@Unionhawk Yeah, I can understand why they obsoleted it. AFAIK Transponder codes are public and can be read by anyone with a receiver, so yeah

Probably not a good idea to make your targets scream they're suspects

New coronavirus variant Omicron keeps spreading, Australia detects cases reuters.com/world/…

As expected

The forever pandemic

@Wipqozn The Influenza Pandemic in 1918 lasted well over 2 years as well

@Nzall The most frustrating part is that we have the ability to keep it under control due to vaccines, but way, way too many people are just refusing to get vaxxed... and the vaccines reserved for them get tossed out instead of sent to poorer countries that need them.

the discussions about mandatory vaccinations are getting much more serious here. Previously this was pretty much unthinkable

@Wipqozn It's just disgusting how the US managed tot urn EVERYTHING into a partisan debate issue, even things that are scientifically established

i'm confused. is Omicron yet another variant or did they rename Nu to Omicron

@Memor-X They skipped Nu because it sounds like "New", which would be confusing to talk about

They also skipped Xi because it would have caused problems with China

@Nzall Sadly it's not just the US, although they certainly seem to be the worst for it.

@MadScientist I'm not surprised. It's wild to think about, but people refusing to get vaxxed are prolonging this pandemic.

Not sure how'd you really go about enforcing something like that though.

@Wipqozn It's easier in countries where the entire population as well as vaccination status are registered in central databases

Here in Belgium, everyone has a "Rijksregisternummer", which is a unique number per living person based on your date of birth. This number is used by nearly every government institution to uniquely identify you. It's on your identity card that you need to show when you get your vaccine

@Nzall I mostly mean how do you force people to get the vaccine. Jail if they refuse? Denial of essential services? Fines?

In Austria they do a 5.5K fine

@Nzall Has that proven effective?

It's not active yet

My concern is the people most opposed to the vaccine are also the ones most heavily armed, at least in the US.

holdouts still have time until February, but after that they will get fined

Though keep in mind that Austria's vaccination rate is roughly same as the USA

66% of everyone over age 12

@Wipqozn Yeah, no, a vaccine mandate in the US would never work

But Europe has far fewer guns than the US

Omicron is in Canada cbc.ca/news/politics/…

Which was expected

Still unclear if this is more dangerous than Delta, although so far it seems like it's mostly been mild symptoms...?

@Wipqozn we really don't know anything there, and that data is biased because it's mostly young people so far

Drosten gave an interview just today and while he emphasized just how much we don't know, he still sounded really worried. With some luck this might turn out to be nothing, but the experts do sound quite worried and there's the potential for this one to be really worse

@MadScientist Hopefully it's nothing. It is worth a noting the person downplaying the virus was a South African representative, so they may have a conflict of interest.