Hong Kong Disneyland is closing for approx two weeks but then again it was not even a 7 day operational park. The theme park was closed every Tuesday and Thursday for cleaning before the decision to temporarily close the park. The HKDL resorts remain open with limited services.
-
Welcome to the WDWMAGIC.COM Forums!
Please take a look around, and feel free to sign up and join the community.
Coronavirus and Walt Disney World general discussion
- Thread starter Parker in NYC
- Start date
-
- Tags
- coronavirus covid covid-19
- Status
Married5Times
Well-Known Member
^^^Anyone else still think the theme parks have absolutely no business being open right now?^^^
everything should be open. the best way to experience things being "closed" is for you and those like you to hermitize and stay home while the rest of us live out whats left of our lives under an at our own risk philosophy.
you win
we win
everybody wins
everything should be open. the best way to experience things being "closed" is for you and those like you to hermitize and stay home while the rest of us live out whats left of our lives under an at our own risk philosophy.
you win
we win
everybody wins
Jrb1979
Well-Known Member
I agree everything should be open but with restrictions in place. Social distancing and mask wearing should still be in place at least til this wave is over. For God sakes stay home when you are sick.
sullyinMT
Well-Known Member
Well to jump on some more good news, IHME is now predicting that today (Jan 8th) is the peak of new cases for this wave. We will see if this is true this week, because reported new cases will start to fall sometime this week (a delay in people getting tests, and a delay in tests being run.)
IHME | COVID-19 Projections
Explore forecasts of COVID-19 cases, deaths, and hospital resource use.covid19.healthdata.org
True. But if the national curve starts to turn this week or early next because the earliest states to confirm omicron begin to drive a decline, then the rest of us have a reason for hope.
That said, I don’t disagree that my state likely won’t peak until late this month or early next.
Married5Times
Well-Known Member
omi is unstoppable. infection, outside of hermitizing, is more likely than not.
you can find me on main st drinking starbucks brewed coffee kicking back watching 1000's go about living
you can find me on main st drinking starbucks brewed coffee kicking back watching 1000's go about living
carolina_yankee
Well-Known Member
We are very good at contact tracing and are fortunate to be dealing with a known group of people who are very good at self-monitoring. So far, everyone who is a known positive can trace to where they got it or who the weak link was. In most cases it’s an extended family member or work. In the couple of unknown origins, they weren’t in person around the time of infection.
All this could easily change, but so far so good. Also a lot of double masking and a fair amount of kn-95s. It requires vigilance
for sure.
carolina_yankee
Well-Known Member
This drives me nuts. I thought surely people would mask up now with our numbers but a recent trip to Wawa this week taught me otherwise. Ugh.
Jrb1979
Well-Known Member
While true things can be done to help. A big one is if you are sick don't go. Judging from my everyday life many have gone back to going out when sick. Just yesterday when getting my booster, quite a few people coughing or looked like they had a cold. No wonder it spreads so much.
DisneyFan32
Well-Known Member
- In the Parks
- Yes
Every winter in the U.S., the public puts up with tens of millions of flu infections and on average tens of thousands of deaths. Respiratory syncytial virus, which mostly affects children and those over 65, causes about 235,000 hospitalizations and 15,000 deaths.
While families can be devastated by these diseases, the majority of us go on, barely paying attention.
When will we reach that point with the coronavirus, people have often asked over the last two years. What is an acceptable level of sickness, hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19?
The omicron variant opens the door to this kind of thinking, expert say, because at least so far it appears so much milder than delta or the original virus.
But first, we have to get through the current surge.
As of Jan. 5, COVID-19 cases had increased by more than 85% from a week earlier – averaging 586,391 new infections per day, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 16,000 American are being admitted to the hospital every day and 1,200 are dying.
It's time, however, for public and political leaders to start talking about what levels of disease we would accept, argue a trio of health experts in a new commentary in the scientific journal JAMA.
Having a formal risk threshold would trigger emergency actions when cases exceed them, and health systems could use this threshold for planning for normal and surge capacity
A variant that is widespread but causes little disease could be something everyone can put up with, like the flu and RSV, wrote Ezekiel Emanuel, an oncologist and health policy expert at the University of Pennsylvania; Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota and Dr. Celine Gounder, an infectious disease specialist at NYU Grossman School of Medicine.
With omicron, "We're not there yet," Emanuel stressed in an interview about this next "new normal" phase. But "we need a plan to get there and a plan how to stay sustainably there and not have more big outbreaks."
What an endemic virus looks like
Smallpox is the only virus that's ever been completely eliminated from the human population, and measles and polio have the potential to be, experts say, because all three can be completely prevented with vaccination.Respiratory viruses like the flu and now SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, will be impossible to eliminate, because they mutate so much the immune system can't protect against them forever, said Dr. Paul Offit, a pediatric infectious disease expert and director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
An endemic virus may come every few years or a few times a year, bringing a week or two of misery and missed appointments, but little risk of severe disease or death. Four coronaviruses in the same family as SARS-CoV-2 already are among those considered the common cold.
Immunity to these infections fades fast and there's no vaccine or even a decent treatment to fight them. Most people just slog through.
But there are still some open questions with COVID-19 that prevent experts from putting those infections in the same category.
One is whether infection with omicron will protect against a subsequent infection of the virus, and for how long.
Lab data suggests than an omicron infection does protect against one with delta, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a Friday call with reporters.
"We don't yet know whether if you've had omicron you are more susceptible or less susceptible to another infection with omicron," she said. "We are setting up studies to evaluate that."
Omicron is described as being "milder" than previous variants, but it's not entirely clear how mild it is in people who are unvaccinated and have never been infected. And many people are still ending up in the hospital, overcrowding the health care system – which isn't sustainable.
"We could have an endemic state where disease burden is still unacceptable, if it stays very severe," said Elizabeth Halloran, a biostatistician and epidemiologist at the University of Washington and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
it also remains unclear whether omicron carries a lower risk of long-haul COVID, where symptoms such as fatigue, headaches, lung damage or a loss of smell last for months or even longer. People who've been vaccinated and boosted probably run a smaller risk of long COVID, but that risk hasn't been quantified yet.
Early research suggests long COVID might increase the risk for dementia and other health challenges long-term.
"Will we see a spate of neurodegenerative disorders, like we did with the 1918 influenza, like we do with measles?" wondered Dr. Gregory Poland, a vaccine expert at the Mayo Clinic. What will happen to a person when heart muscle damage from COVID-19 is compounded by typical aging and hypertension? "Now you're running the risk of cardiac failure," he said.
Why we need to worry about more variants
Anyone who thinks they understand viruses and knows what they will do next hasn't thought about viruses for very long, said Poland, who has studied them for four decades.Although omicron seems milder, the next variant might not be. Many people think and hope that viruses naturally get less dangerous over time, but there are other options, too, Halloran said.
"It could evolve to be less severe. That's what my expectation is," she said. "But it's surprised us a couple of times already."
It may be a good idea to make variant-specific vaccines for the next round of boosters, instead of repeatedly delivering the same, original shots, Halloran said. That will expand immunity and potentially prevent the virus from evolving to avoid vaccine protection.
Variants can arise from a variety of sources. Researchers believe omicron likely came from an immunocompromised person, who unsuccessfully battled the virus for months, while it evolved to keep the immune system at bay.
Animals are another possible source of variants, Poland noted. It's been shown that deer can catch the coronavirus. It might mutate in them, develop some new properties and then jump back to people.
"There's a host of scenarios out here that the American public doesn't understand, will be shocked at if it happens and will blame the 'experts' for not warning them," Poland said.
Bruce Walker, an immunologist and director of the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard, worries about the potential for a variant with the transmissibility of omicron and the deadliness of delta – or even worse, the lethality of the first SARS virus, which killed roughly 10% of those infected, or MERS-CoV, which kills about one-third.
"That's a real existential threat," Walker said.
What are the tools for managing an endemic virus?
Omicron causes many infections very quickly. In South Africa, cases dropped almost as fast as they climbed.The United States is much bigger and more diverse. Still, "omicron is eventually going to run out of people to infect and it will have to decline," Walker said. That won't happen simultaneously everywhere, though, so he expects waves of infection. "We will be dealing with crises that are moving geographically across the country."
The chances people who are immunized and boosted will suffer severe illness "are markedly diminished," he said. But parts of the country with low rates of vaccination "are going to feel the worst of this surge."
Once the vast majority of the population has been infected, boosted or both, public policy should shift to protecting those who remain vulnerable, Walker said, particularly those who are older, have multiple risk factors or weakened immune systems.
Walker, who helps advise Harvard University on how to manage the pandemic, said officials are currently discussing whether to change their response during the spring semester.
So far, he said, they've focused on preventing infection through frequent testing and mask-wearing. But after this wave of infection dies down, he said, it might be smarter to focus instead on protecting the most vulnerable through medications that prevent disease or reduce risk of serious disease.
"Everybody's trying to figure this out," Walker said. "You want to maximize safety and minimize disruption and those two compete with each other."
The federal government has ordered 700,000 doses of AstraZeneca's long-acting combination antibody Evusheld, for about $300 per dose. The drug, which would provided for free, was authorized in December to prevent infection with COVID-19 in immunocompromised adults and adolescents, as well as those who cannot get vaccinated for medical reasons.
Roughly 7 million Americans would fit these categories, so the drug will not be available to everyone who could benefit.
Similarly, Pfizer's antiviral Paxlovid, also recently authorized, has been shown extremely effective at preventing high-risk people from requiring hospitalization if given within 5 days of the start of COVID-19 symptoms.
But only 20 million doses of the drug, which is hard to manufacture, will be available throughout 2022, according to contracts between the company and the government, which has pre-purchased treatment courses for about $530 each.
"You're not going to have that much available," Emanuel said of each drug, limiting their usefulness. "It is part of the solution, but only part of the solution."
Right now, he said, both testing and treatment are being distributed without much of a plan. "We know what happens when we have haphazard circumstances," he said. "The rich and well connected benefit and it's not equitably distributed."
So should I get COVID to get it over with? Experts say that's a bad idea.
Healthy people who've been vaccinated and boosted shouldn't worry too much about getting infected, Poland said."The reality is all of us are going to get infected with coronavirus. That's a given," he said. "The only question is how do I modify it to be a trivial disease and not run the risk of death or complications."
He'd still like to see everyone who doesn't have a valid excuse to get vaccinated and boosted and wear a mask in crowded indoor areas. "That's how you transition" to an endemic virus, he said. "When you don't do those things, you are giving a lottery ticket to the virus every time it infects somebody."
Halloran said she would strongly discourage anyone from intentionally exposing themselves to omicron. They might still get long-COVID. And even though most people are handling omicron just fine, some are not.
"I'm not afraid of getting omicron (myself)," Halloran said. But "I wouldn't want to give it to somebody."
Walker said he's worried about the cumulative effect of so many people being infected at once. "We just can't handle it from a health care standpoint and a societal standpoint for everybody to be sick at the same time," he said.
Still, the pandemic is changing.
In their JAMA paper, Emanuel and his colleagues recommended a four-pronged strategy for coping with this new reality: a better data system for keeping track of infections, more opportunities to provide medical care via telehealth, rebuilding trust in the public health system and establishing a public health workforce supplemented with school nurses that can manage seasonal surges in infections.
If omicron does turn out to be far less dangerous for most people, doesn't cause a lot of long-COVID and doesn't mutate into something worse, public policy should change, Walker agreed.
"That is the time for us to reassess what our approach is to this pandemic," he said. "It's a very different pandemic and I think we need to put some fresh eyes on it."
John park hopper
Well-Known Member
Irresponsible people are the cause of spreading. My daughter in law is a teacher-- a parent who had one child home sick with the latest variant sent her other child with no symptoms to school. She had this kid in her class she is now recovering from covid and yes tested + twice and vaxed.
LittleBuford
Well-Known Member
The doctor in question gave an interview on BBC Radio 4 today. I don't know if the link (posted below) will work outside the UK, but some of his responses are quoted in the BBC article I'm also posting, and here are some other excerpts that I'm quoting verbatim in the order that they were spoken:
To make [vaccination] mandatory, that could happen, but under extremely, for me, extremely severe circumstances, and that would be something like the level of virus going round the tube [or Tube? Not sure if he's referring to the Underground here] and the population dropping like flies.
I've had vaccinations in the past, childhood vaccinations; I would just look at the risks and the benefits and then my personal preferences.
[Referring to when he was eligible for vaccination:] I thought to myself, "You know, there's a good chance I've probably been exposed to the virus, having worked with it on a regular basis since the start of the pandemic." I'm in a good, healthy shape, so I take care of my health, and I thought, "Well, let's see, then, let's see to ride this out; and maybe there are some issues with the vaccination that will arise," and I don't feel there was a rush to take it, so personal preference.
I haven't seen a patient of my age, and my level of health, present to intensive care.
I've had my antibody level checked, and I know that I've had the virus—I've developed antibodies.
Note that he made the decision not to get vaccinated before knowing for certain whether he'd had the virus. That, together with the numerous anti-vax talking points peppering his other responses, does not convince me that the decisions he's made are wise or scientifically sound.
Broadcasting House - 09/01/2022 - BBC Sounds
The Sunday morning news magazine programme. Presented by Paddy O'Connell
www.bbc.co.uk
Covid: Hospital boss admits they may lose staff over compulsory vaccines
One in 10 staff members are still unvaccinated at one London hospital ahead of new rules, its head says.
www.bbc.co.uk
Regarding the second link above, the bit about the group of midwives (if true) is terrifying. How on earth have we got to this point?
DisneyDebRob
Well-Known Member
The links work fine.The doctor in question gave an interview on BBC Radio 4 today. I don't know if the link (posted below) will work outside the UK, but some of his responses are quoted in the BBC article I'm also posting, and here are some other excerpts that I'm quoting verbatim in the order that they were spoken:
To make [vaccination] mandatory, that could happen, but under extremely, for me, extremely severe circumstances, and that would be something like the level of virus going round the tube [or Tube? Not sure if he's referring to the Underground here] and the population dropping like flies.I've had vaccinations in the past, childhood vaccinations; I would just look at the risks and the benefits and then my personal preferences.[Referring to when he was eligible for vaccination:] I thought to myself, "You know, there's a good chance I've probably been exposed to the virus, having worked with it on a regular basis since the start of the pandemic." I'm in a good, healthy shape, so I take care of my health, and I thought, "Well, let's see, then, let's see to ride this out; and maybe there are some issues with the vaccination that will arise," and I don't feel there was a rush to take it, so personal preference.I haven't seen a patient of my age, and my level of health, present to intensive care.I've had my antibody level checked, and I know that I've had the virus—I've developed antibodies.
Note that he made the decision not to get vaccinated before knowing for certain whether he'd had the virus. That, together with the numerous anti-vax talking points peppering his other responses, does not convince me that the decisions he's made are wise or scientifically sound.
Broadcasting House - 09/01/2022 - BBC Sounds
The Sunday morning news magazine programme. Presented by Paddy O'ConnellCovid: Hospital boss admits they may lose staff over compulsory vaccines
One in 10 staff members are still unvaccinated at one London hospital ahead of new rules, its head says.www.bbc.co.uk
Regarding the second link above, the bit about the group of midwives (if true) is terrifying. How on earth have we got to this point?
LittleBuford
Well-Known Member
I work at a university where we taught in-person last term, with everyone wearing masks. We too have no known cases of classroom spread, but I do not doubt that some of our students who tested positive were indeed exposed to the virus during class time. We have to be realistic about this and accept that even the worthiest sorts of gatherings carry some risk.
LittleBuford
Well-Known Member
Great! I should have said that the relevant segment starts at the 8:45 mark.
Incomudro
Well-Known Member
It's a risk factor, a metric.
It's how we gauge our risk.
When you go to a doctor to evaluate your risk, risk is assessed along age, weight, pre-existing conditions, etc. for virtually every illness, and certainly for covid.
If you're healthy, lean and 24 for instance, it doesn't make sense for you to worry about the risk of an illness that is many time more likely to present a problem to people years - even decades beyond your age range, tens, and tens of pounds outside your weight range, and with the addition of conditions that you don't have.
That's the way health works.
sure, but it's less than 10% of the city's economy. the rules around requiring vaccinations are no more obtuse and requires no more planning than paying a parking deck, cab fare, hotel stay, MetroCard, etc. any implication that the requirements for vaccination are more impactful than the actual pandemic is anecdotal sour grapes and not worthy of whinging over.
KrzyKtty
Well-Known Member
I don't know about the rules in your school district area, but in my school district I would not have much of a choice. I would have to send my other child to school regardless until they tested positive. The only children allowed to use virtual learning in our school district are those who have been sent home due to contact with covid or positive covid. However, they don't care about multi children families. If my daughter gets sent home due to contact with covid, I'm not allowed to keep my son home. Or at least I'm not allowed to keep him home with an excused absence and work to keep up with the class. My daughter got a cold earlier in the year, not covid, The school literally told me I would have to send her anyway or she would just have to miss the work and tests, and they would be counted against her. Since it wasn't covid, they wouldn't allow me to put her on the virtual meets.
I'm not saying I agree with the school district at all, and not sure how things work in your area, I just realize some parents don't have any choice.
I will also state that our school district has never once in this entire time had a mandatory mask rule.
Last edited:
TrainsOfDisney
Well-Known Member
To be fair... that was the 10% I was working around while in the city. So indeed I was hearing from a specific group.
John park hopper
Well-Known Member
This come from SCDHEC
"If you completed the primary series of Pfizer or Moderna vaccine over 6 months ago and are not boosted OR
Completed the primary series of J&J over 2 months ago and are not boosted OR
Are unvaccinated
Again SCDHEC
"If you are unvaccinated or not fully vaccinated and have ongoing exposure to COVID-19:
"If you completed the primary series of Pfizer or Moderna vaccine over 6 months ago and are not boosted OR
Completed the primary series of J&J over 2 months ago and are not boosted OR
Are unvaccinated
- Quarantine for 5 days
- After that continue to wear a mask around others for 5 additional days
- Test on day 5 after exposure"
Again SCDHEC
"If you are unvaccinated or not fully vaccinated and have ongoing exposure to COVID-19:
- Get tested immediately when they are identified as a close contact.
- Begin quarantine immediately and continue to quarantine throughout the isolation period of the person with COVID-19.
- Continue to quarantine for an additional 14 days starting the day after the end of isolation for the person with COVID-19.
- Get tested again 5-7 days after the end of isolation of the infected household member.
- Wear a mask when in contact with the person with COVID-19 throughout the person’s isolation period."
KrzyKtty
Well-Known Member
Berkeley County has a very long standing history of doing whatever the frick wants.... It's gotten into plenty of political fights with both SCDHEC and the state school board during the last 2 years.
I already had tests that proved it was just a cold and not covid. It's not like they held me at gunpoint and forced me to send her to school, but at the same time they gave me no alternative way to keep home and continue to learn with the class.
Virtual learning is literally only for those who are covid positive or have been sent home from the school due to covid exposure. If you do not meet those requirements, you just fall behind or come to school.
I already had tests that proved it was just a cold and not covid. It's not like they held me at gunpoint and forced me to send her to school, but at the same time they gave me no alternative way to keep home and continue to learn with the class.
Virtual learning is literally only for those who are covid positive or have been sent home from the school due to covid exposure. If you do not meet those requirements, you just fall behind or come to school.
- Status