The Coronavirus Thread

[Brian Peacock]

China got omicron too now.

[JimC]

Return to sender...

[Sean Hayden]

...address unknown

[Tero]

It's never too late to declare vaccine denial a religion.
https://www.klkntv.com/proposed-bill-wo ... cn6omN8aZ0

[Woodbutcher]

...no such number...

[Brian Peacock]

Article considering the pandemic's impact on pre-schoolers...

Until the spring of 2020, Rebecca Handford’s then two-year-old daughter Eadie was happily spending three days a week being looked after by her grandparents, enjoying trips out, and going to cafes.

But then came the first lockdown, and her world closed in overnight. The family, who live in a small village on the border between Cheshire and Derbyshire, felt lucky to have a garden for Eadie to play in – although, as Handford ruefully puts it, while she was trying to work from home “Mr Tumble did a lot of the heavy lifting”.

Eadie is an only child, and her language came on in leaps and bounds due to spending so much time with her parents. But Handford worries that she missed out on learning to socialise. “If there’s a little gang of toddlers running around, she very much doesn’t want to take part. Even if we go to the park, if there’s another child on the slide she will go and play somewhere else until it’s free.”

Eadie has grown more confident since starting preschool, but still prefers the company of adults. Like many parents, Handford and her husband wonder if this is temporary or whether the pandemic has in some ways shaped the person Eadie will grow up to be.

Something similar is true for Emily Knight and her husband. They spent the first lockdown at home in Grantham, Lincolnshire, working from home while juggling a baby and a two-year-old between them. When restrictions lifted last summer, Knight, who works for an MP, discovered that after so long without seeing other people, her children found being in a busy supermarket overwhelming. “My youngest screams at the notion of going near a swimming pool. Stuff that you build up with very small children to get them used to it – they haven’t had that,” she says. “They haven’t really interacted with people who aren’t in their immediate family. I now have a four-year-old who cowers in fear when a shopkeeper says hello to him.”

...

According to a YouGov survey [PDF] after last spring’s lockdown, British parents worry much less about small children catching the virus than about the impact of the pandemic on their development; a quarter thought it would set their language back, while half had concerns about emotional and social skills – things such as learning to share, take turns and make friends. Other fears pertain to how growing up in a climate of constant anxiety has affected their children’s mental health, or whether they’ll be behind when they start school.

After the first Covid wave in 2020 – which saw nurseries closed to all but key workers’ and vulnerable children for up to six months – the Education Endowment Foundation, a social mobility charity, asked schools about the children who were starting reception that autumn. Three-quarters of the schools surveyed [PDF] reported that new starters were behind in speech, writing and number skills, as well as the ability to focus and behave in class...


https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/ ... -all-right

[rainbow]

Return to sender...

...to be sure, the Chinese wouldn't be responsible. If they were, the first outbreak would've been in London, New York, or Moscow.

That's just logical

[Brian Peacock]

First there was Omicron... then came Stealth Omicron.

[JimC]

Did you hear about the comedian whose gigs were often the source of covid 19 outbreaks?

Problem was, he had an infectious laugh...

[macdoc]

[Brian Peacock]

Leprechaun data...

Another 92,000 Covid cases were reported for England on Monday, a steep rise on the day before, after reinfections were included in the statistics for the first time.

Previously daily Covid case figures – which reflect the number of new infections picked up by testing – did not include reinfections for England, Scotland or Northern Ireland, although figures for Wales did, provided the positive tests were more than 42 days apart. In other words, most people were only counted once even if they had caught Covid multiple times.

However, as the pandemic has gone on, the absence of reinfections in case data led to concerns, with experts noting that a previous infection provides little protection against Omicron, while – two years into the pandemic – there is a bigger pool of people who have had Covid at least once before.

Scientists noted that it was also important to include reinfections in order to understand the dynamics of the spread of immune-evasive variants that emerge, while it also sheds light on why some individuals may get infected over and over.

“This is likely to be a combination of risk – due to exposure – plus inherent likelihood of becoming infected, once exposed,” said Prof Rowland Kao, an epidemiologist at the University of Edinburgh. “We need to know these things in order to better target interventions of various sorts – how important, for example, particularly workplaces are likely to be, and how some individuals are therefore going to be exposed to more risk.”...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/ ... first-time

[Tero]

Omicron kills 6. 2 were vaccinated but not boostered.
https://www.1011now.com/2022/01/31/llch ... -covid-19/

[macdoc]

End of the beginning perhaps..

South Africa eases most COVID restrictions, citing high population immunity
February 1, 202212:54 PM E

https://www.npr.org/2022/02/01/10773007 ... strictions

[Tero]

Socialism saves tens of thousands.

[Sean Hayden]

But then you have to live with socialists; is that really living?