases similarly found people infected with Omicron were 70% to 80% less likely to need hospital treatment than people infected with earlier variants, including Delta.

The findings offer new evidence that Omicron infections tend to be milder in populations with high levels of immunity, whether from vaccination or prior infection.
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Re: COVID-19 Impacts- No Conspiracy Theories

Post by Spirit of the Watch »

I've got a flight in a few weeks, wasn't happy seeing the canceled flights. Being in lab can be rough but I can't imagine being a flight attendant. Less blood, way less blood, but possibly more violent
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Re: COVID-19 Impacts- No Conspiracy Theories

Post by peskydonut »

CDC Updates and Shortens Recommended Isolation and Quarantine Period for General Population.

https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021 ... dance.html
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Post by Robotaz »

peskydonut wrote:CDC Updates and Shortens Recommended Isolation and Quarantine Period for General Population.

https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021 ... dance.html
It’s interesting that if you’re boosted you don’t even have to quarantine after exposure. Only wear a mask for 10 days.
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Post by peskydonut »

Robotaz wrote:
peskydonut wrote:CDC Updates and Shortens Recommended Isolation and Quarantine Period for General Population.

https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021 ... dance.html
It’s interesting that if you’re boosted you don’t even have to quarantine after exposure. Only wear a mask for 10 days.
Seems that they're trying to walk the razor's edge between caution and pragmatism.
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Re: COVID-19 Impacts- No Conspiracy Theories

Post by Robotaz »

peskydonut wrote:
Robotaz wrote:
peskydonut wrote:CDC Updates and Shortens Recommended Isolation and Quarantine Period for General Population.

https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021 ... dance.html
It’s interesting that if you’re boosted you don’t even have to quarantine after exposure. Only wear a mask for 10 days.
Seems that they're trying to walk the razor's edge between caution and pragmatism.
I agree!

The issue I have with that, is that companies use these guidelines and now you’ll have exposed people at work who may or not be wearing good masks, and wearing them properly. I think if I were an employer I would probably stick with the 5 days if my employees worked indoors and in close proximity to each other.
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Post by BostonCharlie »

Good news. Emphasis mine:
Research by South African scientists suggests that Omicron could displace the Delta variant of the coronavirus because infection with the new variant boosts immunity to the older one.

The study only covered a small group of people and has not been peer-reviewed, but it found that people who were infected with Omicron, especially those who were vaccinated, developed enhanced immunity to the Delta variant.

The analysis enrolled 33 vaccinated and unvaccinated people who were infected with the Omicron variant in South Africa.

While the authors found that neutralisation of Omicron increased 14-fold over 14 days after the enrolment, they also found that there was a 4.4-fold increase in neutralisation of the Delta variant.
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Re: COVID-19 Impacts- No Conspiracy Theories

Post by Robotaz »

One “good” thing about Omicron is that it’s so infectious and rapidly spreading, that we may finally see a real net herd effect that stops variants from just tearing through over and over. I was wondering how, at previous infection rates, this would ever end. Now, a lot more people are going to be unphased if/when another variant comes through, and they may just finally be a factor to slow or stop the virus.

The big concern I have now, is that there are isolated pockets due to more lockdowns that stay “immune” to this herd effect and in fact end up being incubators and spreaders of the next variant(s). But I have noticed, interestingly, that many countries are not locking down and in fact are opening up even more. I don’t know if it’s coordinated planning or what, but it seems to make sense.
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