Mostly Apolitical Thread for Discussing/Venting our Rational/Irrational COVID-19 Fears and Experiences in 2020

God will protect them.

(xp) They've been having gigs and rugby matches and what have you in NZ for ages.

It's almost as though stopping the spread of the virus is a good thing that would have led to the return of normal life?

Breaking: dancing and singing back everywhere in NSW, masks no longer mandatory anywhere, no caps on weddings on funerals, as many people in your house as you can fit, @GladysB announces

— Hannah Ryan (@HannahD15) March 24, 2021

Can’t fit that many people in canoes in your house though.

don't dream it's over

So is there a German word for "fear that the person you're talking to (or considering getting back in touch with) is actually a covidiot"? We'll be negotiating this minefield for years, I fear.

I harbor no ill will towards anyone who lucks into their vaccine early by pure chance or fortunate circumstances, but hearing two(!) different coworkers admit, publicly(!!), during a work zoom call no less(!!!) that they each "lied" (their choice of word) to jump the line was really testing my ability to maintain a neutral zoom face. It was just how casually they said it, as if it was equal to admitting to speeding now and then.

so why don't you lie too

As impatient as I may appear to be and as eager as I am, I would not feel good about that at all!

I think this is becoming very common -- when some vaccination sites have tons of open slots, and the eligibility criteria is becoming increasingly loose/arbitrary, people are just starting to go for it here.

xpost Yeah, I'm with you. I've had a couple potential opportunities to get a 'liar's vax' but it just doesn't sit right with me. There's no reason for me personally to rush the process, my day will come.

I have no qualms telling people to do it when I know for a fact that several CVSs around me have dumped unclaimed Pfizer and Moderna vaccines at the end of the day.

Vaccination isn't like stealing someone else's paper towels last March. If you're jabbed, I feel safer: you, your Granny, whoever.

ymmv though!

jon, you're obv and legitimately enduring anguish about vaccination because you're in this thread every day, so why don't you get jabbed and don't tell anyone on this board? You have as much right to it as anyone.

I don't think it necessarily follows that if you get vaccinated you are taking that opportunity away from someone else. You can just as easily reason it as you taking the vaccine from someone that didn't want it. Everyone has to get vaccinated, anyway, so might as well be you, imo.

exactly!

Two of my closest friends got jabbed two Wednesdays ago because the rumor about the dumping of vaccines proved true -- they got to the CVS at 6:30 and they're not in their sixties.

If vaccine supply was so scarce that a black market exists, then I may understand moral writhings. Not now.

i'm with alfred on this; waiting to get the okay because mommy and daddy say its okay now is more offensive to me than presenting with ADHD (a qualifying comorbidity in NYC!) and getting your shot now.

on the other hand
https://gothamist.com/news/cuomo-reportedly-got-vip-covid-tests-relatives-start-pandemic

I mean, thing is that in our immediate area, it is still pretty scarce! There are a lot of stories about senior citizens and much more vulnerable people than I who are still having trouble securing a spot, which is why I wouldn't feel great just yet.

And to be clear, I'm not talking about people who are right place, right time or like, "hey I dropped off my mom and they offered me a shot too", or Josh's example about the dumping vaccines - those are all totally fine, imo - I'm talking about flat out lying at the intake about occupation (in these specific cases).

I absolutely appreciate what y'all are saying, but personally I just wouldn't feel good about lying like that.

imo if there are open slots a few days away in high-traffic/high wealth neighborhoods (last week most of the pharmacies in chelsea and the greater 14th St area in manhattan had availability for saturday when I checked on tuesday) i think ur OK 'jumping the line.' what didn't sit right with me was the idea of white ppl going to primarily POC neighborhoods and getting the shot there.

Yeah I think it's definitely contextual, I would feel ok doing it in some places/situations and not others.

I'm living life in the exact same quarantine bubble I have for the past year and will continue doing so until I'm jabbed. Vaccines open up to all adults in IL next month. Leave me to my socially-distanced moral hand-wringing, it's all I have left.

My wife and I have each had our 1st doses (Pfizer) — just got mine today — and hoping to get our 16yo done this weekend. Our county is now open to anyone 16 and up, but our shots actually came through a Walgreens "waste list" we had signed up for a few weeks ago.

I am of two minds about this -- obviously I don't like lying, but on the other hand: I am eligible and got vaccinated because of essentially arbitrary decisions my state made about occupations; I'm healthy and work from home and I don't think there's any public-health sense in which I "should" be in line ahead of other people. And yet there is no part of me that thinks I should have eschewed the shot I was legally eligible to get, even though just like the NYC liar I took a spot at Walgreen's and thus might have prevented an older / less healthy / more exposed person from getting a shot that day.

FTR, I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with anyone cutting the line here. The quicker more people are vaccinated the better. This is all about me being anal.

Yeah, I mean it's all a bit fuzzy and everyone has different comfort levels. But I 100% don't think being made eligible through the arbitrary decisions of your state/county is worth feeling guilty about at all!

WaPo had an article about this today

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2021/03/25/vaccine-line-jump-lie-coronavirus/

I'm going to continue being honest about my medical status, which is probably dumb, but seems like the right thing to do. Every day that appointments get released here, there are more than enough people to get them 100% booked, so I have to assume that most, if not all, of those people qualify. OTOH, "game thoery" suggests that I'll be the last person to get vaccinated as everyone else magically discovers medical conditions to get them bumped ahead.

This is all about me being anal having personal standards of conduct I feel uncomfortable discarding in this case.

fixed

I'm sure supply-demand issues vary a lot from place to place, but when I went to get my leftover shot at Walgreens, they were saying that they had one more left that they were struggling to dispense — none of the other people on the waste list answered I guess — until someone just called out of the blue to ask if they had any left.

So basically, it's a messy system and I think anyone should get vaccinated however they can work it. I know people who got vaxxed just because they had a friend who worked at a hospital. Whatever, it's about as many people getting the shots as possible.

Heh, "just knowing a friend that works in a hospital" is the crux of the current Loretto Hospital scandal in Chicago, where the administrator in charge actually did redirect vaccines earmarked for low income communities toward his friends.

I am eligible and got vaccinated because of essentially arbitrary decisions my state made about occupations; I'm healthy and work from home and I don't think there's any public-health sense in which I "should" be in line ahead of other people.

This is another reason I've seen reported for why there is sometimes unclaimed or surplus vaccine, folks eligible but feeling guilty for being put ahead of folks they deem more worthy who then skip their turn.

Also, I've got to assume shots are distributed in part based on some estimate of how many people fall in each of the categories, but if the (say) county knows there are 1000 (for example) hospital employees eligible yet only 600 take the vaccine, I don't think those shots automatically go to the next group in line. It probably just shows up as 400 people in that category still not vaccinated, which no doubt affects orders and distribution of vaccine the next time around.

ha, well my friend who knew somebody at a hospital was in a rural county where they literally couldn't give the stuff away. so he drove over there to get one of the surplus shots they always had left.

I just want to raise the point that there are plenty of people with pre-existing conditions who don't show it, and which they might not feel comfortable sharing-- being immunocompromised isn't necessarily something people bring up around the water cooler, even if it's a Zoom water cooler or slack channel or whatever.

I mean, I rode my bicycle the 4.4 miles each way to get both of my shots. But I also am immunocompromised and shit in a bag, so...there are a lot more people like me than one would think.

I should say then, too, that I got my second shot. My arm hurts a wee bit and I feel like I'm recovering from a night of heavy drinking and carousing, but otherwise, I'm okay and feeling pretty joyous.

congrats! I'm at two weeks past and ready to lick random peoples' faces

Minnesota is opening vaccination to all interested adults next week, and even though this likely means hellacious scheduling I am very excited to be able to get it done.

wouldnt say i lied but used a generous interpretation of my job to score an appointment in May, which is after most ppl are expecting it to open up to all adults in my state anyway, so i dont feel ive put my morality at hazard too much. i also feel ok about it because supply doesnt seem to be a major issue where i am.

i respect folks who dont feel comfortable jumping the line, i was pretty annoyed when a few people i know got hooked up like 2 months ago, but at least where i am the requirements seem pretty arbitrary at this point

Table brings up a good point, that there are all sorts of reasons someone might be eligible for a shot that we don't know about. Some of them could be more dubious (former smokers, for example), but many of them could be serious, or at least serious enough to qualify (for example, my goofball younger cousin, who after he got a relatively early shot as a seemingly healthy 30-something explained to me that he got hit in the head with a softball a few years ago, got a concussion, and somehow developed an early case of hypertension).

There was a huuuuge influx of vaccine appointments here next week, btw, something like a wave of 500,000 around Chicago (quickly claimed). But fwiw, we are going to be distantly downstate (ugh) next week, and they are apparently awash in vaccine appointments there, so my wife's considering getting her first shot while we are traveling through Redneckistan.

dan m - if you can travel, try cash wise pharmacy in outstate, I got a march 30th appointment in Moorhead last night

Also ThriftyWhite

again, not trying to pretend this isn't still a big problem or a big deal but it's seeming more and more like everyone on this thread at least is likely to be fully or half vaccinated before June and that's frankly a big relief

wouldnt say i lied but used a generous interpretation of my job to score an appointment

same

(if you get vaccinated before this thread hits 10k posts, you get a free doughnut)

doesn't everyone who is vaccinated get free Krispy Kreme?

then next year we'll all get free insulin

still waiting on my free dr pepper from when chinese democracy came out

I was prepared to lie in order to see my kids sooner but then I realized that while children in general are less susceptible to this, they both have asthma and that even vaccinated the information I've found to date on whether you can still get someone else sick who hasn't been vaccinated has not been conclusive.

second round of under 16 testing is happening now so hopefully that'll speed up the timetable for you

as it happens KK is giving a free doughnut to antivaxers too:
https://www.grubstreet.com/2021/03/how-to-get-free-krispy-kreme-doughnuts.html

Choosing to receive the vaccine is a highly personal decision,” the company’s small print explains. “If you have made the personal decision to not receive the COVID vaccine, please visit us on Mondays, 3/29/21 – 5/24/21, to receive a free Original Glazed® doughnut and a medium brewed coffee to get your week off to a good start.”

wtf

(It's secretly a vaccine-filled donut, shhh.)

In this case “vaccine” is a euphemism for “poop”