Riobard

It is evident that I will not be eligible for CoV vaccination for about another year, based on projected supply chain and low priority status. Therefore, have entered a Phase 2/3 double-blind placebo-controlled trial. Baseline blood and urine chemistry panel a few days away.

Confused enough yet?

It seems to me that this revised curfew plan will shift ‘essential’ goods/supplies shopping from what is often early weekday evening and weekend daytime (Saturday in particular) to weekend morning(s?), thereby compressing greater numbers of rushed and pressured people into retail spaces, notwithstanding distancing, etc, as opposed to spreading out this activity more sensibly. With barely any advanced notice to try to stock up ahead of time. My point applies to the extent that the country leans towards a 9:00-17:00 economy. In my northern city this kind of mitigation structure would be seen to exacerbate community transmission risk, even given lack of public pushback. The idea of bringing down the hammer for 10 days, attempting to wash out the typical contagion period factor of the same duration, while ensuring the infection reproduction number stays no greater than 1.0 and the approximate 2-month new case incidence doubling does not shorten, is good in principle. However, I thought that curfews were most intended and useful to dissuade gatherings that tend to uptick later in the day. The impact on transmission will likely be discernible by the weekend of Jan 16-17. Testing rates may drop during the stricter curfew, so it may be difficult to make an assessment at the point a decision needs to be made about the exigency of extending it beyond the point in question. The health authorities also asserted that a recent testing blitz in shopping malls yielded a 17% rate of current CoV positivity. That would put the true point prevalence at 165 or more times the reality suggested by reported incidence metrics for the country. Something is not adding up there.

What antibody test did you have, or will you have when enough time has elapsed, to ascertain you did not have asymptomatic infection? Since the majority of those infected are unaware. I have utilized the antibody assay manufactured by Roche. I wanted to make sure I was not chasing down a vaccine opportunity for nothing.

[Sorry, I tried snipping the quote down but the CC’s at the bottom will not delete using backspace] Re: amount of COVID risk ... this can be quantified for the state of Rio de Janeiro based on current reported new infection incidence data, for any arbitrary number of persons. For example, the current probability of minimally one person with contagious novel coronavirus on board, among a total of about 50 people, is 35%. I imagine it is higher than 35% for the municipality of Rio de Janeiro because the urban per capita rate of infection tends to be greater. Apart from the difference between city and state, the figures are adjusted for a standard undercount; if the bias correction is too low relative to the unknown ratio of reported cases to actual cases the risk percentage also increases. It is an estimate of infection within your interactions, not literal likelihood of transmission. It may help to settle on your own degree of risk tolerance. If you can live with the possibility of a 75% chance at least one person in your interactions throughout your visit has transmissible infection the corresponding number of people is approximately 160.

For Rio Whatsapp contact addition, in case the confusion was country or district code, the format is: +55 21 9xxxx-xxxx Some smaller regions in the country may not have the 9 ahead of the eight main digits for mobile numbers. It seems to work every time, even when I enter it in my iPhone Contacts app. It just transfers over to the Whatsapp. The format may be different if you obtain a local SIM chip. I hope someone explained to the guy that his number can be scrawled inside a toilet stall whether it is recorded in a smartphone or on a scrap of paper.

Cuba is a powerhouse in vaccine development and manufacturing. There are 3 intramuscular and 1 nasal counter-COVID candidates in early phase research development there. However, with a population-adjusted rolling daily incidence currently peaking at only 1.5 persons per 100,000 there is skepticism that even interim analysis of Phase 3 efficacy trials can occur in the near future unless resources are available to expand to other Latin American countries. It remains to be seen whether their internal approval process as a sovereign nation will somewhat bypass the ‘gold standard’ rigours of a placebo-controlled trial.

Interesting. Another big bash planned for New Year’s Eve, called Oasis 2021. BRL605 per head plus optional transport transfers. Some of the same well known gogos as the event that just got busted. I am thinking that sometime prior to the stroke of midnight it may be renamed Mirage 2021.

I was just talking about Cuba with a friend that frequently visited in the past. He stays at a ‘casa particular’. That popular form of lodgings requires one week of quarantine, and locals residing in the same home must quarantine along with the foreigner(s) for the same week, even though the tourist gets a COVID test on arrival, even if the test is negative early in the week. The host must stock all supplies for the week for the whole group (see below regarding supplies). A hotel requires 24 hours initial quarantine, longer if your test result is delayed, but it seems to me that it is stipulated that you would keep basically entirely to yourself or your travel party, and utilize only the hotel services during your visit. This arrangement seems workable for a beach resort but would make a Havana vacation very unappealing. With all of these requirements, how would a visitor trying to score with locals manage to arrange indoor sexual interaction with a heterosexual ‘gay for pay’ escort? Nobody has recently travelled to Cuba. Cuba restricted entry in March. They allowed commercial travel entry to begin mid-November. That plan is now going in reverse and 6 countries are abruptly restricted because the cases of COVID in Cuba are increasing in number due to the attempt/experiment at renewal of tourism. Cuba’s bind, their predicament, is a crisis-level shortage of food and supplies that occurred due to the devastating impact of lost tourism and due to interrupted supply chains. However, it will not trade off health for the sake of economic recovery. It will need to rely on the global humanitarian branch of vaccine access. It will call on its citizens to endure the economic crisis and lock out the pandemic as much as possible. Brazilians (with an approved tourist card) may be added to the list of restricted countries due to the rates of coronavirus infection in Brazil. It makes sense. My country, Canada, a main source of Cuba’s tourism revenue, can expect the same.

Based on the change in case incidence since The Lancet study dialysis cohort was screened for antibodies, a metric that is now 4 times the cumulative total that existed when study recruitment ended, as well as epidemiological estimates of the ratio of true case incidence to reported incidence, the likelihood of natural immunity, FWIW, has to be much higher than 10%. I think it is minimally 25% for the USA overall. I think that reality poses a missed opportunity for ‘sero-sorting’, widespread screening for coronavirus exposure and presumed recovery/protection. It would be an enormous undertaking, but those more vulnerable to new infection could be vaccinated that much sooner. Imagine if you could, in some regions, separate out the 40% that have viable antibodies and focus on the remainder. The former are unharmed by vaccination but could be put on hold.

The current classification phase is, I believe, 5 Green, if not the lighter restrictions of Phase 6A Blue. The activity cluster is Leisure & Events —>Boate. In either case, the mitigation ruling is 1/3 capacity and 4 square metres of floor space per person. No closing hours or masks are stipulated. Rulers lost mean rules broken. Where you see enclosed subgroups of 12-15 persons, that space would accommodate 1 person if following the guidelines. Activity restrictions, some categories stratified across 8 phases, seem lenient compared to São Paulo’s position within its particular 5-phase classification scheme. São Paulo (returning to Phase 3 Yellow on 4th Jan following a holiday shutdown) appears to allow events at 40% capacity but the attendees cannot be standing or milling about.

Chapeau! This has to be in the top 10 of funny for 2020.

Noah was recently on a few episodes but he slipped thru the cracks of the producers’ screening of participants because he just disappeared with no explanation. Is actually Ethan slipping thru cracks at Corbin Fisher.

I don’t like to look at naked boys or photos of naked boys. That position reflects the majority of queer adult men. If that is the content you are posting ... I wouldn’t know because this message board is not a Tumblr offshoot and Tumblr doesn’t interest me anyway ... then your prerogative for posting such content is at the pleasure of the total composite of viewership, of which I am one, though no pleasure yield for me particularly. That you continue with impunity is at the discretion of the readership. That you think that what you do is a much needed service to fill the otherwise slow traffic on the board (I disagree with that assessment BTW) then I would have to question your judgement. I have no personal intention to shut it down, as formal censorship is not my role or on my agenda, and it is the admin’s role to try to filter content, and besides I like erotica, but I don’t like the association between text posts thematically centred on MSM and trade, etc, linked to visual representations of minors. We have generally agreed to let the title of the board stand, the trade-off being a bit of extra vigilance on content that supports impropriety or any notion of illegality. I would have preferred to stay ‘on page’ with respect to my simple and reasonable request regarding the basic architecture of the message board, an inarguable impression that it would vary the visible content in the field boxes of the recent updates and recent posts. But you took it personally and, in pushing back, resorted to the immature tactic of maligning my character. I would think that you would be keen to balance your privilege with a bit of respect for a member’s hope that you would graciously reconfigure your contributions and cluster them in larger groupings in order to allow shared space on the two aforementioned site headings. Reply if you will for the edification of a few others here. I am blocking you. I am not a fan of ‘cancel culture’ but I may discover that the block function eliminates some of the repeat groundhog-day-grade clutter of the two site components and shifts up the variety of update alerts in a way that upticks the value of them.

It comes up as an option when you click on a member’s profile. Is this a new feature?

What does this mean?

Always eager to read newbies’ impressions. Easier to follow if they are not buried in long threads with topic headings that don’t match up with the content.

You could have your cake and eat it too, while sharing it. But no. You could present your content some viewers like and leave some wiggle room for what I suggested. You are the best candidate to accommodate my suggestion. Passing the buck to admin is not good advice. You likely have an unalterable impression of me now, as I now do of you. You are complaining about a perfectly legitimate request that promotes the idea of arranging the two relevant sections in a way that viewership sees a broader cross-section of topics updated, with newer posts. That’s correct, you are a complainer ... grousing about a recommendation that could improve the site’s optics (while not compromising your rate of posts) makes you a complainer, honeybunch. LOL

I put this info elsewhere as it was a bit of a topic ... gonna try to find it. There are many options others use cuz there is such a huge volume of COVID number-crunching thrown at us. I don’t make the graphs myself though I did a lot of illustrations in my med sci research days using SPSS and PowerPoint platforms. ——- OK found it: look at July 14th in ‘So cute guys in Prague!’ in Euro section of board. Where else would it be? Buried in the most likely of places! Surprised you did not see it there. I searched ‘graph’ or ‘graphs’, knowing our bad habits of going off on tangents. LOL

I would benefit from these sections a lot more if the ubiquitous photo posters would collapse their huge volume of topic headings into broader headings. I don’t need to see a theme for every photo subset. Besides which the message board was not intended to disproportionately cater to photos that can be found in a multitude of other locations. Much of the space in the two sections is utilized by a very small number of frequent posters of pics, displacing/pushing out the clues that other topics are updated.

Currently ranks 53rd of 175 nations with COVID incidence; 7th for non-continental Caribbean.

Information, not advice. For decision-making, the state of COVID at any point of time is my governance. I have discovered that most people go by instinct. I may use spidey-intuition to a point but being a numbers nerd I cannot stop the algorithmic calculations from suffocating and pushing out my sixth sense. Do you see the big head little head parallel here? If you indicate some or all of: where you reside ordinarily, where you are on the continuum from home isolation to full-on community integration, the number of flight passengers for travel to LRD, the number of people with whom you expect to interact in a way transmission is possible, and whether you plan hotel versus DIY accommodations and self-catering versus meals out, it is easier to assess and give more info but I do not give advice. Also what standards of exposure mitigation are you aligned with and intend to follow, that is, all of the recommended and scientifically grounded ‘hygiene theatrics’ including face-covering. Easier still, if you provide a metric for your risk tolerance/aversion with respect to contact with others it helps to guide travel choices. For example, what is the highest figure, on a scale of 0-100%, that you can tolerate for the probability of being exposed to one or more (ie, minimally one, at least one, not zero) persons with contagious COVID status during the course of an event, in this case the duration of a trip?

I am piping in though the question directed not to me. The beach is Progreso. We went once, for lunch, Über there with a stop for a few hours at one of the ruins on the way, and local bus back to central Mérida. Pleasant though a bit of a commitment with the transit. I liked the archaeological site along with its notable cenote the most. I know people from the far northern boreal that live on the beach there (east-ish end?) all winter. It seems idyllic and peaceful. We did not see much evidence of sun-bathing (a warm Jan day) on the beach stretch along the boardwalk parallel to the populous part of town with the higher-end eateries overlooking it. There is a very long pier and there is a cruiseship stop. I think we picked a day without the hordes of port-of-call tourism influx. If you are returning to your accommodations on the coast late at night from Mérida you would be advised to check the otherwise frequent bus service north earlier in day and south later in day. Getting to the beach zone late at night by local transit may be a bigger challenge. I think the sched caters to urbanites working for the townies. I think Progreso could be a good home-base option if you have a small but semi-permanent monogamish bubble harem of luscious bubble-butted guests. There is already much written here about Mérida stay locations.

The seedy gay places are not well identified here either! LOL. It’s to each his own digging. Maybe I missed out by bypassing all the home gardening retail centres.

Hello, @ChristianPFC, would you be receptive to starting a new topic now that you are on the ground in Brazil? Something like ‘In Brazil in September -Report’.