SirBillybob

If 01:00 seems harsh, the clubs that are essentially bars with spa/bathhouse features and commercial sex workers in Brazil are re-opening but the typical hours of 15:00-23:00 have been scaled back to 11:00-17:00, so no business following usual end of workday office hours. Pretty much also obsolete is the evening stage show. I suppose one possible effect will be arranging an offsite evening liaison with a working guy, potentially reducing the risk of a more crowded space. Otherwise, the venues are essentially reduced to weekend afternoon events. So count your blessings, Montreal.

This is also exactly how I have been calculating it for a few posts here related to pubs and planes. Multiplying the rolling daily average per 100,000 by 10 for ascertainment bias and again by 15 for contagion period, yielding a proportion infected out of 1. Subtract from 1 to get proportion uninfected. To calculate probability of one infected: 1 minus [uninfected to the power of number of people in gathering]. Multiply by 100 to get standard percentage. Obviously it is not exactly infection risk. It is probability of someone in attendance infected. Mingling would mean greater risk than if everyone is basically stationary. I had arbitrarily chosen the ascertainment bias as 10-fold. Now I feel more anchored in that.

It will likely be legally required to wear a mask in indoor public spaces as of July 27th. The bylaw will probably extend broadly to include bars. Too many outrageously risky gatherings are occurring and increasing transmission.

I have been physically present in The Village but as a rule I don’t go indoors unless (most) occupants wear a mask as I do or I must buy essential goods. Very few are wearing masks in grocery stores in Montreal or indoors in The Village. I have ascertained that the private dance areas in the clubs are operational, masks not mandatory, in keeping with guidelines that measures are but recommended. Only public transit is pushing masks as essential, but it is difficult to enforce. I don’t know details about the private dance choreography but I do not think it is substantially different from pre-pandemic. Staff, understandably, gravitate more to the ‘party line’ of public health when you inquire. Some dancers allude to no restrictions imposed. Most people on the strip are sitting outdoors, but certainly less volume than previous summers, and indoor spaces are very anaemic. I think that Saloon and Club Le Date are recovering the best. Street performers are notably absent.

I have been physically present in The Village but as a rule I don’t go indoors unless (most) occupants wear a mask as I do or I must buy essential goods. Very few are wearing masks in grocery stores in Montreal or indoors in The Village. I have ascertained that the private dance areas in the clubs are operational, masks not mandatory, in keeping with guidelines that measures are but recommended. Only public transit is pushing masks as essential, but it is difficult to enforce. I don’t know details about the private dance choreography but I do not think it is substantially different from pre-pandemic. Staff, understandably, gravitate more to the ‘party line’ of public health when you inquire. Some dancers allude to no restrictions imposed. Most people on the strip are sitting outdoors, but certainly less volume than previous summers, and indoor spaces are very anaemic. I think that Saloon and Club Le Date are recovering the best. Street performers are notably absent.

The entry restrictions will likely be very gradually and gingerly eased over the next 12 months, with basic tourism the lowest priority and essential business & supply chain continuity the highest priority. Some in-between areas in the hierarchy, for example, broadening the criteria for family relations, or American owns property in Canada. All with a watchful eye on infection rates. There isn’t much in the way of Canadian tourism experience that cannot be accessed to a similar degree south of the border, for the broader American public anyway, and considering that outdoor emphasis is promoted. Canadians would endure no less deprivation, especially seeing as winter access to warmer American weather is not off the table, since we are not restricted from entering the USA by air, but likely influenced by reluctance especially among the ‘silver set’. Each group putting money into respective in-country local resources offsets the troubled tourist economy woes with similar net effect.

When I was visiting Mexico my Gr profile was in Spanish but I indicated being from where English is spoken. A few scamppenings reached out in English, invitation to presumably orgiastic events that came with an admission fee. I just assumed it was bogus, would require prepaid or release of account info, and did not take it further.

The rolling fatality rate descent is slowing towards zero degrees from horizontal, as states with current ascending death rates adjust the tally. Two weeks ago it was 68% of the average recorded four weeks ago. Now it is 57% of the average recorded four weeks ago and 84% of the average from two weeks ago.

Apart from mortality lagging behind infection, and testing capturing greater numbers of less severe cases, I think the phenomenon of regression to the mean may partly explain this trend. I think @bigjoey is familiar with the concept. It has occurred worldwide and in many nations. Back to clarifying it in a second. That it has not been as evident in countries with good measurement protocol earlier in the game suggests it is not viral genetic drift. Also as things get more out of control and new case rates speed up it is difficult to keep apace and add both probable but unconfirmed deaths and excess deaths reasonably attributable to Covid-19 to the overall mortality tally. A better option to positioning rolling death against rolling new diagnoses is to review the death:recovery ratio for closed cases, ie known outcomes. This mortality rate curve for most jurisdictions has been descending in a less pronounced fashion compared to absolute deaths taken out of context of recoveries. The ratio fluctuated widely early in the pandemic. You can also see this in the global ratio curves, though smoothed out as a function of averaging out the more pronounced early anomalies and marked ratio changes for individual countries. As volumes increase, the death rate is want to gravitate towards the overall central tendency (ie, mean) that represents the overall 5-month average to date of death/recovery proportions, given also that measurement protocol also stabilizes and reduces overall error ... the discrepancy between observed values and true values. It just so happens that ‘regression to the mean’, a shift in the graph towards the most truly representative likelihood of fatality, has been downward, for all countries whose death curve was considerably variable across time early in the pandemic. One way to discern it is this exact explanation will be an eventual levelling out of the ratio, that is a horizontal direction on the graph (rather than a deviation from horizontality), as has been seen in Germany, for example, or more so globally than nationally.

I don’t see how he can enter the country due to foreign national restrictions and required quarantine even for Canadians arriving back home.

I definitely don’t think it’s taking a break. I thought that the average reader would take from my personifying it’s eagerness to find hosts that I was being tongue-in-cheek. I remain as vigilantly hazard-protected as ever in Montreal.

Quebec has given coronavirus a 2-week construction holiday, roughly spanning St Jean-Baptiste, Stonewall date-centred Pride, and Canada Day festivities. It is a unique tradition, typically applied a little later in the summer but enabling all in the construction industry to halt all projects at once rather than a staggered and more difficult to schedule arrangement over two months for various work roles. Kingston, in Ontario midway between Montreal and Toronto (and once in the running along with Ottawa for national capital city status), foolishly neglected to assign coronavirus a vacation. Kingston had been totally under control for months but got cocky and now has coronavirus and associated testing and tracing ripping through it, the nano-epicentre being 2 nail salons in town. Imagine! Expecting coronavirus to trade off a much needed rest so perfectly groomed feet could show off in fashionable summer footwear, complementing shiny sassy fingernails curled around patio cocktails. Enjoy the break from Montreal, coronavirus. See you back at work in a few weeks.

Your selective visual priorities were in the right place. LOL

In the live feed was it possible to discern mask-wearing trends among customers? I’ll possibly drop in Tuesday (eve of a holiday here), or next weekend after a week has passed for establishments to have settled in to their adjusted protocol.

All things being equal in terms of community infection prevalence, the masseur bears the far greater risk. You have to interact with 25 masseurs to match the risk the masseur incurs massaging 25 clients. Risk figures for masseurs (and cascading to clients) vary considerably geographically and according to assumptions about the estimated ratio of true : official prevalence. Let’s say actual prevalence is 10X reported tallies; assume a window of 15 days contagion among recent pop-adjusted rolling new case averages, the bulk asymptomatic/pre-symptomatic; and compare the higher incidence rate Arizona with lower rate Vermont. Probability of at least one SARS-CoV-2 positive client in a grouping of 25 within a massage practice in Arizona is 13.6% for reported cases and 77.8% for assumed ‘under the radar’. In Vermont, those calculations are, respectively, 0.5% and 4.9%.

Quebec just reversed plan to dial back daily reporting to weekly.

The gay bathhouses are opening this weekend, presumably no restriction on cabin use.

Today’s probability of at least one potentially contagious person in a gathering of 50 is .8%; gathering of 100 is 1.7%, based on absolute reported rolling average province case tally. Based on estimated true community infection prevalence (arbitrary multiple 10-fold), is 8.2% among 50 people and 15.6% among 100 people.

Since respirological aerosols represent the greatest transmission vector, one’s face at crotch level, with verbal interaction minimal to none, seems to be theoretically no greater risk than social chatting in a bar’s common area. People traffic movement yields greater exposure than isolated one-to-one.

The province’s public health spokesperson actually indicated “strip clubs too” according to the Montreal Gazette. Understandably, lap dances were not specifically mentioned ... that would contradict the intent of protective measures. The guidelines appear to be: no dance-floor dancing; stick to seating with minimal milling/circulating; seating together in a group is restricted to members of the same household (ie, family members or other co-occupants of the same home); otherwise, 2-metre physical distancing but wearing a mask if that cannot be accommodated; ample hand sanitation, etc. The above simply represents pointers I have lifted from my reading. I could not find an official document on measures. Obviously, there will be some ambiguity. Waiting to eliminate grey areas would have taken forever. Quebec has also elected to report pandemic figures every Thursday as opposed to daily. Composite federal tallies will therefore be more accurate each Thursday/Friday. I went to one of the major grocery chain stores downtown Montreal. Very few people wore a mask compared to earlier in the pandemic, the control of customer density seemed to be relaxed, and many ‘pinch points’ in the aisles made distancing impossible.

Must be why urophilia is ‘sipstinkling’.

I think I am a poor trial candidate because my current “behave as usual” set point is extremely low risk of exposure. I realize that does not disqualify me because a gradient of exposure risk among subjects is acceptable, but I am willing to trade off a lot of non-normalcy duration for the possibility of increased qualitative aspects of vaccination that may occur over time. The study in Canada is a China-Canada collaboration, Canada lagging behind in the Phase progression and, I add hopefully, isolated from the politics of a current reciprocal detention standoff. Preliminary results of human application in China suggest side effects (beyond site infection) that will indirectly unblind many subjects‘ awareness of group allocation.

Gotcha. [survival immunity plus minimum direct vaccine-conferred herd volume immunity] plus non/fail-vaxx’d indirect protection via reduced transmission vector all potentially lowers or eradicates infection.

With less than one percent in Canada’s most affected province to date, I expect artificial immunity is the likelier scenario. Natural immunity would take about 100 reiterations similar to initial wave magnitude. The temporal order is: artificial, I croak unrelated, herd immunity.

So I fact-checked and, indeed, the source on age exclusion (a bioethicist) was incorrect, likely misinterpreting news that older folks (particularly well beyond 65) are formally excluded from some trials underway. Fortunately the clinical watchdogs are strongly advocating for broad age representation. In fact, Phase 2 of Canada’s one approved trial will include up to age 85.