More than 1M Americans have died from #Covid19. A new study from @commonwealthfnd suggests the toll would have been 4 times higher, but for Covid vaccines. @brittanytrang reports. https://t.co/3NAqEbSwdm
— Helen Branswell đșđŠ (@HelenBranswell) December 13, 2022
Hospitalizations for people with COVID-19 in the U.S. rose by more than 30% in two weeks. Much of the increase is driven by older people and those with existing health problems, said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC. https://t.co/HylU9gmFLB
— The Associated Press (@AP) December 11, 2022
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"We will get back to a world, I hope, where people appreciate when a group like public health officials have devoted their lives to the safety and the health of the American public," Dr. Anthony Fauci tells Judy Woodruff. https://t.co/RpD46RbZEQ
— PBS NewsHour (@NewsHour) December 11, 2022
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The head of the GAVI global vaccine alliance suggested on Monday it was too early to call an end to the COVID-19 emergency, saying the pandemic could still get worse. https://t.co/XZViZLL2oE
— Reuters Health (@Reuters_Health) December 12, 2022
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BBC: On #China's internet today thousands rushed to the social media page of hero doctor & whistleblower #LiWenliang to tell him that zero-#COVID was being abandoned. As if stopping by the graveside of a family elder, they poured their hearts out to him. https://t.co/TH4NreWqjt
— Patricia M Thornton (@PM_Thornton) December 8, 2022
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The end of the Zero Covid era has been bewildering in its speed. It's literally happened over the last week. Unfortunately it doesn't mean everything's back to normal. People are now scared of getting infected, and with good reason since half the city seems to have Covid.
— Gabriel Corsetti (@GabrielCorsetti) December 11, 2022
Nowhere asks you for a recent test anymore, so no one wants to get tested either. I found this open testing booth which would have had an enormous queue just a week ago. Now it had three people waiting. On the other hand, everyone's trying to get hold of home testing kits. pic.twitter.com/AkUK0jFjmX
— Gabriel Corsetti (@GabrielCorsetti) December 11, 2022
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Significant reduction of hospitalization (by 40%) and deaths (by 70%) among patients who received Paxlovid vs controls in a large US health system (@MassGenBrigham) https://t.co/adjB62nooJ@AnnalsofIM @AnnWoolleyMD @SDrydenPeterson pic.twitter.com/m1NgJXAvBI
— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) December 12, 2022
(2,980 yuan = approximately $427)
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A #Covid nasal vaccine has been approved for use as a booster in India. The vax is based on technology licensed from Washington Univ in St. Louis & has been approved on an emergency basis in India. The vaccine is delivered via nose drops https://t.co/7svWRe3fP0
— delthia ricks đŹ (@DelthiaRicks) December 12, 2022
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Fauci has something Musk can't buy; class.
— M.D. Lafrance (@MD_Lafrance) December 12, 2022
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NeenerNeener
Monroe County, NY:
112 new cases on 12/09/22.
80 new cases on 11/10/22.
92 new cases on 12/11/22.
69 new cases on 12/12/22.
Deaths at 2106, up 6 from last week.
I started looking at hospital bed availability…and it’s pretty damn bleak. The two largest hospitals in the area have no regular beds available, and the two smaller hospitals have a whole 31 beds between them. Hard to tell whether they’re full because of COVID patients or just the regular accidents/coronary problems, etc.
All four area hospitals together only have 15 available beds in their ICUs.
Except for mailing Christmas packages this coming week and getting curbside groceries I’m not leaving my house this winter, just like the previous 2 winters. I’m going to have to be very careful not to fall and break anything this year.
New Deal democrat
As I anticipated might happen, the downturn noted in BIobotâs data last Friday has been revised away. Now the trajectory is an increase that has slowed almost to a stall, consistent with about 375,000 ârealâ cases per day. Increases are more apparent in the Northeast and Midwest, with only a slight increase in the South, and a downturn in the West.
Confirmed cases also show a sharply decelerating increase at 62,300, up about 4,000 in the past week, vs. 35,000 at their October lows. Hospitalizations are also increasing at a slower rate at 35,900, up 1,500 in the last week, vs. 23,000 at their recent lows. Deaths total 403; their increase may or may not be decelerating.
State by State data generally shows increases almost everywhere. The jurisdictions with the most cases per capita include PR, NY, AZ, NJ, CA, NE, IL, NM, IN, and RI. Those with the least include DC, AK, VT, WA, ME, NH, ID, GA, LA, and HI. There really is no regional outlier.
The good news is that this winterâs wave is subdued compared to the last two years. It is also good that this is happening at the point where the new Alphabet soup variants should be creating the most new cases. The bad news is that we still have Christmas and New Yearâs get-togethers ahead.
As an aside, almost all the COVID experts have moved their accounts to, or are at least cross-posting at, Mastodon, so you donât have to visit the old toxifying site if you donât want to.
OzarkHillbilly
But Musk had $44 billion to throw away on a vanity purchase, so there.
rikyrah
Long COVID is very real.
It’s affecting a large number of people. We haven’t begun to get a handle on it as a country.
YY_Sima Qian
Standard disclaimer: the reported numbers in China no longer track reality, not even the underlying trend. The numbers to watch now are active severe/critical cases, new deaths, & vaccinations.
On 12/12 Mainland China reported 2,315 new domestic confirmed (153 previously asymptomatic), 5,181 new domestic asymptomatic cases, 11 new domestic suspect cases, & 0 new domestic deaths. Mainland China reported 45 new imported confirmed cases (2 previously asymptomatic), 183 imported asymptomatic cases, & 1 imported suspect case.
Overall in Mainland China, 3,943 confirmed cases recovered (61 imported), 25,685 asymptomatic cases were released from isolation (176 imported) & 155 were reclassified as confirmed cases (2 imported), & 195,613 individuals were released from quarantine. Currently, there are 36,340 active confirmed cases in the country (491 imported), 143 in serious/critical condition (all domestic, + 6 in the past 24 hrs.), 230,346 active asymptomatic cases (1,659 imported), 19 suspect cases (1 imported). 777,516 traced contacts are currently under centralized quarantine. There have been 5,235 total COVID-19 deaths to date.
As of 12/12, 3,450.244M vaccine doses have been injected in Mainland China, an increase of 1.252M doses in the past 24 hrs.Â
As of 12/12, Hong Kong reported 13,721 new positive cases, 791 imported & 12,930 domestic, & 37 new deaths. There have been 11,021 total COVID-19 deaths to date.
On 12/12, Taiwan added 17,168 new positive cases, 50 imported & 17,118 domestic. There were 12 new deaths. There have been 14,722 total COVID-19 deaths to date.
YY_Sima Qian
Wuhan started lifting restrictions on 11/28, after the wave of protests fro 11/25 – 11/27. Since then, COVID-19 has swept across the city. Just over the past weekend, my entire family have tested positive. I am still testing negative on the rapid antigen test, but I have developed discomfort in the throat, so I am probably infected. Most of my wifeâs extended family in Wuhan have developed symptoms & developed symptoms w/in the past week. There have been no family gatherings, & they live in different parts of the city, so they were infected by their daily contacts. I have heard a lot of anecdotes from our contacts that entire families and offices have been tested positive. Members of our local community office have also been infected, & thus have Clearly, the virus transmission is incredible. Similar stories abound in Beijing, Guangzhou, Chongqing, Zhengzhou, Shijiazhuang, etc. I would not be surprised if the actual daily incidence of infection in China is in the millions.
Fortunately, the symptoms are still relatively mild. Most have low to medium grade fevers, soreness or pain in the muscles & joints, throat discomfort, etc. My daughter has developed high fever the day before yesterday, topping 40 C on occasions, current being managed w/ ibuprofen. We took her to the hospital ER early yesterday morning out of an abundance of caution. The childrenâs ER were full of kids having fevers & the childrenâs ward is full, adultsâ fever clinics also have very long lines, but the adultsâ ER was actually pretty quiet, & there is no stream of ambulances in & out. The same is the case in other cities, too. So far, there does not appear to be a massive wave of people needing emergency care & hospitalization. We will have a better picture in a couple of weeks. Chinese authorities are claiming that the BF.7 strain prevalent in north of China appears to produce slightly stronger symptoms than the BA.5.2 strain prevalent in southern China. Mild to moderate fever & muscular-joint soreness/pain are common w/ the former, while many infected w/ the latter show no symptoms.
In theory, one needs to show the health codes & negative PCR test w/in 48 hrs. to enter hospitals, but w/ COVID-19 prevalence so high in the community hospitals are ignoring the requirement. The Chinese government has stopped the mini-APP that shows recent travel history, as inter-regional travel are no longer restricted. We will see how long the health codes last. They are already useless, since the vast majority of infected persons have only tested on the rapid-antigen tests. In theory, they are supposed to report self-test positive to the community office, but few people bother, & the community offices donât bother, either. It is actually very difficult to purchase latter flow rapid antigens tests & anti-fever medicine, as people are hoarding & logistics are still iffy. Even w/ lifting of almost all restrictions, streets are very quiet as most people stay & work from home (or w/in factory compounds under âclosed loopâ). Masking rate even outdoors is almost 100% here in Wuhan, & more people are wearing N95s & KN95s.
Argiope
@YY_Sima Qian: Thank you for the update. It can be scary when a kid is really sick. I remember long before COVID was a thing, when my 5 year old had H1N1 influenza and got some chest pain with it along with high fever. Those were some of my hardest hours as a mom even though I’m also a clinician. There’s no amount of logic that can completely calm a parent’s heart. I hope your daughter recovers fast (kids often do that!), and that your family’s course is mild.
Amir Khalid
Malaysiaâs Ministry of Health reported 809 new Covid-19 cases yesterday, for a cumulative reported total of 5,011,443 cases. 805 of these new cases were local infections; four new cases were imported. It also reported six deaths, for an adjusted cumulative total of 36,769 deaths â 0.73% of the cumulative reported total, 0.74% of resolved cases.
26,094 Covid-19 tests were conducted on 9th December, with a positivity rate of 6.3%.
There were 17,972 active cases yesterday, 749 fewer than the day before. 1,128 were in hospital. 72 confirmed cases were in ICU; of these patients, 49 confirmed cases were on ventilators. Meanwhile, 1,552 more patients recovered, for a cumulative total of 4,956,702 patients recovered â 98.9% of the cumulative reported total.
The National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme (PICK) administered 1,621 doses of vaccine on 12th December: 41 first doses, 53 second doses, 463 first booster doses, and 1,464 second booster doses. The cumulative total is 72,525,421 doses administered: 28,117,495 first doses, 27,528,573 second doses, 16,271,595 first booster doses, and 607,758 second booster doses. 86.1% of the population have received their first dose, 84.3% their second dose, 49.8% their first booster dose, and 1.9% their second booster dose.
dmsilev
LA County, the hospitalization rate seems to be leveling off. We’ll have to see, but so far (fingers crossed) looks like this wave won’t be anywhere near as bad as the original-strain (20-21) and omicron (21-22) December/January tsunamis that we had to endure.
Argiope
Well, I’m trying again to convince my 80 year old dad with obesity (but fortunately otherwise healthy) that vaccines are more likely to help him than hurt him. He’s been stuck for years in that weird part of the Venn diagram where right wing idiocy and the supplement industry intersect, so my hopes are low. I sent him the info about Republicans dying at higher numbers due to
stubbornnessÂmisinformation this morning. It’s nah gonna work but I have to to give it a go. I’ve left it alone for months, so maybe one of these days he’ll decide he’d rather be alive to watch the libs get pwned than die of something that could be prevented, at least enough to try out one of these newfangled Fauci jabs. And he substitutes regularly at a high school so he’s getting exposed again, for sure. I am not holding my breath.OzarkHillbilly
@Argiope: That’s rough, sorry you are having to go thru that.
jonas
I wish writers like Delthia Ricks would quit blaring headlines about how Omicron “easily evades” vaccines and immune systems. People aren’t getting their bivalent boosters because all they see are stories like this implying that they’re apparently completely ineffective against any Omicron variant.
Another Scott
@YY_Sima Qian:
@Argiope:
Best of luck to both of you. :â -â (
Hang in there.
Best wishes,
Scott.
YY_Sima Qian
BTW, no one in China, from the government to the public health experts to the population, thinks transmission is dropping because the official cases are dropping. They/we are all quite clear that we are into the massive exit tsunami, some of the cities may already be peaking, while other parts of the country are 2 – 3 weeks behind. What is happening now is entirely predictable & largely unavoidable.
No amount of preparation will accommodate the exit wave, no amount of stocking of supplies can prevent short term supply issues due to hoarding, no amount of staffing plans can accommodate the massive worker absenteeism due to infection, & no amount of government exhortations will force fearful people to go out & consume, & the elderly vaccine refuseniks will only vaccinate when they fear infection greater than side effects of vaccination. Workers in important professions are already asked to work while positive, if they are asymptomatic or mild. Cities are already calling retired medical workers to return to hospitals. Vaccination numbers are surging again. There are a lot of policy failures one can rightfully blame the Chinese government for, but there should be no pretending that the exit from “Dynamic Zero COVID” will be anything but a mess. We have already seen it other former Zero COVID countries/territories as they exited. Hong Kong in the spring got a lot of coverage in western MSM, but New Zealand & Taiwan did not.
However, the 180 degrees turn in western media narrative is as rapid as the turn in Chinese policy, & even more predictable. Nevertheless, the predictably distorted western MSM narrative only makes it easy for the CCP regime to make the case to the population that all western critics are operating in bad faith, & diverts domestic attention from its actual shortcomings, failures & wrongdoings.
jonas
@dmsilev:Â â
Once you wade through all the data in these stories, it’s pretty clear that nearly all of the Covid patients in hospitalized right now are very old people with underlying conditions are are un-, or only partially-vaccinated (i.e. maybe got two original shots, but no recent boosters). What’s infuriating is that the reporting on this is all “Even vaccinated seniors now ending up in hospital with Covid!” This is almost never the case — they may have been “fully vaxxed” two years and however many strains ago, but not any more and that’s why they’re sick now.
YY_Sima Qian
@Argiope: Thank you! My daughter’s fever is already breaking, 48 hrs. later. That first evening my wife & mother-in-law were quite frightened, as my daughter was becoming delirious, & developed shakes. Worse, I wasn’t there because I was self-isolating, as the only member of the family still negative. As soon as the ibuprofen kicked in, however, she became her normal active self again.
Good luck w/ your dad. I have been working hard throughout the year to convince my elderly relatives in China to get vaccinated.
Ken
For years my go-to analogy for Federal Reserve policy has been a drunk driver who realizes he’s scraping the driver side door against the guardrail on that side, so jerks the wheel hard to the right and ends up scraping the passenger side door against that guardrail. It’s convenient to have “China COVID policy” as a shorter way of analogizing the behavior.
(Though I agree the US has not been better; we just got to the “pretend it’s over” stage a little faster.)
Nicole
@jonas:
Yeah, this. I wish there was less “omigod Omicron evades the immunity system” and more, “omigod people need to get their boosters if they don’t want to die.” I mean, if the media wants to sell fear, at least do it constructively.
jonas
@Nicole: Yep. I’ve talked to perfectly reasonable people who were happy to get their original vaccines who are hesitating about getting the bivalent booster because they’ve read or heard somewhere that omicron can evade all the vaccines so there’s no point. A lot of medical Twitter played themselves on this, I’m afraid.
YY_Sima Qian
@Ken:
Lei Gong posted the below on Twitter, that I think captures the dynamics of exiting DZC in the age of Omicron, there is no “middle way” of slowly allowing Omicron to spread, it is far too infectious:
https://twitter.com/gonglei89/status/1602476673860923392
BTW, I don’t know who he is, but many China experts I respect treat him as a credible interlocutor, & I often find his takes wrt to China insightful (which basically means I often agree w/ what he says, so YMMV).
YY_Sima Qian
Here is another twitter thread by Gong Lei on the dynamics of exit from DZC, something I mentioned in my guest post, as well. He was discussion the Chinese population, but I think it applies to Western media & China watchers, too.
https://twitter.com/gonglei89/status/1602465547157131267
Matt McIrvin
@New Deal democrat: As I said earlier, the post-Thanksgiving spike in Greater Boston wastewater numbers hit a ceiling… but it’s still at that ceiling. Leveled off into a plateau, and at this point, I’d expect that to turn into a new Christmas-associated rise before it goes down. The only question is how high up it goes, in a world that is rather different from last year.
I am still masking up in public indoor spaces and I haven’t been out to eat in a while–might hold off for a few months. Most people I know are not masking.
Matt McIrvin
@jonas: The concept of “fully vaccinated” (or even “vaccinated and boosted”) needs to be killed yesterday. We are two and a half years into the pandemic, a year and a half past the vaccines. What’s the effect of being up to date on shots? That’s what is important, and the CDC doesn’t seem to be emphasizing it, nor is anyone else. This frustrates me.
YY_Sima Qian
@Matt McIrvin: At least the vulnerable people in the US & the ROW had the option of boosters over the past year (though not enough people took that option). The vulnerable people in China mostly a year removed from their last booster, if they had any shots at all. Still plans for 2nd booster shots have been announced, though things seems to be in motion toward that direction.
Matt McIrvin
@YY_Sima Qian: Stories in the West always talk about the vaccines in China being inferior, but it really seems to be more important that the most vulnerable people aren’t necessarily getting them– at least not in a timely, repeated fashion.
YY_Sima Qian
I rap on western MSM for their China coverage a lot, so credit where it is due. Nice twitter thread from Dake Kang, AP reported based in Beijing, on the situation on the ground there:
https://twitter.com/dakekang/status/1602619318637928448
Can’t say I am very impressed by AP’s press coverage in general, but Dake Kang’s twitter stuff is very valuable. I guess he does not need to answer to his editors for his twitter content.
YY_Sima Qian
@Matt McIrvin: They always had the option of getting their shots & a booster, but too many calculated that the risk of complications from vaccination was higher than risk of infection under DZC, which was a rational calculation. That & extremely conservative medical advise wrt vaccination of the vulnerable population, due to exactly the same dynamic. Only when the risk calculation changes, will they change. The risk balances has turned 180 degrees in the past 2 weeks, & from the vaccination figures it appears people’s behavior is changing, too, again rationally. Unfortunately, COVID-19 will spread much faster than vaccine uptake. & Chinese vaccines need 2 shots to have any effectiveness, & 3 shots to reach peak protection against hospitalization & deaths for the vulnerable populations.
Matt McIrvin
@jonas: Also, there have been some stories about how the bivalent booster actually isn’t any better than the original vaccine at preventing Omicron infection, or even bad consequences (it produces more antibodies by a factor of several, but this turns out not to be as clinically important as you might think).
That’s interesting, maybe relevant to Monday-morning-quarterbacking the authorities, but it’s also beside the point from the perspective of what you should do. Getting EITHER booster is way more effective than no booster. If you got vaccinated with the original vaccine, you should get the new booster just because it’s a booster.
Matt McIrvin
@YY_Sima Qian: That risk calculus always depended on an assumption that the future would be like the present, which was unwarranted. But I see the same kind of reasoning from doctors here too.
YY_Sima Qian
@Matt McIrvin:
No argument from me. Throughout 2020 & 2021, one could plausibly believe China’s DZC strategy could be sustained almost indefinitely, until much more effective vaccines & treatments are available, and/or variants become much milder. The arrival of Omicron, the way it rapidly tore through the ROW, the way it rendered Zero COVID in the other holdouts untenable, & the way it greatly stressed China’s DZC strategy in the spring of 2022, should have signaled that DZC would not longer be sustainable in the medium term. However, the genie was put back into the bottle at Shanghai in Apr. – Jun., which again encouraged complacency.
I saw that very reasoning from my relatives who are medical professionals, & I kept banging the drum in our family WeChat groups throughout spring that Omicron means DZC will break down at some point, & once containment was lost it will spread like wild fire on dry tinder. Thankfully, a couple of my elderly aunts listened.
Barbara
I know that Fauci is very elderly at this point, but it’s hard to overstate how tough he must be — he played basketball in college even though he is relatively height challenged, and he worked in construction to put himself through college. The New Yorker profile is quite good, but the best anecdote in the whole article is how Fauci decided to try to work with AIDS activists, who routinely protested outside his window at NIH. He told the reporter that at one point as he sat in his office listening to protesters, he thought, as a guy born and bred in Brooklyn — many of the protesters were from NYC — if he were in their shoes he’d be doing the same thing, and there had to be a way to work together. The U.S. is so lucky to have public servants like Fauci.
Barbara
@YY_Sima Qian: From reading about the puzzling low rate of vaccination of elderly people in China, I finally found an article stating that side effects from the approved vaccines are much higher than they have been for the US and European vaccines. It’s all luck of the draw, I assume, but it explains why elderly people don’t want to go back for a booster shot. I don’t think the side effects are really serious but they can apparently be very unpleasant. I hope they can ramp up vaccination, because it will be very harrowing and needlessly tragic if they don’t.
Matt McIrvin
@Barbara: It does seem as if, of the vaccines widely used in the West, it was the slightly more traditional ones with a viral vector, not the mRNA or protein-subunit ones, that had the worst side effects–they were the source of the clotting scares, a distinction that antivaxxers could not or would not get right.
eachother
Disturbing trends in this article.
Sorry to hear people here are getting sick and that so many around us are getting sick.
You are in my heart and my hope is for a quick and total recovery.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@YY_Sima Qian: welcome to the club!
Kayla Rudbek
So if I had my fifth shot in early October, should I try to go back for a sixth shot now or wait until the 3-month period which puts me into January?
Ruckus
@YY_Sima Qian:
I got my first shot in January 2021 and the last booster in September. The only thing I can do is stay away from people and mask up. Is masking up all that much fun? No, but I’m betting that masking is a hell of a lot less uncomfortable than getting Covid.
Anoniminous
November Stats for the US:
Total Number of Cases:Â 1,321,203
Total Number of Deaths: 9,652
Projected Number of Long Covid Cases:Â 244,240 – 528,481Â (20% – 40%, range of most common findings)
It is to be noted the Projected Number of Long Covid Cases is nothing more than a WAG. A recent Lancet (Aug 2022) reports “almost 90% of COVID-19 survivors have developed sequelae.” If that number is anywhere near accurate it means a Covid-19 patient, like an HIV patient, goes into remission but is not cleared of the infection. More-and-More it is looking like the SARS-CoV-2, like HIV, integrates itself into the body and becomes Just Another human replication/transcription complex. Thus sequelae can express at any time during the patient’s life.
Barbara
@Kayla Rudbek: I would wait.  It doesn’t seem like immunity would have waned for a shot you received in October. I got the bivalent booster in early September, and then tested positive for Covid six weeks later, while on vacation and had mild symptoms. My working assumption is that I have at least 90 days after being sick during which I am unlikely to get a bad case of Covid. I have been timing my shots to take place at least two weeks in advance of travel or family gatherings, for maximum reduction in likelihood of getting really sick.
Matt McIrvin
@Kayla Rudbek: I don’t think they’d give you a sixth shot. I haven’t heard of the bivalent booster being authorized for more than one shot.
I personally think it SHOULD be, but I’m just some non-expert in the peanut gallery and they haven’t done it.
YY_Sima Qian
@Barbara: IIRC, the reports from health care authorities that conducted Stage III trials of Chinese inactivated whole virion vaccines, and/or administered them to their populations, have all reported that such vaccines have lower side effects & better safety profiles than the mRNAs or viral vector ones. Anecdotes from my acquaintances who received shots in China versus the US appear to confirm this. That is why Hong Kong & Singapore offered the Sinovac vaccine for their elderly populations, as an alternative for those deterred by stories of stronger side effects of mRNA vaccines.
I think the Chinese vaccines refuseniks would have been even more skeptical of mRNA vaccines, due to the stronger side effects & them being  new (& thus in their minds âunprovenâ) tech., had them been available.
J R in WV
Wife and I are fully vaxed and boosted, thanks to local clinic for original vaxes and large county next door health dept, where we got all three boosters. We only go to town for medical appts and grocery shopping, I have been doing most of the shopping as Wife is doing PT to recover from her spinal surgery last spring. We do eat lunch out some times, but at off hours, so even less crowded than usual.
So far, no colds, no flu, no covid in our house hold, nor for our close neighbors, who are also trying to keep their distance from crowds.