Everyone around me is veryyy sick but I’ve been fine so far wearing my Zimi N95. Sadly have to cohabit with my family and I’m just having relatives come over via plane and go to restaurants… I hope I’ll be fine it’s very stressful and I wish people took Covid seriously. Got harassed for masking in a hospital by the staff recently… :/
Still masking but Covid really is way down in most places (https://pmc19.com/ ). OTOH there’s other bad stuff out there, like explosive diarrhea. Tickborne diseases are booming too, though masking doesn’t help with that.
I’m not that big on pop music but lately I’ve been obsessing about a particular performer who has been doing stadium shows. I’ve become dismayed that those shows exist at all. They have to be scheduled way in advance, and cancelling or rescheduling one is a humongous disruption. So lots of times, the headliner has to show up and sing even if they’re sick as hell. That’s in addition to the audience members all getting each other (and the performer) sick. This particular guy is young and healthy but still seems to get sick a lot, and I can understand why. Glenn Gould (famous eccentric piano player who at some point quit doing live performances and only made recordings) probably had the right idea.
IKEA now has an affordable ($35 USD) air quality monitor that measures CO2 among other things: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/alpstuga-air-quality-sensor-smart-70609396/
I don’t have one yet, but plan to get one.
is it actually down or did we stop checking? several years ago already my state was down to only a couple wastewater facilities testing and neither of them was in the nearby metro area.
Well, was down a few weeks ago but is coming back.
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/covid-summer-bay-area-22345320.php
It’s down overall, but rising. That being said, wastewater is a horrible indicator for risk assessment and for people to be pulling back on their precautions because it really doesn’t tell you what’s happening outside of the areas being monitored let alone the distribution of cases within a monitored area.
Note that white outlined counties are “estimated,” that means they’re unmonitored and the only other data that can be used to estimate are tests that largely aren’t being done. As someone who lives in the middle of no man’s land of monitoring, we’re playing very fast and loose with our assumptions. Especially, since we’re basically just waiting for immunity to wear off from the last wave or a new dominant variant to visit a couple of super-spreader events. I could be in the middle of a mini surge from some July 4th celebration and there’d be no data to indicate it.
yeah i figure there would be a bump from july 4th. i’m in a very low but i have no idea who’s collecting data, we weren’t on whatever site i looked at last. kinda gave up on monitoring the monitoring 'cause it went to shit and i’d still mask everywhere and not go out for anything but work and groceries regardless of what it said.
My country never stopped measuring wastewater and there hasn’t been a spike this year and numbers are lower than they have ever been