gradenko_2000 posted:

https://twitter.com/MetroUK/status/1781211880364613645

NeonPunk posted:

Wait I could be wrong but after checking how paid sick leave works in the UK, doesn't that just straight up mean that employers will never have to pay sick leave ever again?

maxwellhill posted:

holy poo poo i just realized

WHEN did people panic

outside of the very brief period where boomers were running around with makeshift or scam PPE products in public, NO one panicked; there was no mass panic to prevent.

panic buying does not count, that's just hustling. but sanitiser and TP are all that people remember as "the panic".

maxwellhill posted:

holy poo poo i just realized

WHEN did people panic

outside of the very brief period where boomers were running around with makeshift or scam PPE products in public, NO one panicked; there was no mass panic to prevent.

panic buying does not count, that's just hustling. but sanitiser and TP are all that people remember as "the panic".

Why Am I So Tired posted:

I'm still very much of the mindset that concerts shouldn't be taking place because we're in an airborne pandemic, but it's nice to see activism like this and that more and more artists are understanding that the current "let's pretend everything is fine and do nothing" model is unsustainable.

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/clean-air-club-organizing-covid-safer-shows

gradenko_2000 posted:

https://twitter.com/MetroUK/status/1781211880364613645

NeonPunk posted:

Went and checked to make sure I wasn't remembering wrong. It was both. There was a spike in gun sales both when Covid was declared an emergency and when the protests started.

gradenko_2000 posted:

https://twitter.com/MetroUK/status/1781211880364613645

gradenko_2000 posted:

https://twitter.com/MetroUK/status/1781211880364613645

Platystemon posted:

In the near future, people will write that the lockdowns extended even to the present date.

Vesi posted:

wow the lockdowns really did a number on britain

https://twitter.com/JimBethell/status/1780230698885898259

Vesi posted:

wow the lockdowns really did a number on britain

https://twitter.com/JimBethell/status/1780230698885898259

Platystemon posted:

quote:

It appeared to be a problem with the food.

In February, dairy cattle in multiple herds in northern Texas were suddenly producing less milk, and what they gave was abnormal and thick.

And the typically voracious eaters had seemingly lost their appetites.

For weeks in March, veterinarian Dr. Barb Petersen sought an answer. She talked to dairy owners and exchanged notes with fellow vets in the panhandle of Texas. She submitted numerous samples to labs that tested for more than 200 potential causes.

“Any fluid you can collect from a live animal, I collected it,” said Petersen, who was raised on a dairy farm near Davenport, Iowa. “As did many others. There were so many of us at the same time texting each other and trying to figure this out.”

She started messaging Dr. Drew Magstadt, who she had studied alongside at Iowa State University years before. He now works at the ISU Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory — a preeminent national animal lab in Ames — and researches infectious disease in cattle.

When the voluminous amount of testing in Texas failed to find any clues, Magstadt and Petersen concluded that a likely cause was ill-made food.

“The affected cattle were very high-producing dairy cows, and they are on a race-car ration,” Magstadt said. “If you mess with that a little bit, it can cause problems.”

Petersen agreed to send Magstadt some samples of the feed and animals for testing.

But then the cats started dying.

Barn cats are common on farms. They kill rodents, provide companionship and need little help to survive.

Some dairy farmers also feed them milk from their cows, and sick cows can shed viruses in their milk.

“A colleague of mine, he told me, ‘You know what’s strange? I went to one of my dairies last week, and all their cats were missing. I couldn’t figure it out — the cats usually come to my vet truck,’ ” Petersen recalled. “And then someone called me and said half of his cats had passed away without warning, and so then all the alarm bells start going off in your head.”

The cats had died from swollen brains, a potential result of influenza. They didn’t have rabies.

Outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza have plagued poultry producers in the United States since early 2022 and have led to the culling of more than 90 million domestic birds in backyard and commercial flocks. It is often transmitted by wild, migrating birds.

The virus had never been known to infect cattle in the country, and so the potential for it to have sickened the Texas cattle seemed highly unlikely, Magstadt thought.

It would be a “zebra,” Petersen said, which in medical parlance can refer to a surprising, exotic diagnosis.

Yet Magstadt immediately tested Petersen’s milk samples for influenza A — which most commonly infects birds — before investigating the feed. He thought the testing would merely rule out bird flu as a potential cause, but instead it confirmed it.

“I was incredibly surprised,” Magstadt said.

Further testing and retesting over days confirmed that the virus is the type that has been driving the poultry outbreaks, with an official confirmation on March 25.
The ISU Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory tests for a variety of animal illnesses. (Photo by Jared Strong/Iowa Capital Dispatch)

silicone thrills posted:

Only figuring it out because all the loving cats died is terrifying.

quote:

I got a 3M half mask + P100 filters from Amazon on Monday because gently caress giving up my last good days of summer to smoke.

Nocturtle posted:

Correcting for the change in UK working age (16-64) population between 2020 and 2024, the rate of economic inactivity due to "long-term sickness" increased from 4.8% of the working age population to 6.6%. Attributing this to the pandemic suggests that ~1.8% of the UK working age population was impacted enough to have difficulty working.

quote:

Those variants are still out there and are randomly causing ICUs to flood with COVID cases, Musk. You loving moron. You gormless muppet.

quote:

Did they expect the diseases to stick around after vaccines?

The gently caress do they think the vaccines are for?

Nobody questions where polio went….

maxwellhill posted:

On that note i'd like to also turn everyone's attention to the lovely Wikipedia article on "COVID-19 lockdowns":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_lockdowns

and have a fun time looking for examples of how the United States in specific locked down! spoilers, you won't find any

maxwellhill posted:

still trying to remember when schools reopened

jetz0r posted:

We had high school athletes dropping dead on the field in mid/late 2020. So I guess they were back in full force for the 20-21 school year.

quote:

WPIAL reveals 2020 football playoff brackets

By: Chris Harlan
Saturday, October 24, 2020 | 7:47 PM

quote:

Dropping their original demand that the district would suspend in-person learning when the citywide test positivity rate surpasses three percent, the CTU now accepts a convoluted health metric whereby the district would only “pause in-person learning for 14 days” if the citywide test positivity rate increases for 7 consecutive days, with each day being at least 15 percent higher than the rate one week prior, and the seventh day ten percent or greater. All district schools would reopen after 14 days or when those same criteria are no longer met, whichever is later. Under this absurd and criminal scheme, as long as the test positivity rate increases slowly enough, it could reach 100 percent and the district would stay open!

euphronius posted:

every school was open Because they all had special education / needs kids coming in full time . also remote is still open school.

quote:

The Chicago Teachers Union’s vote to return to remote learning over what it says are unsafe conditions due to covid-19, forcing the city’s schools to close on Wednesday, not only defies reason; it’s also an assault on the well-being of children. City, state and national Democrats should act to bring vaccinated teachers back to work and prevent future unjustified work stoppages.

While the Chicago union says it wants reasonable safety measures implemented, here are the facts: 91 percent of the Chicago Public Schools staff is fully vaccinated. Data clearly show that those fully vaccinated are extremely unlikely to be hospitalized with covid-19, even as the omicron variant sweeps across the nation. CPS requires indoor masking and is also distributing high-quality N95 masks in its schools. In other words, fully vaccinated teachers are well-protected against contracting serious illness.

It’s also undisputed that remote learning is severely hurting children, especially those from low-income families, which make up the vast majority of students attending Chicago public schools. That’s one reason the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended that schools teach children in person — an advisory it has not revised in light of the omicron variant. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot reiterated concerns about disruptions to education at a late-night news conference on Tuesday, saying “achievement gaps are real and they’re affecting kids of color at an exponential rate.”

One might think such an impact on children would cause alarm among teachers. Apparently not.

This is a national issue, as teachers unions throughout the country debate whether to return to work as winter breaks conclude. Many unions, if not most, are hesitant about returning to large urban school districts in blue cities and states. That means the responsibility for addressing the crisis falls directly on Democratic politicians.

City leaders can help children by staying firm in the face of union pressure to go remote. Lightfoot is an ardent progressive, but she has been clear about the need for in-person schooling. She has said she will place teachers who don’t come back to school Wednesday on no-pay status. Illinois state law holds that teachers cannot strike while a collective bargaining agreement is in place, which is the case in Chicago. That means Lightfoot and the school district could go to court to force the union to return or pay substantial penalties for its act. They should consider doing that if the matter is not resolved quickly.

Nationally, Democrats should also take steps to forestall other unions from acting similarly. The federal government appropriated more than $200 billion in pandemic relief packages to finance schools’ ability to make in-person instruction safe. House and Senate Democrats should condition that money on keeping children in schools so long as districts follow CDC guidelines for maintaining a safe workplace. That would put them on the side of safety, and parents, and show recalcitrant unions that they have no friends who will back them as they use unwarranted fear to get more time off for their members.

Every person deserves a safe workplace, and all school districts are working to provide that. Children also deserve a quality education, and we know that only comes from in-person instruction. The Chicago Teachers Union’s vote is insulting and unwarranted. Democrats need to get tough with their political friends and stop this effort and any future strikes now.

Henry Olsen is a Washington Post columnist and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

Oracle posted:

I assumed we only meant in person school. Remote school everyone was back by fall 2020. Our local schools opened up in spring 2021 for whoever wanted to come in, you could choose hybrid or full time, they continued this in fall, told people to stay home after Thanksgiving break and went back full remote for the holidays, then went back to hybrid for 2022. Everyone had to go back in person fall 22 and masking was optional but I think they were still enforcing the five day quarantine if you were positive (though they weren’t testing at school). That’s when my kid got got and the doctor at the clinic tried to discourage me from getting her tested because she’d have to miss school if she were positive and I was livid because that attitude is how my kid just got sick!

Chamale posted:

"This is only going to last a few more weeks so there's no need to improve our support for Zoom classes."