I'm writing indoors at a cafe for the first time since March 2020. Every table is taken and every person has a laptop out. It's completely silent apart from the background music.
Someone just came in, saw there were no tables and went to leave when someone else offered to share a table. The new person has no laptop, but she has ringbinders. Silence continues.
Someone answered her phone. The rest of us are giving her dirty looks.
This used to be a normal (if a bit third-wavey) coffee shop. Somehow, it seems to be on library rules now. I feel like if I'd come here to meet a friend, we'd be shushed for talking.
Ringbinder girl has put away her binder and produced a laptop. We are back to 100% laptops
A hipster-looking dude came in and shook hands with two other hipster-looking dudes with laptops who've been here for a while. It seems like they're having a meeting. In whispers.
5 pm. In the last five minutes, half of the people here have paid their bills and left. End of the work day.
Like a shift-change, most laptops are gone. People are coming in with friends and talking. Library rules are over for the day.
On my way out I asked the barista if the silence was normal. No, she said. She was weirded out by it. So not a new post-pandemic trend, just unexpected Library Day.
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I think this NYTimes article is too pessimistic. In particular, it doesn't take account of the situation in Israel, where it looks like there *might* be population immunity with just 54% vaccination.
Almost 30% of the population in Israel is under the age of 16. The young population meant that we weren't *expecting* herd immunity here until kids could be vaccinated.
The article suggests that you need 80% vaccination coverage to keep unmitigated R<1. But that doesn't seem to be what we're seeing in real life. Maybe because infected kids alone don't transmit the virus to enough other people to keep the pandemic going?
The "watermark" theory was all over MAGA and QAnon in the week after the election. The theory was that Trump had ordered the US military to secretly watermarked the ballots in order to expose fraud by state officials.
Here's a few examples from 8 November showing what they imagined the "real" ballots might look like under UV light. QAnon adherents also referenced the Q phrase "watch the water", claiming it might refer to watermarks.
The irony is that QAnon dumped the watermarks theory months ago, and have spent recent days explaining how the UV light at the Maricopa "audit" wasn't looking for watermarks because that would be dumb! The UV must really be looking for something else like skin oil
Was just about to write about Rob Petrosian, a pro-Trump TikTok account that pretends to be a White House Correspondent, posting old videos as if they're news. But @TRWerkmeister got there first. observers.france24.com/en/americas/20…
"Petrosian" has nearly 300k followers on TikTok and his videos have 4.9M likes. They're mostly old clips labelled as if they're happening now, with fake captions
The Petrosian account was behind the false claim that Biden collapsed at the White House during Easter and was hospitalised. This fake claim, complete with a video of reporters running to the West Wing, was all over MAGA networks that day.
Israel's Health Ministry came up with a plan to limit numbers at Meron due to Covid. The plan was ignored by the Government. The authorities just allowed the various Hassidic sects to do their own thing. Last night's tragedy is the result.
This is from a news report yesterday, before the tragedy at Meron.
From a Haredi website 3 years ago: "Who will prevent a disaster at the Toldot Aharon bonfire lighting?". It noted the narrow exit and risk of a crush. But the authorities turned a blind eye for years until tragedy struck.
Israel reports 41 cases of the B.1.617 lineage "Indian Variant" of the coronavirus. Of them, 24 are recent arrivals from abroad and 17 are cases of community spread. Four of the cases were in vaccinated people.
The 24 from abroad are probably unvaccinated. Of the 17 domestic cases, 5 are kids. That leaves 12 adult domestic cases, of which 4 are from the (vast majority) adult vaccinated population and 8 from the (about 13%) adult unvaccinated population.
These numbers are too small to say much. I don't know the current proportion of vaxxed/unvaxxed in daily infections to compare as a baseline. They *look* consistent with the vaccine being meaningfully effective against the Indian variant to me, though.
In a rare case of the headlines underselling good news, yesterday's Public Health England finding that vaccination cuts transmission by up to 50% is actually much better than it sounds.
Why? Two reasons:
The 40-50% reduction in transmission was among THOSE WHO GOT INFECTED DESPITE VACCINATION. That's already a minority of vaccinated people. Most people don't catch the virus at all after vaccination.
Today's ONS study suggests 65% protection against infection after one vaccine dose, rising to 70% after two. So it's 50-60% **of the 30-35% who catch it** who can transmit it in the home. A much bigger reduction in transmission overall.