Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[DGuller]

Vienna has scheduled a vaccination appointment for all non-vaccinated people and sent them invitation letters with additional information material addressing the common worries of anti-vaxxers. They're asked to cancel the appointment if they still don't want to get vaccinated. I ... am not sure how this will go.

It maybe actually be somewhat effective, it sounds like this is soft paternalism.  There must be some people who just can't be bothered to make an effort to get vaccinated, but also can't be bothered to make an effort to cancel a vaccination appointment.  It's like companies automatically deducting 6% of the income to 401k, because a lot of people can neither be bothered to set the percentage themselves, nor to change the percentage that someone else set for them.

[Syt]

I agree it may be useful to rope some in, but some who can't be bothered, might just ignore it and be a no-show. And the "true" anti-vaxxers will of course just ignore the whole thing. Well, not ignore, they will scream and shout (we will have another demonstration this Saturday ...), but you know what I mean.

[DGuller]

I agree it may be useful to rope some in, but some who can't be bothered, might just ignore it and be a no-show. And the "true" anti-vaxxers will of course just ignore the whole thing. Well, not ignore, they will scream and shout (we will have another demonstration this Saturday ...), but you know what I mean.

Yeah, the complication is that someone has to not care to cancel the appointment, but still care enough to show up.  As a leading expert on inertia and procrastination, it's my professional opinion that it may still work often enough to be worth the bother.

[Agelastus]

I agree it may be useful to rope some in, but some who can't be bothered, might just ignore it and be a no-show. And the "true" anti-vaxxers will of course just ignore the whole thing. Well, not ignore, they will scream and shout (we will have another demonstration this Saturday ...), but you know what I mean.

Yeah, the complication is that someone has to not care to cancel the appointment, but still care enough to show up.  As a leading expert on inertia and procrastination, it's my professional opinion that it may still work often enough to be worth the bother.

As another expert (on a personal basis) regarding inertia and procrastination I concur with this opinion.

[Admiral Yi]

You guys must have a lot of focus and drive to become such experts and inertia and procrastination.

[DGuller]

You guys must have a lot of focus and drive to become such experts and inertia and procrastination.

When you're passionate about something, focus and drive come naturally.

[Zanza]

Germany has an extremely high growth of cases right now. 65.000 cases yesterday, assumed to be three times as high. Case fatality rate right now is 0.8%, meaning about 400 of those reported as infected will die eventually. Our ICU capacity is getting to the limit. Patients are already medevaced to Italy etc.

Government will decree another lockdown in the next days.

[Zanza]

Utter failure of politics. Opened up too fast, did too little for preparing booster vaccination.

[Barrister]

Utter failure of politics. Opened up too fast, did too little for preparing booster vaccination.

That was Alberta's story - summer 2021 we declared victory (when vax rates were barely at 50%) and removed all restrictions.  Few months later we had the worst outbreak in Canada with virtually all surgeries cancelled because hospitals were full of Covid cases.

It's finally dropped a lot, but government (finally!) has shown no sign they're going to remove current restrictions.

Hopefully once 5-11 year olds are vaxxed, and boosters for those who need them, we can finally consider lifting restrictions.

[Duque de Bragança]

Utter failure of politics. Opened up too fast, did too little for preparing booster vaccination.

I suppose the ongoing coalition negotiations did not help, with no proper government yet. Could Merkel have done a bit more before being out for good or was she just merkeling out? As nearly always.

[Zanza]

Utter failure of politics. Opened up too fast, did too little for preparing booster vaccination.

I suppose the ongoing coalition negotiations did not help, with no proper government yet. Could Merkel have done a bit more before being out for good or was she just merkeling out? As nearly always.

Merkel was typically on the forefront for more stringent measures, but constitutionally the state premiers have the powers regarding public health, not the federal chancellor. But yes, election campaign and coalition talks with acting government did not help. The new coalition did pass a law today against opposition Merkels party.

[Syt]

Some parts of Austria are running low on PCR tests. And the central test result database is urging test labs to not enter negative results anymore, because the database is overloaded with the number of tests at the moment.

[Syt]

Austria is going in full lockdown on Monday, for 10 days, with an option to extend by 10 days. Yay.

[garbon]

Austria is going in full lockdown on Monday, for 10 days, with an option to extend by 10 days. Yay.

[Syt]

Also rumors of a vaccination mandate starting Feb 1st.

EDIT: Mandate is confirmed.

Lockdown as said 10 days with an optional extra 10 days with no further extensions. Afterwards lockdown for non-vaccinated. Surprisingly frank language by Chancellor Schallenberg - too many people refuse to show solidarity, influenced by extremist parties and fake news on social media, so vaccine mandate is necessary.