Der Zeitgeist

Yes, that's also why I no longer have any patience to discuss a lot of the bullshit that's routinely brought up in this thread. A friend of mine is currently pregnant with her second child. Shortly after the start of her pregancy, she discovered a lump in her right hand, at he base of her thumb that kept growing. At first it looked like they might be able to remove it, with a special form of local anesthesia before the pregancy has advanced so much that no doctor wants to risk surgery any longer. But now because the hospitals are completly swamped by unvaccinated COVID cases (80-90% unvaccinated in the ICU at my local university hospital), so that's all off the table until the child is born. Now my friend has to wait until March with a freaking tumor growing in her hand, constantly thinking of her own mother that already died of cancer last winter with no one being able to visit her in hospital when she was dying.

Like I said, I'm not having the same argument over and over again. If you want to believe that vaccines cause Covid, go ahead. Good luck with that.

Something like that, probably, depending on the testing strategies different countries tend to pursue and other mitigation measures being in effect for particular groups. Whatever it is, I'm pretty sure it's not "vaccines cause Covid" like some people here apparently believe.

Sorry, but I'm not having the same argument about this once again. The point you made earlier by misinterpreting that graph is essentially that being vaccinated carries a higher risk of COVID infection than being unvaccinated. If that is the assumption you want to make for your own decisions regarding vaccination or getting a booster, that's fine, I really don't care. I'm dealing with enough crazy anti-vaxxer arguments in my real life, and I don't have to deal with this crap in my free time. Good luck to you.

No. You assume that everyone is constantly tested and the infection status of everyone is constantly known. But that's not the case, and the graph you quoted earlier doesn't show complete information about the entire population, but only those that are tested. It's the same argument we had a few weeks ago. I can try to explain it to you, I cannot understand it for you, sorry.

We've been through this already (several times, actually).

Can't have a "Xi" virus.

It's still unclear if it will really outcompete Delta in populations with substantial immunity (vaccinated or previously infected). If it does, virologists are currently expecting some, but not complete immune escape, so current vaccinations will probably still work, but slightly less so than with previous variants. Same as with Delta, but more so, we can expect larger numbers of breakthrough infections the longer ago the vaccination occured. For countries, this could mean a still increased importance of closing vaccination gaps in the population as well as increasing the speed of booster vaccinations. Oh, and they're calling it Omicron now.

To be fair, it's quite unlikely he really contracted it two times in this instance. It's probably some residual RNA from his first infection that triggered the test. In some weird conditions, PCR tests can go positive weeks after an infection still. Concerning natural immunity & vaccines: My boss, who already had Covid last winter and got his regular BioNTech double vaccine in the summer, got a textbook breakthrough infection now together with his entire family. It probably got into the house through the unvaccinated school children (daughter fell ill first) and then hit the vaccinated parents. Nothing too bad, but it still knocked them down into bed for a solid two weeks. Luckily, we didn't have any further infections from him at work.

Any bets on how long Baerbock will last as foreign minister? 😄

Let's try again.

No way!

I'd say overall, we're having the same problems over here in Germany, maybe slightly fewer people with heavy obesity. The standard fast food joints like McDonald's seem to be mostly frequented by lower-income people over here, often with an immigrant background. One thing that might be interesting is the overall physical mobility of the population. Just from the way city planning is done and towns are laid out in Europe vs. North America, we might have fewer door-to-door car trips vs. more bike rides or just walking.