Be Excellent To Each Other

Incredibly happy to hear that. Hopefully your tastebuds are up and working again for Christmas dinner if they went, too. I hope M is feeling well, too, and that Mrs A and H keep well xxx

It is great news you are feeling better

Ta. The shortness of breath is a weird one. Covid keeping clear of MrsA.
The other people I live with are also fine. Only me that suffers.

And I bet your roommates don't appreciate quite how much a martyr you are to the sickness!

Great to hear you feeling better Mali!

Just had my booster jab! Pfizer-Pfizer-Moderna. In the words of the good Doctor from Team Fortress, "I am fully charged!"

Damn, we're back in lockdown again here in NL.. Omikorn.. kids back home instad of school...pff

so weird to see Palaces with dartsfans on your side of the pond...

good you're feeling better mali

Looks like two weeks of no indoor mixing from next Monday.

https://twitter.com/katelallyx/status/1 ... 5678521350

How many “leaks” is that now? https://t.co/lZTbPfRnjH

— Kate Lynch. BLM🖤 (@katelallyx) December 20, 2021

Gonna be some cold DJs knocking about.

We had the announcement today of yet another Johnson lockdown loopazoola.

Yeah, we should have guessed that Barnard Castle was the tip of the iceberg, and that none of them were ever going to take it seriously or show leadership when it mattered.

It's tips of the icebergs all the way down.

Astonishing. Even Tory apologists should be finding this difficult. But they may not.

I've wrestled with it, being back in the area of my true-blue upbringing, and just down the road from the posh school I attended with a bunch of arseholes (but to be fair to them, they differ from the conservatives in that they grew up). The only explanations I've come round to over the last year or so are that people who vote that way no matter what want "freedom," so the right offer to leave them alone the most (some of these people are those who claim the EU were "telling them what to do" etc) and are the better option - and that's backed up for them by occasional dog whistles on 'common sense' (failed) policies of toughness on crime, death penalty and so on.

Plus they're kind of broken, and if pushed to justify the right's terribleness, then the argument is that all politicians are terrible, and therefore, um, so what? One of the arguments they'll go to most often is that "X isn't perfect". Which is the perfect Tory kind of truth - sounds at a glance like something poignant and meaningful, whereas actually it's true of absolutely everything man-made, and therefore meaningless.

A lot of people vote Tory just because they reckon that they'll keep more of their money that way. They'll seldom admit to such a simple, selfish motivation but it seems like an amazing coincidence that the policies that will provide optimum benefit to the rest of society are somehow always the ones that will benefit their personal finances the most as well.

https://twitter.com/NewStatesman/status ... 2798962689

Chart of the Day: Despite record numbers of cases fewer people are dying now than in the second wave. https://t.co/euGYv4hiDq pic.twitter.com/ppGmS6pRu8

— The New Statesman (@NewStatesman) January 11, 2022

That seems to suggest (to me at least) that this current wave is MORE dangerous to anyone under 40 than the previous one, and that the younger you are, the greater the increased risk (compared to the second wave)

Yet I've not seen anyone cover that in the news, even the NS here isn't making that point as far as I can see?

I don't get that from those charts

Unless I’m missing something I can’t see ages noted in those charts at all.

I think it means that individually there's lower risk the under 40's with Omicron, but owing to the high levels the total deaths for that age bracket are actually higher? So good on an individual level of risk from catching it, bad as far as the total toll goes? Or am I completely wrong?

Whichever way it points, the fact is that we still don't know yet as the surge only really got underway four weeks ago and that's on average about the time it takes for a patient to succumb to the virus. So it's going to be over the next few weeks where we finally learn how Omicron goes. Four weeks ago cases were at 50,000 a day. It seemingly peaked a few days ago at around 180,000 and is slowly coming down again - if testing is accurately reflecting. With the latest figures the current 7 day average of deaths is probably around 200 a day. However the late booster surge means that it might not rise too much higher.

So in summary Omicron is a bit weaker, sure, but I think those who haven't been booster are still in a lot of danger.

Where are you guys seeing the ages on that?

Each horizontal bar is an age range. as indicated to the left.

Those are the days (1-60) of the ‘wave’. It tells you that at the top.

Then there's definately no age given.

‘H’?

I'm a doofus, I thought they were age ranges

Egad! You're right!

I think I got confused as I was looking at a population demographic pyramid earlier today, and my brain short-circuited and read it as that.

Um, I'm much better at picking out furniture options for library-loving elephants on remote-island getaways.

I can see how that happens. I guessed that wasn’t it before seeing the key because it started at ‘1’, whereas usually they’d start it at 5 if it were in five year increments.

I haven’t studied them too carefully as I’m trying to take a bit of a brain rest from it all, but hopefully with the age data anomaly removed it looks positive, relatively. I think we need a glimmer of hope.

Have to say, I'm pretty much done with being constantly tired now. Wake up tired, tired all day, then start to fall asleep on the sofa at about half eight.

Maybe you need more caffeine

I tested positive on a LFT on Tuesday, after getting a bit of a sore throat and a tickly cough on Monday.

I have to isolate until the 21st, although apparently I can end that early if I take a LFT on day 6 and 7, testing negative each time.

I assume this is the 3 jabs working their magic, but other than feeling a bit light-headed (and brain fogged!) I’ve, so far at least, not had any symptoms to particularly write home about. My throat hurts to swallow, almost like I’ve pulled a muscle in it.

Half eight falling asleep for me too, but not the rest.
It's just monotony of it all.

Have any of you here that have had Covid experienced sickness as a major symptom? All of my family that have had it (sister, nieces and nephew, uncle, etc) all seem to have experienced sickness as a (in fact THE) major symptom. Most haven’t been able to eat for four days. My uncle was six days, and was extremely weak as he is in his 70s, but I haven’t seen many people mention this. My sister has now had it twice (once last year and again at the moment), and it’s the terrible sickness that’s been the major worry as she’s been unable to keep water down and has been dehydrated.

May sound daft, but get them to try sipping lemonade. as an child it was all I could keep down when ick.

I’ll definitely pass that on. Still fizzy or flat?

Sucking ice cubes also

Olly was sick when he had it. Around 10:30 - 11am every morning for about 4 days, he'd start being sick. What was weird to me was the timing, not the symptom itself.

well done giphy

Brilliant.

Order your lft, people.

Thanks Mali!

My entire household got it, seems our youngest (he's 5) came down first and we all followed a day or two behind.

It was a shame as we were only 2 nights into a 10 night holiday at a caravan park when he tested +be, so it felt like we had barely even got settled before we had to pack up and come home.

He did spew twice, but at first we thought it was more like heat exhaustion. Unfortunately it also crossed over to one of the other families we were holidaying with.

I have managed to dodge it for 2 years. I tested positive today

Oof, that sucks man. I've managed to dodge it too, but I can almost feel it homing in. Took a test yesterday evening that was thankfully negative, taken having gone out for the a proper pub crawl on Saturday - first in many, many months. Was slightly freaked out by mild dose of the sniffles yesterday evening which seem to have largely dried up now, so could just be allergies or mild vanilla cold.

Get well soon, Kovacs, and hopefully you continue to stay well, Pete.

Thank you.. Fingers crossed, it clears up quickly..

I've known more people get Covid in the last 4 months than in the previous 18 in total. Omicron is certainly a contagious little blighter.

One down. If neg tomorrow I am free.

Whoop! Fingers crossed.

That’s good to see, Kov. How are you feeling now?

He has no concerns about losing his sense of taste.