A bit close for comfort.

How are things in Jersey now Sue? Has the infection rate settled down?

It is now under 1,000. Thank you.

Our flaming government need shooting.

As mentioned before, the British and Irish Lions rugby squads used Jersey as a training camp prior to their South African tour. That tour is now over and South Africa is a country from which travellers to the UK need to go into a quarantine hotel for ten days. So guess what, our government said that they can come here and not be quarantined! The Beta strain is high in South Africa and the vaccines are not effective for that strain.



Our government actually paid for their training camp, or should I say our taxpayers.

You couldn't make it up, but then with our government you don't have to try. We need a new hospital as ours is very much make do and mend. This has been going on for ages, trying to decide where etc. They have selected the most ridiculous site, planning permission has not been sought yet, millions have been spent and nothing to show for it. The estimated cost of this hospital is a billion or more, making it about the most expensive hospital in the world by cost per square metre. It is totally out of control. We don't need fancy, we need practical. Also they appear to be aiming for a non-general hospital and expecting GPs etc to do more - so at a cost to patients.

Amazing! As you say you couldn't make it up!

Stand by for a new surge soon after 26th August, our so called Freedom Day. Nightclubs open, drinking at the bar in pubs, no masks except on public transport and in medical settings.

At the moment they are doing some pop up vaccination centres, a session lasts a couple of hours then moves to next location - accompanied by police! The anti-vaxers are harassing those wanting to be vaccinated.

Anti vaxers are entitled to their beliefs, but in my book they ought to forfeit the right to treatment should then catch the virus. Not that it would happen.

My sister's granddaughter, seven years old, just tested positive. She's sick, but not terribly, at this point anyway. Probably picked it up at daycare, her parents are both teachers so they've been back at work getting ready for the new year for the past couple weeks. Her dad has a sore throat so he's home with her now, her mom has no symptoms so can't even make an appointment for a test. All the adults vaccinated of course but kids can't be.

Our government has decided that covid is over - no more rules, no more isolating if you've been in contact with someone sick, no more testing unless you have symptoms, and the plan is for that to end in two weeks so there will be no testing at all.

Meanwhile, cases are exploding again, 800, 900 a day. Our provincial government has been taking advantage of the pandemic to wage war on doctors and nurses, cutting funding, and renegotiating contracts. The only way this makes sense is to get a little conspiracy minded. Our current government is very conservative and is not very supportive of our single payer public health system. It's starting to feel like they are sabotaging the system, so they can say "see, public health doesn't work, we need to privatize."

I hate to think this way, I don't want to go down the rabbit hole of imagining conspiracies and plots. But sometimes you have to think "Why else would they behave this way?"

Urg. I'm not feeling happy and hopeful right now. And if that little girl's life really does become endangered, I think there's going to be some rage.

I am so sorry to hear this Agony. I do hope she recovers soon.

Her mother could have covid, just without symptoms and be gaily spreading it around.

One the news this morning they were saying that it looks as if the vaccine effectiveness wanes after six months. Locally here they are talking about giving a third dose booster at the same time as the flu vaccinations.

Hope your granddaughter will recover quickly, Agony. The situation in your province sounds scary, and I would not be surprised at all if your current provincial government really had a hidden agenda.

Anyway, here in the US things are going south again in large parts of the country. Yesterday I was looking at some statistics on global vaccination rates, and I was astonished when I saw that fully vaccinated people in the US are only 51% of the population, while many European countries have over 60%.

Agony - do you have the at-home Covid tests in Canada? We can get them at the pharmacy - 2 tests for $20. They're the same rapid tests you can get at the doctor. They're not the most reliable, but better than nothing.

I hope she gets well soon - luckily kids in general do a lot better with Covid than adults. And I hope we get vaccines for kids very soon! My two kids just started school this week and it's basically wear a mask, wash hands, don't change seats (sit with the same kids at lunch all year).

We probably do, I don't know - it's been so easy to get a test so far that nobody's thought about it. I'll suggest it.

So far she's mostly happy that she gets to lie around and watch TV, she was only really sick and quiet and feverish for a couple of days. Thank goodness most kids do OK, but I worry about kids with asthma. We need to be able to vaccinate kids if schools are going to be open.

Our rate in this province is 69% (12 and over) fully vaxxed, and since it's the rural areas that are more resistant, my city is probably higher than that. But the kids absolutely need protection, and little kids especially can't really be trusted to remember the distancing and cohort rules.

Oh whoopydo, stand by for blast off, today almost all restrictions locally have been lifted. No having to book a table to have a drink, drinking standing up permitted, no masks in shops (try and stop me!), nightclubs open, dancing permitted. In fact it is just public transport, medical facilities, ports and airports where you need to mask up.

That's about where we are for restrictions. For a while, masks almost disappeared but now about half the people indoors are wearing them.

I always wear a mask when I am inside a store. If the staff have to wear a mask, I don't see why I should not wear mine. It's a question of respect, which unfortunately is getting increasingly scarcer these days.

Not all companies require their employees to wear masks if vaccinated, but the one I work for in Alexandria reimposed a mask mandate for all employees regardless of vax status earlier this month. It'll stay in effect for three foreseeable future. Some of my coworkers have theirs on, but keep it below their nose and/or mouth. I've always worn mine the proper way, however, when I'm outdoors, I don't wear one.

Dave, that really annoys me to see people with it not covering their nose.

When I went to the supermarket yesterday I only saw a few people not wearing one.

I don't wear a mask outdoors either if I know I am going to walk in the open for a while. The humid heat that has been plaguing us for the past few weeks makes it unbearable to wear a mask outdoors.

It is extremely rare to see anyone not wearing a mask here in Hong Kong. It has always been the habit to wear one when you have a cold ,etc. and it just remains part of life. Hence our infection rate for Covid is low..210 deaths to date out of about 7 million people.

My son has tested positive, so has to isolate until the 16th. He's fully vaxxed, so just has a very mild case of the sniffles. His main problem is going to be boredom in his basement studio apartment and his TV is on the fritz.

I spend a lot of time with him (and always have symptoms, because my chronic health issues all look a lot like covid, lucky me) so I went for a test yesterday, should hear by tomorrow morning.

And getting tested was a joy - they are trying to phase out testing here (I suppose so that nobody will know the numbers) which meant that there were few staff for hundreds of people lining up for the test. Two hours in line for the two minute test. I have problems with my feet and find standing very painful, so after about half an hour managed to snag myself a wheelchair. Pretty dreary way to spend a lovely summer day - the facility is the old hockey stadium that they were meaning to tear down but now it's been very useful for testing and giving shots, lots of parking, big empty place that's built to manage crowds. It's really ugly though, all concrete and no natural light. I don't envy the staff there - masked, gloved, gowned, standing on that concrete floor for a whole shift doing nothing but sticking a stick up people's noses. People who are unhappy because of the wait, because of the possibility of having to miss work and also maybe get really sick, because we might not be in this mess this badly if everyone had acted like adults. Exhausting and depressing as hell.

I'm sorry to hear about your son. Why would they phase out testing? We have schools going in person and the pediatricians don't have enough appointments to test everyone - and when I got notified of an exposure, my daughter and I went to get tested.

Someone in my kids' school tested positive, but the health department hasn't notified us, so I guess it wasn't a close contact? I need to order more of those at-home test kits. I wish they wouldn't say anything until people were notified, and notify them quicker... the email didn't say we had to isolate, but honestly, a responsible person would if there was a chance they were exposed? But I guess the school doesn't see it that way.

A woman in one of the FB groups I'm in for our school district's daughter got ill - about the same age as my daughter - and she said it could very easily have gone south. And her vaccinated husband had it even worse... I just want a vaccine for the kids. I joke about dressing up the kids like senior citizens and getting them vaccinated, but part of me just wants to get them done...

And I agree - some people are like "You told us this would be two weeks" and are all mad. But it's because of people like them who won't wear a mask, who never stopped having parties in their homes, etc., who made this last longer. Had people just stayed home and stayed put for a few weeks, it could have been contained... but everyone moved too slowly and China wasn't forthcoming until it was too late... I really thought I'd see people come together and help each other more, but it seems like people don't care about others and only care about doing what they want to. It's very depressing.

They're phasing out testing because that fits the narrative that it's all over. And to be fair, if it wasn't for new variants, we'd be in reasonably good shape here.

If the parts of the world that had good and early access to vaccine had really gotten on the ball and gotten up to herd immunity levels, we could now all be focusing on getting other places to that point, and variants would not have hosts to develop in. But no.

My son's pretty angry - he's been working with the public all this time, and really doing his best not to catch it. So now he has to miss nearly two weeks of work because he's contagious, and that's not only financially a problem for him, but he works for a small business that really needs those bodies in place. If he infected a few co workers, they'll be in real trouble. So this is not great, even though he's not very sick at all.

If I were a parent of small kids I'd be furious right now.

So sorry to hear about your son, Agony. I really hope things will work out for him, though I can understand his (and your) worry and frustration. As you said in your earlier post, none of this would've happened if people had behaved like adults and remembered that we are part of a community. The experts had been warning for months that there was a risk of nasty variants developing, and unfortunately they were proven right.

I have a travel voucher to spend by the end of this year, and will have to get tickets to Italy to avoid losing money, but at this point I doubt it is a good idea to travel anywhere. In most of Europe you have to have digital proof of vaccination to do a whole lot of things (such as eating indoors at a restaurant), and getting this certification can be tricky if you don't live there. My husband hasn't had a true vacation in almost three years, and we are concerned that our trip might turn into a stress fest.

Agony, I'm sorry to hear about your son. I hope his case is mild and he recovers quickly.

It's more than people needing to act like adults. They need to act sane first. Some of the people testifying at school board hearings against their children having to wear a mask at school are in need of long term interventions behind locked doors. Unfortunately, they are running around free. Even worse, some of them are making policy. The news featured a clip last night of a woman saying masks are "demonic instruments" and "we in the Christian community must fight against them." She then used very unchristian like behavior to discuss the doctors that had testified in favor of masks, insisting there was "proof masks don't work against germs" and the doctor's needed to go back to medical school. Other people were worse.

I am proud of one governor here in the United States. He became fed up with the nonsense being spread about the coronavirus vaccines. He said, among other things, "How can people say there are tracking devices in the vaccines? Then they carry their cell phones with them everywhere? C'mon now!" I hadn't heard that logical argument before but I do like it.

During late July and in August I had noticed fewer people where I live wearing masks. But in the past week, mask wearing seems to have gone up to 98% compliance. I don't know if it is because school has started and the local school districts are firm on wearing masks. Also, I live near a hub of colleges that have opened. All of them are firm on mask wearing too everywhere on campus. I notice once a person has a mask on for work or school they tend to keep it on in their cars and when they go into stores. Every store I go into has employees wearing masks.

The county has a 77% vaccination rate. Cases are rising though among people that are unvaccinated and people in their 20s. The analysis for the last age group is due to "riskier behaviors" such as gathering in larger groups without a mask, delaying getting the second vaccination shot, and not wearing their mask properly or at all. Well, summer is over. The beaches won't be as much fun to hang out at as they were even two weeks ago. Here's hoping we won't spike too badly in the months ahead.

MiraJane - and he was from West Virginia! I have said it before and will say it again, in Virginia, the governor is a pediatric neurologist who believes in science and he's mandated kids wear masks in schools.

We are all wearing masks in public again - most of the stores mandated it. I don't think they should have ever let people stop wearing masks until the county population had herd immunity - that would encourage people to get vaccinated.

News today was saying the US president was going to require all federal employees to be vaccinated - no more testing 'get out of vaccine free' card. And I think businesses employing over 100 people will need to as well?

There are people who are against these mandates because of freedom. But there's a good Doctor Who quote about rules: "Good men don't need rules." When people do what they should do, you don't need rules forcing people. This is happening because of all the people not doing the right thing.

I just want my kids vaccinated.