Covid 19 - Updates from your zones

[Jitter]

My condolences about your relatives, deadrose. What a terrible rate!

We have some anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers and protesters here in Finland too, but despite great efforts they haven’t managed to ruin everything. At least so far. Now the government is planning to lift the restrictions as vaccination rates climb. We are nationally at bit over 60% of over 12 year olds fully vaccinated. The threshold for removing the restrictions is planned to be 80% fully vaccinated or the time when everyone over 12 would have been able to get their shots.

[deadrose]

The dreadful thing this autumn is that with the schools opening back up, and the delta variant of the virus, so many children are getting sick, some of them quite badly. In many areas of the country, it's a very bad time to need emergency hospitalization, as emergency departments and intensive care units are full. One state (Idaho) has had to start triaging people and treating only the ones with a good chance of survival. The rest are "made comfortable".

[Opaque]

I miss Seattle it's a great place (Very pretty too). Your daughter's must miss you too. Hopefully everything will work out for you. I'm so sorry to hear you lost some family to this plague. Oklahoma isn't doing well with people preferring to poison themselves over getting vaccinated. It's very disappointing to watch. They would rather their children go to school with out masks than protect them or other children from harm. There have been too many kids die from this and still people can't be bothered to care.
It's a shame people are so willing to sacrifice their neighbors/family/friends for their own stubbornness. We have a long ways left to go but everyone needs to stay strong and keep everyone else safe. Take care of yourselves.

[Jitter]

People don’t cease to amaze me. Frankly, I had thought (hoped) that the dewormer thing was something that a small group of crazies actually did, and became meme material due to the sheer ridiculousness of it. Even though I had read about it I couldn’t believe it would be so widespread! Thank you for enlightening me, although this particular piece of information is one that I would wish to be untrue.

[Opaque]

Don't get me wrong. There is ivermectin for humans too. Of course some people are smart enough to use that instead of the stuff for horses (not that a dewormer will help against a virus). Still, many people have jump straight to the ivermectin for livestock. The fact that some people are so eager to use horse dewormer without thinking it through is, to be honest, frightening. Hospitals can't even keep up with their covid cases and they really shouldn't be dealing with these people getting sick too.
While I don't agree with them on many issues I also don't want them to get sick. Even if they're doing it to themselves...

[midwestmutt]

For all our technology we are still not too far removed from bloodletting and burying cats in the graveyard at midnight.

[RanVor]

For all our technology we are still not too far removed from bloodletting and burying cats in the graveyard at midnight.

Where else are you supposed to bury cats?

[Grade E cat]

I think it's midnight that is supposed to be the strange part.

Spoiler:  Technicality I happen to be aware of • show

Also, it's technically illegal where I live and one is supposed to have the body disposed of properly. The vet who put to sleep the cat I grew up with was explicitly turning a blind eye because my home has a few large flower beds that take up half the garden between them.

[midwestmutt]

I think it's midnight that is supposed to be the strange part.

Spoiler:  Technicality I happen to be aware of • show

Also, it's technically illegal where I live and one is supposed to have the body disposed of properly. The vet who put to sleep the cat I grew up with was explicitly turning a blind eye because my home has a few large flower beds that take up half the garden between them.

It was an old folk remedy for warts.

[LetsEatBees]

Over where I am some universities have made proof of vaccination mandatory for anyone entering.
Mine just had to be one of them, and I just had to wait to get vaccinated didn't I.
So my scheduled is going to be a bit confusing for a while.

[wavewright62]

Mobile vaxx vehicles are rolling out tomorrow (heh, geddit? rolling out? jaaa okay).  Cute names are being mooted for this service, among them: Vaxi Taxi, Vax-In-Da Arm (a play on our PM, Jacinda Ardern), Jabba Cabba, Crusher Covid (a play on the nickname of the Leader of the Opposition, "Crusher" Collins), and my personal favourite, Jabber Waka (a waka being the Maori word for canoe but now in use in NZ English for any vehicle).

Have you got any good ones?

[JoB]

Have you got any good ones?

For our similar efforts? Not really, they officially go as "niedrigschwellige Impfangebote" (low-threshold vaccination offers) and the nicknames need only a minuscule dose of originality to raise above that. Also, srs bsnss with our stalling vaccination rates (~60% now, ~5% outright unwilling, need to get to the remaining ~35% to reach a level sufficient to prevent another wave or vax getting made mandatory).

For yours? Weeeeeell ...
Shot in the Park(ing)
Riding Shotgun (how frequent is the term "vaccination gun" in English-speaking countries, actually?)
Drive-By Jabbing (OK, this one might prove contentious ...)
Needles 'n' Grins
Spritza Delivery
Flying Docs (might want to avoid that one where the real ones are active)
Keystone Docs
Yellow Carders
Strain Unsurfers ('cause they want to stop the waves, geddit?)
... OK, work just called with an outage, prepare for my return ...

[Yastreb]

The Anti-Vaxx/Anti-Lockdown factions have united to take to the streets in defiance of lockdown orders in violent protest over the last four days. The ostensible trigger was a compulsory vaccination requirement for tradespeople on building sites, but the ranks of the protesters seem to have been bulked out by elements looking to create unrest and foster violence, in the vein of the so-called "Boogaloo boys"* in the US.

The outcome has been violence on an unnerving scale, with many injuries and hundreds of arrests. Yesterday the protesters occupied the Shrine of Remembrance,** a memorial to the dead from all conflicts of the modern era, which led to widespread condemnation. The protesters had the chutzpah to shout "Sacred place!" at the police as they were driven out and arrested; fortunately no damage was done to the Shrine itself.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boogaloo_movement

** https://www.shrine.org.au/

[Opaque]

Oh, wow. Good thing those people didn't vandalize the monument. That would have been awful.

[JoB]

In the meantime ...