Here's the latest from California:
Mark Ghaly, secretary of the California Health and Human Services Agency, said Monday that masks will be required in all public indoor spaces for one month beginning Wednesday through January 15.
The state will also require those attending large indoor events to provide proof of a negative PCR test taken within 48 hours before the event. Previously, the window was 72 hours. People who use a rapid antigen test must take it within 24 hours of the event.
[This is not correct. See update below.]
The mask mandate is fine, but the test requirement is a huge pain in the ass. Testing is more widely available than in the past, but PCR tests still take 1-3 days to get results. So if you get a test 48 hours before the concert you have tickets for, you'll probably get results back in time but then again, you might not. Of course, you always have the option of paying $150 for guaranteed quick turnaround, but that's pretty pricey.
The antigen test is better, but if you're going to an evening event you'll have to get it done on the same day as the event you're going to. If that's a weekday, taking time off from work might be a problem.
It all just seems a bit much. Even with omicron blah blah blah, proof of vaccination ought to be enough, shouldn't it? It's not perfect, but is it substantially worse than the testing requirement?
UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal is wrong, and therefore so was I. The testing requirement is only for people who are unvaccinated. If you've been fully vaccinated, you can attend indoor events merely by showing proof, just like always. Sorry about that.
...proof of vaccination ought to be enough, shouldn't it?
It is, according to CNBC:
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/13/covid-california-imposes-indoor-mask-mandate-regardless-of-vaccination-status.html
"California is also requiring people attending events with more than 1,000 attendees to submit a negative Covid test if they do not have proof of vaccination."
Proof of vaccination IS enough.
"The mandate will go into effect on Wednesday and will remain until at least Jan. 15, state officials said on Monday. The state will also require unvaccinated people attending so-called mega-events to show proof of a negative coronavirus test result from within a day, if it’s an antigen test, and within two days for a P.C.R. test..." https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/13/us/california-mask-mandate.html
You need to fix this post.
Even for the unvaccinated, I think a test within the past 4 days is probably good enough, but it does make sense that the unvaccinated must provide a test. People can't be trusted to keep their masks on. But proof of vaccination IS enough for California - no test required if you're vaccinated.
For indoor events with 1,000 or more people, attendees age 3 and older must provide proof that they:
Are fully vaccinated, or
Have received a negative COVID-19 test
https://covid19.ca.gov/mega-events/#indoor-events
Moving on, knowing that some states are already ahead of the federal gov't, when do you think the CDC will require boosters to be qualified as "fully vaccinated"?
Feb 2022?
Next issue. How long will the federal government control the supply of COVID-19 vaccines and keep them free for Americans?
Finally, why is the US targeting poor neighborhoods with free at-home testing kits, but not the poor, generally?
Targeting neighborhoods is easier--drop them off at a local organization and let them hand the kits out.
Why not hand them out to vaccine providers to give out to anyone who comes in for a shot w/o insurance or is on Medicaid?
You know it’s easy to lie and say you don’t have insurance right? For example, even I with insurance took a test at a neighborhood center without telling them I had insurance (because I forgot my card and it was easier than going all the way home to get it).
So I don’t know if your idea really makes any difference in the real world from just giving them to providers in poor neighborhoods and letting them distribute them as they see fit.
Poor people aren't just in poor neighborhoods. Section 8 housing, for example. Income-limited housing exists in mixed areas.
Also, there is no downside to more people getting free tests; eventually, the point is to get free tests out to everyone not just the poor.
Yeah, the distribution is a kludge. Both kits and rapid test sites should be much more available. Food trucks should double as test sites.
Perhaps I'm being too credulous but food trucks have a difficult enough time maintaining sanitary conditions. You want them handling test kits??
People are still talking about boreicron????
I had a mild case of covid back in June; it didn't get into my lungs, and even still it felt like death. It was hands down the the worst illness I've ever had in many decades of life.
May you have just as good if not better luck with that I did.
I'm hoping that "boreicron" will wipe out the willfully unvaccinated. That would be cool.
It can't loser. It's weak and irrelevant.
just like you!
I thought we weren't supposed to be feeding the troll...
I don't live in California and I have never been much of a participant in "large indoor events" but I guess this just ends up making the events more or less impossible to stage profitably.
Is it worth trying to blunt the next wave with these precautions? I don't know. It's difficult to imagine anything preventing the willfully unvaccinated from spreading the illness. The rest of us have already done our part. Mild breakthrough infections among otherwise healthy people are generally fairly trivial. If this scares you, I think you should skip going out.
I've been anti-event since 2003. I am an OG hermit.
Same as NY Cities and now NY States. The City is vax only, the rest of the State has the option of masks on and accept tests or fully vaxed.
The City is doing really well, concerts, Knicks, Rags, all selling out.
UBS Arena in Nassau was doing Vaexex or neg test. Not sure what they will do now, likely fully vaxed.
So at the local rheumatoid arthritis convention we are gonna allow vaccination only as TH"E protection when Omicron has shown that most vaccines are ineffective against it?
Why not just do away with all protections?
Just let those with immuno compromising diseases just die?
Omicron is NOT the end of the pandemic just because it has less severe symptoms folks. The spanish flu showed us the viruses can get stronger with mutations
My concern right now is that we are still in a DELTA wave and Omicron is now spreading at a faster rate than DELTA. If you get Omicron first, then contract DELTA what will your immune response be?
I shudder to think what a mutation involving Omicron and Delta would result in
Obviously we must cower in fear forever. We're doomed I tell you! Dooooooommmmed!
Calm down.
After another couple of years of the deliberately stupid dying and infecting the rest of us we'll get past it.
You mean old people dying.......which they won't by this spring.
Why would you need to take off work to take an antigen test? It is a do-it-at-home test that does not require a lab. You buy the kit at a drug store.
As others have pointed out, it appears the test is in lieu of proof of vaccination. This is really stupid, though. If you're unvaccinated and show up maskless to a major indoor event with hundreds or thousands of people, even if the majority are vaccinated, you're statistically almost *guaranteed* to contract Covid. Most countries around the world require testing within 24 or 48 hours to board airline flights, and yet omicron is raging around the globe. Testing doesn't always catch recent infection and there are occasional false-negatives. If they're going to allow indoor events, concerts, etc., just require everyone to be vaccinated and boosted -- no exceptions. If you're unvaccinated, you can kindly go screw around with some other plague rats in private away from the rest of us.
The testing option is a sop to the unvaxxed who might otherwise sue if they aren’t given any alternative to providing proof of vaccination.
Sigh. Our country is doomed if we always have to give alternatives to following the rules/laws to all the sociopaths walking amongst us.
Yet another version of the birthday problem. Why oh why can't people do simple arithmetic?
You are not exposed to thousands of people at an event, only to a much smaller number who come within a certain distance. So your personal danger is not so great. The problem is that when everyone has this degree of exposure, the disease will be fairly certain to be transmitted to some people (not everyone) who can then be new centers of transmission.
As a rule of thumb, if you're close enough to someone to smell the weed they're smoking, I'd guess you're close enough to catch covid from them.
Uh, you do know how this works, right? You don't perform your calculations on the basis of might infect you; you calculate on the basis of those who might, but don't and then take the complement of that figure. So if you have a 99% chance of not getting infected by an encounter with any given character, you'll have a 50-50 chance of catching the virus after having had less than 70 such encounters. And after 100? The odds are 2-to-1 that you will.
Well, if CA is requiring even vaccinaed and boosted folks to take a COVID test prior to admission, that ought to take care of the "social distancing" issue.
Do morons understand that 75% of Adults are already fully vaccinated???? I mean, you can't teach stupid. This his Coronavirus is going like all ones before it. Getting weaker and weaker until it kills or damages barely no one. Shame on the morons on this site.
Sure. But most of these vacc'd folks are elderly, people who don't attend big mass events in the first place. So the percentage of unvacc'd at a big gathering is significantly higher. If you're at a Trump rally (would he even hold one in CA?), your vacc'd percentage would be near zero.
And they'd lie about having been tested.