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[Frumple]

Ordering from supermarkets online is something a lot of people cannot afford.  Higher prices, plus having to order large amounts at once just does not play well with those on the low-income side of society.

The at-once thing is more of a problem*, but at least where I'm shopping, as near as I've noticed prices are identical. No markup, least for the stuff I actually shop for. Maybe I'm missing some of it, or my memory's deteriorated from not actually going into a grocery store since like... March or something... but at least for the staples I regularly tracked previously, the prices mostly haven't been higher.

*Though the minimum order is only 35 bucks at the nearest place to me offering curbside, and as someone that's been on the low-income side of society literally my entire life, grocery shopping only once or twice a month is how I've saved money. You do larger shopping trips to save on transit costs and time. Definitely do understand plenty of folks have more trouble doing that for various reasons, though. Still. Access to the means to make the order (internet, banking and credit/debit cards, reliable transport to get to the store and back with a substantial amount of stuff) is probably what I'd note as a larger issue.

Contact tracement revealed the vast majority of infections to occur at home and at work.  Pubs and bars only account for a very small percentage.

Hasn't that had a lot to do with the pubs and bars being closed, or at least significantly less trafficked than prior to the plague? The infections occur mostly where there's people, from what I understand.

[martinuzz]

Over here in the Netherlands, people on the low-income side of society usually do not own a car, so yeah transportation is an issue. A month, or even a week's worth of groceries does not fit on a bicycle.

Also, they usually do not have a large enough fridge to store 1 month of groceries.
And indeed, access to internet banking is an issue too for a lot of folks.   A lot of low income people are under administration, which means they do not have access to internet banking.   They get a weekly allowance which can be less than the minimum of 70 euros that a lot of home delivery grocieries require, if they accept ATM card payment at the door to begin with (they don't, you need to pay online).  Credit cards are not a thing over here either, except for the rich and the fools.  Credit cards are a US insanity.  People here are taught not to spend what you don't have.

[Reelya]

Doesn't sound that good then. Here, when I was getting regular unemployment that worked out at $680 a fortnight including rent subsidies. At the time I was eating more or less a paleo diet all the time, buying protein powder as well, and still managed to save up $3000+ of my payments. Part of this is down to the fact I used to be pot smoker but gave that up, and I don't smoke cigarettes or really drink. So when I gave up pot I suddenly had a lot of extra cash and invested that in eating better and saving. The point here is that you can do pretty well for yourself even on welfare payments as long as you're smart with your money. Now I've been working for a year and a half and have $30000 in the bank since I've avoided the temptation to make any big lifestyle changes.

Also, I don't know about banking in the Netherlands, but here I have a VISA debit card. That works like a credit card online but it comes out of my bank account.

[martinuzz]

Social minimum welfare for a single person household over here is about 930 euros, excluding rent and heathcare insurance subsidies.
Most of that goes to paying rent, gas/electra/water and healthcare insurance.

Once those are paid, it leaves somewhere between 50 and 70 euros a week for groceries, clothing and unforseen expenditures, which is really not much if you look at the prices of food and clothing.

It is completely impossible to own a car and pay road taxes, vehicle insurance and petrol (or get a driver's license, 2000-3000 euros) from that income.
Then again, cars aren't so much of a nescessity as they are in the US for we do not have vast distances to travel to go shopping or get anywhere.

We are one of the strongest economies in the world, and a very wealthy country, but income disparity between the rich and the poor is also one of the highest if not the highest in Europe.

[Starver]

Contact tracement revealed the vast majority of infections to occur at home and at work.  Pubs and bars only account for a very small percentage.

Hasn't that had a lot to do with the pubs and bars being closed, or at least significantly less trafficked than prior to the plague? The infections occur mostly where there's people, from what I understand.

Reminds me of one of the justification for the "moral" imperative to send kids back to school, over here.

"We haven't had any infections traced to school children mixing..."  Well, probably that's because there have been only a limited number of children mixing at school for the last three or ?four? months now...

(Unrelated to COVID, the same sort of trick was played with our 'smart motorways' development. We have an acknowledged very safe motorway network, so based upon this they feel justified in changing the base design principle of three transit lanes + hard-shoulder(/dedicated rescue lane for emergency use; i.e. breakdowns when they need to pull over or emergency vehicles to pass stationary traffic) into four lanes and occasional emergency refuges, and then are surprised when incidents happen seem to suggest it's no longer as safe to have broken down vehicles stuck on active lanes.  The goalposts are moved, and they are highly surprised when the rate of scoring changes...)

[martinuzz]

Nah, bars and pubs have been re-opened for months now already (and getting lots of visitors), and still only account for a very small percentage of infections.

[Loud Whispers]

big moment with 10,000 protesters in London claiming covid is a hoax

With a surprise showing from jeremy corbyn's brother

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Symptomatic reinfection confirmed. Though the dates are only a few weeks apart, genetic testing of the two infections rules out the second being a direct descendant of the first.

Potential reinfection within weeks. If that timeframe isn't an extreme outlier that's the worst case scenario coming to pass.

[Il Palazzo]

big moment with 10,000 protesters in London claiming covid is a hoax

Weaksauce. They have nothing on Berlin's ~40k.

[ZBridges]

Symptomatic reinfection confirmed. Though the dates are only a few weeks apart, genetic testing of the two infections rules out the second being a direct descendant of the first.

Potential reinfection within weeks. If that timeframe isn't an extreme outlier that's the worst case scenario coming to pass.

Does this being the first confirmation of reinfection in 6 million cases suggest that reinfection is extremely rare, or is there another reason?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

There's still a lot of variables that aren't defined in this - the chief among them being the average speed of vulnerability. It could be that average vulnerability is much longer than a few weeks, and this guy just happens to be at the bad end of the curve. It's also a question of how well or poorly the immune system is responding to similar covid strains, as it could also be the case that a distant covid strain reinfects quickly but a near one doesn't reinfect at all. That he had two highly distinct strains lends some credibility to this.

Additionally, the odds game is at play. There have been other reports of reinfection, they're just asymptomatic. So you have an unknown number of real covid cases out there, with an unknown number of genetically distinct strains, and you're waiting for one to cross over the other. In a world of billions, that might take some time.

[Starver]

And how many people got 'reinfected' while still technically convalescing (but succesfully so) from their prior infection?

As in, whatever makes the second (third, subsequent...) 'hit' of virus get around the aquired immunity of the earlier exposure(s) manages to get in there while the patient is still fighting (but winning) the early round...


(If we knew to look for it, we could probably detect by tests if H1N1 was joined by H18N11, through unforeseen reasons, but perhaps "being ill is being ill", and taking a turn for the worse isn't unusual in any condition so would anyone necessarily think to check?)


Still too many unknowns here, and I'm just riffing on the idea without any actual info to back my wild hypothecating up.

[misko27]

Does this being the first confirmation of reinfection in 6 million cases suggest that reinfection is extremely rare, or is there another reason?

This is the first confirmed symptomatic reinfection. We previously (albeitly recently) confirmed reinfection, but that case was asymptomatic (other instances were confirmed in Europe soon afterward I believe), leading some to hope that that would be the norm.

So many variables...

[Reelya]

Yep so it's far better evidence than some of the early claims of reinfection that seem to be the media just sensationalizing a difference in testing methods. For example in China some hospitals started testing recovered patient's poop and found Covid in there, and that got reported as "cases of reinfection" completely ignoring that the virus obvious doesn't infect you via your butthole.

[martinuzz]

An Icelandic studies has shown that 90% of recovered covid patients still had high concentrations of antibodies against the virus after 4 months.
The scientists investigated blood samples of over 30000 Icelanders.  Of those, 1215 people were found to be infected.
91% of those infected showed a sharp increase in antibodies the first two months after diagnosis, after which the number of antibodies remained stable.
So it looks like losing immunity within a few months is not the standard, it's somewhat rare.