RuTemple
Ika Makimaki-Are you coming to [event]?
-Is it outdoors?
-No, we want it to be cozy.
-Will there be ventilation and filters inside?
-*puzzled look*
-*sigh* Are masks required?
-No, no one is doing that anymore.
-I am. Will there be an online option?
-No, too complicated, we want everyone to be together this year.
-I don't think I'll join, thanks.
-We've moved on, the pandemic is over!
-Sadly, it is not. And it's not worth risking my family's health so we can pretend it's 2019 again.
Daniel@pezmico my kingdom for a safe third place to gather.
Chelle (she/her) 🐸☕@pezmico I feel you. We have maybe one person over a month, test with RATs first, and then leave the door open and run a big filter in the middle of the room. Otherwise it's the hermit life for us.
Stormcrow
Energetic NovaI wore a n94 at the convention and didn’t at Disneyland (when outside). The guildlines work if you follow the guidelines.
Andrew Pontious
CnEY?!@pezmico I had hoped NZ would hold to taking the pandemic more seriously than a lot of other countries, and was bummed when they decided to, what was it, """safely""" turn the page by doing the most unsafe thing imaginable and drop requirements...
lucas 🎺@pezmico my work is only doing non optional, huge indoor gatherings now. No ventilation, no masks
@theLUCASTDS that sucks. Shouldn't be this way.
Wilfried Klaebe@theLUCASTDS @pezmico Do they want to lose employees? Because that's how they'll lose employees!
Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE@theLUCASTDS @pezmico My work knows that I'd simply retire if they tried to force me to attend the office.
Real Fooding 
@pezmico I’ve heard that it’s complicated in aus and nz, but to be honest- I live in Bulgaria, Eastern Europe - we forgot about it already.. everything is quite like 2019.. except financial crisis and war near us. Stay healthy, cheers
@cured_meats most people here say it's over and forgot about it too.
But they're sick a lot. Just today, two members of my team are off sick.
"Not covid" they say, but they're not testing. They can't know.
Meanwhile I wear a mask and am cautious. I'm healthy. I like not being sick. Especially not for months on end.
Wearing a mask is a minor inconvenience. Being sick sounds a lot worse.
Christopher Masto@pezmico @cured_meats We worked from home successfully for 3 years, but suddenly everyone has to come to the office because we couldn’t possibly collaborate with the online collaboration tools we market for collaboration. Oh, and to save money you get to share desks now, isn’t that great.
TransitBiker
Michael Misamore@pezmico #CovidIsNotOver until #LongCovid is cured, and sadly it isn't yet. That's the reality. Folks are in denial.
GreenDotGuy@mmisamore @pezmico At least in the US, the portion of the population who report currently experiencing Long Covid has been dropping. It barely blipped up a tenth of a percent in our winter Covid wave.
It appears that Long Covid is becoming less and less of a concern as fears of it doing cumulative damage on aggregate have failed to materialize.
Cifer@DarcMoughty @mmisamore @pezmico Is the portion who report Long Covid dropping because fewer people are sick with it or because fewer sick people are reporting when this stuff currently has no real treatment?
@Teskariel Pretty sure it's because each variant seemingly has less teeth than the one before, and the people most susceptible to harsh effects are no longer with us.
I had four very healthy friends hospitalized with the Alpha and Delta strains, some had Long Covid lasting months. More recently though, even high risk friends have avoided anything more than a 'bad cold' with no after-effects, and the stats back that anecdotal experience up.
@DarcMoughty @pezmico I'd love to see a peer-reviewed paper that supports this hypothesis after accounting for selection bias. It would honestly be a relief.
@mmisamore @pezmico I'm not sure there will be any. People don't write papers on what's _not_ happening.
Long Covid was always more prevalent and more severe in the people who had the most severe Acute Covid. That's not to say that you had to have risk factors or severe Covid to develop Long Covid, just the likelihood of it.
Also, most Long Covid itself is mild. Can't smell or have a lingering cough five weeks after Covid? That's Long Covid by some definitions.
Then there's recovery. Plenty of evidence that there are outflows of LC as people recover.
With each wave, the ratio of severe disease to cases has been more favorable.
Add it all up, and it would make sense for fewer and fewer people being affected with LC, even if Covid is still circulating.
Now, I'm not saying it's no big deal. I'm saying that in a nation with something like 28% people disabled from the start, Long Covid is 'only' adding 130 basis points to that, and that number has trended DOWN. The impact on society hasn't grown and grown, it's faded into the giant mass of existing disability as just another contributor, and it's shrinking anyways.
Deb4+ aka Deborah DT 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️@pezmico Yup. My local lefty political groups sent out surveys and apparently most people in my now previous local political groups think in person is great.
Actually one is alternating between meetings in a park (apparently mostly for socializing?) and lunch meetings.... Talk about your extremes.
"Nobody is doing that" = gaslighting, thanks.
Falx Cerebri@pezmico yep. Exactly this. Just now.
Kevin Karhan 
@pezmico +9001%
Noone's paying me enough to risk being crippled for life or nonconsentially turned my pronouns into was/were.
rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua@GustavinoBevilacqua @pezmico that assumes they'll be a net positive by being yeeted 6ft under and not potentially crippled for life due an avoidable infection.
Erik Uden => I love how doing this will make it seem like we’re the issue. It’s like killing the messenger but softer. People are annoyed at us for showing them reality, for robbing them of their innocence and naivety they’ve built themselves in order to forget Covid was ever real.
@pezmico One meeting I attend, the committee has decided to have one in-person meeting per year. They can manage without me for one meeting ("but please send in your report").
Arachnomancer@pezmico A wise decision. 😷✌️
Steven D. Brewer 🏳️⚧️I am lucky to live in a progressive place that is more accepting. Arrangements were made for me to present remotely next weekend at a local conference. And when I said I couldn't attend the breakfast with the new Chancellor, they followed up to ask if I would like to attend via Zoom. ♥
Olivia Maes@pezmico I feel your pain!