[W. K. Lis]

As soon as my office downtown opens again, I'll be there. Working from home is dreadful.

Can you come into work in your jeans or pyjamas? Or at least, in a less business attire?

Or what will your "work attire" be at home?

 

[picard102]

Can you come into work in your jeans or pyjamas? Or at least, in a less business attire?

Or what will your "work attire" be at home?

Typically I wear jeans at work, shorts in the summer. Despite the "dress code".
I don't own pyjamas so I don't think I'd get away with that, but I often wore gym clothes at my desk if I was doing a lunch session, or after work classes.

The only difference is I don't shower until 5 most days WFH, and wake up at 8:50-9:30.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Typically I wear jeans at work, shorts in the summer. Despite the "dress code".
I don't own pyjamas so I don't think I'd get away with that, but I often wore gym clothes at my desk if I was doing a lunch session, or after work classes.

The only difference is I don't shower until 5 most days WFH, and wake up at 8:50-9:30.

You could be like the medieval kings and do "office work" while on the toilet. See link.

 

[afransen]

I expect this will be pretty common, at least to some degree. My own workplace has adapted well, and I hope that my own job can keep me home most days with occasional trips to the office. It's been nice to go in when necessary, though it's been pretty solitary.... I'd like to have a bit of the social aspect of a workplace again.

I expect my employer to keep their big main office but to also start shedding some of the satellite offices. We had already started on flex-work transition and hot desking before the pandemic and now pretty well all of our offices are hot desk. I expect people may occasionally go to an office that is closer to home if they just need somewhere that isn't home to work. I went in for some IT kiosk support a while ago and the building was pretty quiet, maybe 1-2% normal occupancy.

 

[gabe]

I don't expect office workers to go back to the office till next year. Possibility of a third way remains a threat.

Enjoy it while it lasts. Modelling warns another mass lockdown may be needed to control Ontario’s looming third wave

In the worst-case scenario, Ontario could see as many as 5,000 cases per day by early April, mostly made up of new variants, according to a company sp...

www.thestar.com

https://twitter.com/x/status/1367860126011568128

 

[W. K. Lis]

Brazil's COVID Crisis Is a Warning to the Whole World, Scientists Say​

From link.

COVID-19 has already left a trail of death and despair in Brazil, one of the worst in the world. Now, a year into the pandemic, the country is setting another wrenching record.

No other nation that experienced such a major outbreak is still grappling with record-setting death tolls and a health care system on the brink of collapse. Many other hard-hit nations are, instead, taking tentative steps toward a semblance of normalcy.

But Brazil is battling a more contagious variant that has trampled one major city and is spreading to others, even as Brazilians toss away precautionary measures that could keep them safe.

On Tuesday, Brazil recorded more than 1,700 COVID-19 deaths, the highest single-day toll of the pandemic.

“The acceleration of the epidemic in various states is leading to the collapse of their public and private hospital systems, which may soon become the case in every region of Brazil,” the national association of health secretaries said in a statement. “Sadly, the anemic rollout of vaccines and the slow pace at which they’re becoming available still does not suggest that this scenario will be reversed in the short term.”

And the news just got worse for Brazil — and possibly the world.

Preliminary studies suggest that the variant that swept through the city of Manaus is not only more contagious, but it also appears able to infect some people who have already recovered from other versions of the virus. And the variant has slipped Brazil’s borders, showing up in two dozen other countries and in small numbers in the United States.

Although trials of a number of vaccines indicate they can protect against severe illness even when they do not prevent infection with the variant, most of the world has not been inoculated. That means even people who had recovered and thought they were safe for now might still be at risk and that world leaders might, once again, be lifting restrictions too soon.

“You need vaccines to get in the way of these things,” said William Hanage, a public health researcher at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, speaking of variants that might cause reinfections. “The immunity you get with your cemeteries running out of room, even that will not be enough to protect you.”

That danger of new variants has not been lost on scientists around the world. Rochelle Walensky, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, pleaded with Americans this week not to let their guards down. “Please hear me clearly,” she said. “At this level of cases with variants spreading, we stand to completely lose the hard-earned ground we’ve gained.”

Brazilians hoped they had seen the worst of the outbreak last year. Manaus, capital of the northern state of Amazonas, was hit so hard in April and May that scientists wondered if the city might have reached herd immunity.

But then in September, cases in the state began rising again, perplexing health officials. An attempt by Amazonas Gov. Wilson Lima to impose a new quarantine ahead of the Christmas holiday was met with fierce resistance by business owners and prominent politicians close to President Jair Bolsonaro.

By January, scientists had discovered that a new variant, which became known as P.1, had become dominant in the state. Within weeks, its danger became clear as hospitals in the city ran out of oxygen amid a crush of patients, leading scores to suffocate to death.

Dr. Antonio Souza remains haunted by the horrified faces of his colleagues and relatives of patients when it became clear his Manaus hospital’s oxygen supply had been exhausted. He thinks about the patient he sedated, to spare her an agonizing death, when the oxygen ran out at another clinic.

“Nobody should ever have to make that decision,” he said. “It’s too terrible.”

Maria Glaudimar, a nurse in Manaus, said she felt trapped in a nightmare early this year with no end in sight. At work, patients and their relatives pleaded for oxygen, and all the intensive care beds were full. At home, her son caught tuberculosis after contracting COVID-19, and her husband shed 22 pounds as he fought the virus.

“No one was prepared for this,” Glaudimar said. “It was a horror film.”

Since then, the coronavirus crisis has eased somewhat in Amazonas but worsened in most of Brazil.

Scientists have scrambled to learn more about the variant and to track its spread across the country. But limited resources for testing have kept them behind the curve as they try to determine what role it is playing.

Anderson Brito, a Brazilian virus expert at Yale University, said his lab alone sequenced almost half as many coronavirus genomes as all of Brazil had. While the United States has done genetic sequencing on roughly one in 200 confirmed cases, Brazil sequences about one in 3,000.

The variant spread quickly. By the end of January, a study by government researchers found it was present in 91% of samples sequenced in the state of Amazonas. By the end of February, health officials had reported cases of the P.1 variant in 21 of 26 Brazilian states, but without more testing it is hard to gauge its prevalence.

Throughout the pandemic, researchers have said that COVID-19 reinfections appear to be extremely rare, which has allowed people who recover to presume they have immunity, at least for a while. But that was before P.1 appeared and doctors and nurses began to notice something strange.

João Alho, a doctor in Santarém, a city in Pará, a state that borders Amazonas, said that several colleagues who recovered from COVID-19 months ago had fallen ill again and tested positive.

Juliana Cunha, a nurse in Rio de Janeiro who has been working at COVID-19 testing centers, said she assumed she was safe after catching the virus in June. But in November, after experiencing mild symptoms, she tested positive again.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Cunha, 23, said. “It must be the variants.”

But there is no way to be sure what is happening to people who are reinfected, unless both their old and new samples are kept, genetically sequenced and compared.

One way to tamp down the surge would be through vaccinations, but the rollout in Brazil, as in so many countries, has been slow.

Brazil began vaccinating priority groups, including health care professionals and the elderly, in late January. But the government has failed to secure a large enough number of doses. Wealthier countries have snapped up most of the available supply, while Bolsonaro has been skeptical both of the disease’s impact and of vaccines.

Just over 5.8 million Brazilians — roughly 2.6% of the population — had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine as of Tuesday, according to the health ministry. Only about 1.5 million had received both doses. The country is currently using the Chinese-made CoronaVac — which laboratory tests suggest is less effective against P.1 than against other variants — and the one made by British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca.

Margareth Dalcolmo, a pulmonologist at Fiocruz, a prominent scientific research center, said Brazil’s failure to mount a robust vaccination campaign set the stage for the current crisis.

“We should be vaccinating more than a million people per day,” she said. “That is the truth. We aren’t, not because we don’t know how to do it, but because we don’t have enough vaccines.”

Other countries should take heed, said Ester Sabino, an infectious disease researcher at the University of São Paulo who is among the leading experts on the P.1 variant.

“You can vaccinate your whole population and control the problem only for a short period if, in another place in the world, a new variant appears,” she said. “It will get there one day.”

Health Minister Eduardo Pazuello, who called the variant a “new stage” of the pandemic, said last week that the government was ramping up its efforts and hopes to vaccinate roughly half of its population by June and the rest by the end of the year.

But many Brazilians have little faith in a government led by a president who has sabotaged lockdowns, repeatedly downplayed the threat of the virus and promoted untested remedies long after scientists said they clearly did not work.

Just last week, the president spoke dismissively of masks, which are among the best defenses to curb contagion, claiming that they are harmful to children, causing headaches and difficulty concentrating.

Pazuello’s vaccine projections have also been met with skepticism. The government last week placed an order for 20 million doses of an Indian vaccine that has not completed clinical trials. That prompted a federal prosecutor to argue in a legal filing that the $286 million purchase “puts millions of lives at risk.”

Even if it proves effective, it will be too late for many.

Tony Maquiné, a 39-year-old marketing specialist in Manaus, lost a grandmother, an uncle, two aunts and a cousin in the span of a few weeks during the latest surge of cases. He said time has become a blur of frantic efforts to find hospitals with free beds for the living, while arranging funerals for the dead.

“It was a nightmare,” Maquiné said. “I’m scared of what lies ahead.”

 

[Bayer]

Entering the Grey-Lockdown category comes with more ridiculousless; there will actually be more restrictions where I live. Right now, at the Manulife Centre, I am totally free to exit the residential building through the mall, to go to the grocery store, the LCBO or Shoppers Drug Mart. But starting tomorrow, there will be a check point where every resident wishing to enter the mall will have to go through an active screening... so there will likely be lineups and people congregating in the lobby, which is precisely what should be avoided.

However, it will be entirely ok to leave the building through the Charles St. exterior exit, cross the street, shop at Rabba and return without being screened.

 

[Northern Light]

From:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1368217573033209859

 

[Richard White]

Just a heads up for those living in Durham Region. The Durham Region Health Website is booking appointments for Phase 2 starting this morning. I booked one for my Grandmother on Wednesday but it was booking up rather quickly .

 

[Jonny5]

As expected, a COVID outbreak has happened in a BC nursing home infecting some residents who are "fully vaccinated". The vaccine is working to boost their immune response, and, so far, preventing serious medical issues, but, it's a sign this isn't going away, and we will likely have a lifetime of annual vaccines and updates to boost immunity continuously. Seniors will die from this for years to come.

 

[PinkLucy]

The vaccine appears to be doing its job; less severe infections.

 

[Richard White]

I have some interesting news out of the UK that some people here may find interesting.

I spoke with my cousin 25 year old cousin in London this morning who has no preexisting conditions and is not in a priority group occupationally. Her entire family is vaccinated now and she is up next.

This a country with twice the population of Canada and yet we have not yet vaccinated one million people.

I look at the news and the press releases coming from Ottawa but it reeks of incompetency. The feds got caught with their pantaloons down when Covid hit and now we are so far behind without a plan that Canada looks incompetent on the global stage. It's one thing to say we purchased vaccines and that Canadians will be fully vaccinated by the fall but that's honestly too slow. The reality is the idea of all these vaccines coming does nothing for us right now, we should have had facilities to produce vaccines.

While countries like the US are easing restrictions for the fully vaccinated and places like the EU are demanding vaccine passports for entry into certain places the Trudeau Government really needs to step up, get a glove and get in the game.

Canadians are being left behind by a government that has no idea what they are doing other than to send out feel good press releases with little to no substance.

Sorry for the rant.

 

[PinkLucy]

Have you been watching the Ontario news? General Hillier released an updated, aggressive plan for us last week. Yes, we're behind but we should catch up. Biden says all Americans by the end of May, Hillier says all Ontarians by June 20. Both are making promises so we'll see if it pans out, but it appears to be progress.

You can check the daily stats, the numbers are rising. Do I wish it had happened sooner? Yes. Am I glad it's at least happening now? Yes.

And let's not talk about the US easing restrictions ... some of the states have had NO restrictions through all of this. I'm not about to hold them up as an example of how to run a pandemic.

 

[Richard White]

Have you been watching the Ontario news? General Hillier released an updated, aggressive plan for us last week. Yes, we're behind but we should catch up. Biden says all Americans by the end of May, Hillier says all Ontarians by June 20. Both are making promises so we'll see if it pans out, but it appears to be progress.

You can check the daily stats, the numbers are rising. Do I wish it had happened sooner? Yes. Am I glad it's at least happening now? Yes.

And let's not talk about the US easing restrictions ... some of the states have had NO restrictions through all of this. I'm not about to hold them up as an example of how to run a pandemic.

True.

I am not an anti-masker but I just prefer not to wear a mask through Christmas 2021 if I get vaccinated in may.

 

[APTA-2048]

Have you been watching the Ontario news? General Hillier released an updated, aggressive plan for us last week. Yes, we're behind but we should catch up. Biden says all Americans by the end of May, Hillier says all Ontarians by June 20. Both are making promises so we'll see if it pans out, but it appears to be progress.

You can check the daily stats, the numbers are rising. Do I wish it had happened sooner? Yes. Am I glad it's at least happening now? Yes.

And let's not talk about the US easing restrictions ... some of the states have had NO restrictions through all of this. I'm not about to hold them up as an example of how to run a pandemic.

Not to mention, it’s easy to vaccinate that many people that fast when you’re basically hoarding most if not all of your domestic production.

I don’t think it makes the US and UK look as good as they think it does. Especially when countries like Russia and China are sharing their vaccine, sometimes giving it away for free. They gain more influence at the expense of the West.

Hell, even I’m a bit bitter about the US blocking vaccine exports to Canada. But at least we’re getting what we can (thank you Europe and India). Many countries are in far more desperate situations with regards to vaccine.