curmudgeon22

I'm in Burnaby. It was really rainy and windy for a couple days, but I haven't been meaningfully impacted so far.

For sure it was a major storm with some major impacts, but I think most people in the lower mainland weren't severely impacted.

I think it's fine for the article to have a focus, profitability in this case. It's an interesting thought experiment after seeing how many people profit at each stage in the tobacco supply chain to then consider how pervasive tobacco was despite all the downsides.

This study shows 25% likelihood for vaccinated vs 38% for unvaccinated from a member of your household who is a carrier: https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2638

As far as I’m aware, the experiments covered symptomatic cases but didn’t look at a reduction in “getting it”.

Based on this study, vaccinated had a 25% chance vs 38% for unvaccinated to become infected if someone in their household had Covid. So a helpful reduction, but not night and day.

Once infected, from what I’ve read vaccinated folks are just as likely to spread it.

https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2638

Agreed with this, we still get questionnaires.

Should smokers be denied medical treatment related to that choice too?

A fee to commercial facilities making frivolous calls could be more reasonable, as they should have competent folks managing things. See my sibling comment regarding fees in general.

I think there are a lot of potential problems charging a fee for emergency service calls. Who decided what is frivolous?

The person making the call can't be assumed to be an expert. And in many cases, it might seem serious/freaky in the moment, but be less so to an outside observer.

This sounds like a good way to penalize poor folks and have them avoid using the system altogether, resulting in worse outcomes and higher cost burden on the system when preventable issues aren't dealt with proactively.

I get where you're coming from and agree that preventing frivolous calls is a good aim, I don't know that a fee is the right solution.

Giving the upswing in cases (including breakthrough) something like this could be very useful in terms of reducing transmission.

> Patients in the NONS treatment arm demonstrated viral loads, as determined from PCR testing of nose and throat swab sampling, that were lower at days 2 and 4 by a factor of 16.2 than those on placebo, and symptom resolution was also found to be faster on NONS treatment than on placebo in this study.

> Accelerated SARS-CoV-2 clearance with NONS may reduce symptom duration, decrease infectivity period, reduce hospital admissions, and lower disease severity

agreed. I live in Canada and can't recall ever getting a burn on an overcast day.

For me, it's hard to justify a mandate if we don't have a reasonable understanding of how much vaccines actually improves the situation. I agree, they likely do improve it in the ways you say, but if it's a cumulative 25% less likely to spread the disease, a mandate seems like overreach.

Handles are the culprit for paper bags I’ve used.

for maybe ~6 weeks, i noticed dramatically reduced tofu supply in stores near me (Vancouver BC), including from local brands. There was usually something... the soft/dessert tofu being most common. Seems to be back to normal the last couple weeks.

Uber only has one HQ. Sure, it’s more expensive than a taxi service in city X, but Uber HQ and engineering service a very large area.

I think it's too soon to say yet if the vaccines encourage mutation. But my understanding is quite a few of the significant variants come from places where there was significant vaccine testing: - Brazil (Gamma) - South Africa (Beta) - India (Delta) - Alpha (UK)

Yes, but only symptomatic folks were tested.

I don't believe it's a matter of 100% guarantee of immunity. The current covid vaccines are designed to prevent severe infection, NOT prevent infection. My understanding is that the current vaccines ~95% efficacy is against severe infection, but we don't actually know what the efficacy against infection is.

If you compare this to say smallpox vaccine, it is 95% effective at preventing infections. https://www.health.ny.gov/publications/7022/

A core difference is the smallpox vaccine had/has sterilizing immunity while the covid vaccines do not. I think given non-sterilizing immunity and the rate and scale of global vaccine roll outs, zero covid is virtually impossible.

I think if the vaccines offered sterilizing immunity, you'd have a much stronger argument. As it is, vaccinated are able to transmit the disease, also putting immunocompromised at risk. That the vaccines appear to lack durable protection is a problem as well IMO. What are the compound impacts of the vaccines if booster shots are required on an annual basis?

I would guess it also depends on concentration. If you're at the gym exercising a specific muscle group, you could over-exert that muscle easier than generic overtraining while playing a sport.

One option that could help with projects are udemy or similar courses. I've done a couple courses centered around a project, like this one: https://www.udemy.com/course/the-complete-react-native-and-r...

You'd probably want to personalize/customize the projects, but could be a good starting point.

Yeah, I went through similar, interspersed with small bouts of university and some travel. Until my late 20's, I worked in construction, kitchens, call centers, hotels, saw mills and more.

I wouldn't worry about the 'laziness' bit, I think most people are like that and it sounds like you've provided for yourself.

I ended up getting a 2 year diploma in computer science (BCIT if it's relevant to you. I was happy with the program, but some folks didn't have as good of results).

For a long time, no jobs etc.. really stuck, nor did university the first time I tried. A 2 year program was good, because it didn't require as long of a time commitment to get something out of it. This one also had the option to do another 2 years (either right away or later) to finish the degree.

I'm in my second job since school now. I've never found something where I feel "joy" at work, but I'm very happy with the most recent one. Most jobs are annoying a lot of the time I think. Money and future prospects are much better than my random jobs earlier in life.

I changed cities when I went to school even though I could have found similar programs in my home town. The change of scenery was helpful I think.

I guess I have 3 main takeaways:

- I don't think you need to feel like something is a perfect fit/joy. Good enough is OK.

- Don't worry about having "wasted" years. I think life experience counts for a lot and a diverse background can be a strength.

- I never did in my late 20's or early 30's, but I think about retirement money a lot more now. People how started careers earlier and were smart with their $ have a big advantage over latercomers.

I think there’s some truth to this. To me it seems like the social media amplification and pile ons take it to another level though.

I think the narrative around the why is interesting - discussion of self-censorship and the impacts of politics and social media on how we interact.

Very interesting table in the appendix, linked to in the "Supplementary" section [0]. The table is "Supplemental Table 2. Attributable risks and fractions in risk of severe COVID-19 outcomes associated with BMI across age groups" on page 5.

The main datapoint is that for a BMI of 23, there is very little risk.

[0] https://www.thelancet.com/cms/10.1016/S2213-8587(21)00089-9/...

I think a lot of the benefits you (can) get from this you can take with you after you leave the company. I have good friends I still hang out with from my previous work places 1 and 6 years ago. If it would have been all/mostly virtual interactions, I'm sure things would have been OK, but I don't think it would have resulted in the same level of connection with some of my coworkers. YMMV, different people form connections differently.

I think it's reasonable to do a personal assessment of the risk. Yes, COVID can have very negative short and long term effects. BUT, what are an individuals chance of getting COVID? Quite a bit less than 100%. That's not the same math as the vaccine.

I've had good results for the past ~6 months using Habit List [0]. What's worked for me is to slowly add 1-2 new items, being thoughtful about prioritizing them. Then when I'm consistent with those, adding more.

[0] https://habitlist.com/ (ios only, just a happy user)

During Covid, I've often wished I could reprogram the elevator of the apartment building I live in. The current rule is only 2 people can be in the elevator at a time.

Problems that arise:

* Elevator stopping frequently, but already at capacity, slowing down overall performance

* Elevator always goes to bottom (or top) first to pick up passengers going up (or down). This means if your waiting on the ground floor and it's a busy time, folks at the parking levels will repeatedly get picked up before you.

Possible solutions:

* First come, first served (need to remember order of what floor pushed button when)

* Ability to set elevator as "full". Even if abused by a single person, still better than multiple wasted stops.

I suspect it probably comes down to what's in your contract. I've seen situations where the company has the option (at their choice, not yours) to buy stock off you when you leave the company. If it's a significant amount of money, probably makes sense to talk to a lawyer.