We’re going towards 4th mandatory dose.
Basically no restrictions, because tourists, and basically hospitals full again, because no restrictions.
It’s high tourism season, so reality is on hold, we’ll see in autumn.
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4th dose recommended for people over 60. The number of covid cases is rising fast, but not the number of deaths (yet?)
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We are still vaccinating this year I think. After autumn then probably not.
Canada has mostly forgotten about covid. I haven’t seen a news report about it for a long time.
These “suggested news videos” used to be nothing but covid for almost 2 years. When Putin invaded it disappeared and hasn’t come back since.
EDIT:: The one story about covid is " Decision to resume random testing [at airports] ‘mind-boggling’".
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As testing for covid became largely optional here months ago, the number of cases has become an unreliable indicator. So instead, our national public health institute (RIVM) relies on measurements of covid particles in sewage water, which indicates that the current wave is flattening out.
Those sewage measurements do seem to be a fairly good predictor for the number of hospital patients a week or so later:
So I expect that our number of hospital patients will flatten out too in the coming week or so.
Our minister of public health care is even thinking about dropping the self-isolation rule after a positive test. I hear that many people already don’t adhere to that rule, so dropping it will probably change little.
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Have you seen that meme that says “Putin for Nobel of medicine! Solved Covid in one day” 
I don’t even know if there is such a nobel prize, but the joke is kind of accurate on roasting how the “news cycle” rolls … 
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I have, but it’s just that the mainstream media is fickle and doesn’t particularly care about the issues at hand, just what gets viewers and ad revenue.
Hit pieces on the left/right, celebrity issues, Biden saying something dumb, etc. all get much more attention here than, say, Sri Lanka, Canadian airports, inflation, banks in China, etc…
I mean the news here in Canada barely reports on Ukraine anymore.
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I read estimates that in France, about 2/3 of the population got infected by the coronavirus at least once, so I guess we got used to it. The omicron variants are milder than the previous ones but they still kill at least two times more than the flu (deaths caused by flu: 10000-15000/year, deaths caused by covid during the last four months: 10000).
Personally, after having escaped covid for 2 years, my wife got sore throat about 1 week ago. After a few days she made a covid self-test which turned out positive so she isolated herself. The rest of the family made a self-test which was negative. However I started having symptoms the next day. I didn’t bother to make a test again and immediately isolated myself. So far it’s indistinguishable from the flu. Unpleasant but manageable.
Despite our precautions, our daughter is starting to have a sore throat and made a test which was negative…
I have no idea whether the first test was a false positive, or if two of the other tests were false negatives.
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My understanding is that for rapid tests the chance of false negative is high (50/50 or some such) while the chance of false positive is low. Hence the system of twice weekly tests or daily following suspected exposureb as you need to do a lot of tests to compensate for the false negatives.
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Our population is about 25% of France’s. We had about 800 covid deaths in the last 4 months (22,500 during the whole pandemic, about half of France when accounting for population size).
On average we have about 6000 influenza deaths per year, with significant variation per year (sometimes half, sometimes double). So considering only our number of deaths, the impact of covid seems to finally be reduced to below influenza.
But I think that our covid hospitalizations are a bigger problem than our covid deaths, and this was actually the case during the whole pandemic. Hospitals (and ICUs in particular) overflowing with large numbers of patients of an infectious disease (be it covid or influenza), means that regular health care needs to be postponed, reducing quality of life and life span of people with other ailments and accident victims.
In the last 4 months about 13000 covid patients were hospitalized here, and currently about a 1000 are hospitalized per week. That’s only half of our worst episodes during the pandemic, but a 1000 hospitalizations per week puts a big pressure on our health care system, on par with a heavy influenza season. Covid is not as deadly as is used to be, but indirectly it still has a significant impact on the lives of millions of people with health issues.
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I just found out that if you are a tourist and you test positive for covid the guidelines of our ministry of health (tourism) is “please try to be careful until you return home”
However, for the SAME test result, if you are local and living in Greece, then you have to go to quarantine. 
What a magical place. And then they wonder why a lot of citizens do not take the “ministry of health” seriously 
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But Jeth, it’s just the same rules for everyone. As a Greek you also have to ‘be careful until you are home’. You just happen to be home already. Bad luck.
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Yeah, and then stay there.
Maybe I didn’t write it clearly, but the guidelines for the tourists do not say “be careful until you get in the hotel and stay there” (which was last year’s policy).
This year you are free to walk around and go everywhere, until you get back into your own country and actual home, as long as you pinky-promise that you will be careful
So, it is really not the same rules for everyone.
Do they check whether you actually go to quarantine?
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They did use to check that back when everyone was scared and there were no vaccines. There were some cases here that were known to have tested positive, so those generally stayed at home, but others just wouldn’t declare their test results and you’d see them go to work or the supermarket and stuff while claiming that they “just had a cold”.
Then, once you got covid as well, you’d add two and two together and realise which were the morons that broke their quarantines. All my friends that got covid, contracted it in that exact way. The latest case was a couple of months ago where a woman took her child to play 5vs5 football and said “the kid has a cold, but it wanted to play, so brought it” … fast forward a few days all the other kids and their families had covid. You do not need to be a scientist to trace that kind of stupidity 
One of my best friends almost died because that horrible person just wanted to have one hour of quiet from her son, so she could play on her phone.
In any case, a law has to make sense and be logical and fair. Enforcing the law afterwars is always a totally different beast over here. Tourists and locals are both human beings, so it makes no sense to treat them differently on a scientific or medical basis, unless the ministry of tourism is the one actually in charge for the healthcare of the country.
OK so basically, since the law is not enforced, the situation is the same for tourists and for locals: those who want to act responsibly will do it, those who don’t will continue their normal activities without being punished.
Those two sentences are not the same, though. There were millions of euros issued in fines during the pandemic for breaking or attempting to break the law. Just because some people managed to do it, doesn’t mean that the law was totally not enforced.
Again, the point is that a law that is about science and medicine, is treating people different, depending on where they live, which is unscientific. Remember that this is the official and scientific line of the ministry, because, come September all those people will blame the citizens again and then they will wonder “why don’t the citizens trust science?”
Because they are trying to blame a purely monetary decision on science, when, in fact, science has nothing to do with it.
Maybe it is not clear enough now how much of a long-standing damage in the public trust such ludicrous decisions make, but this erosion and watering down of reason and science is something that we will eventually have to pay.
Carl Sagan used to warn about this situation a lot and while the technological and economical advances of the past decades have covered this problem under the rag, the last few years of crisis and tension have put this issue back in full view. The consequences of having the majority of the citizens being distrustful of everything, living in a state the is bereft of logic and growing up without any understanding of science, are going to be dire.
I have this weird idea/dream that when it is my time to die, I’d like to see the world be a better place from the one I grew up in. I am slowly getting to terms with the fact that this is not going to happen.
Are you talking about the past (1-2 years ago) ? Do I understand correctly that now, no fines are issued anymore for not respecting the quarantine or other restrictions?
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Of what I know the laws defining the fines have not changed.
It is 5000 euros fine if caught breaking the quarantine, it is considered a misdemeanor (up to 3 years in jail) and if it can be proven that someone died due to your negligence and breaking the quarantine, it can be considered a fellony (up to ten years in prison).
What has changed now is that none of this applies if you are a tourist or if your hotel/store/shop is filled with tourists. They can be certifiably ill and still keep being your patrons without any consequence from the law.
Tourists can spread covid as much as they like, as long as they are having their vacations here.
That’s what the law says now.
For the locals, the old laws and fines and quarantines still apply.
If that’s medically correct or scientific, I’d like someone to explain how.
I understood already that the laws didn’t change, but did anyone get fines or jail sentences during these last three months for breaking the quarantine?