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

yes, im just goofing - even earlier this year, i never expected the US to be at this level (much less that i would have a shot in my own arm by now)

tomorrow, i am going to meet a friend at her apartment for dinner together and then we're going to go see a movie in theaters together. it's kind of amazing.

I want to go see a movie so badly

I am hyped right now!

I'm not changing habits at all until at least May and even then cautiously -- that's when my family will get together for the first time properly in a year and we'll have all had our shots. I really am content to ride things out until the vaccination levels are absolutely through the roof here, and thankfully we've been going great on that level. By the end of the week I'm guessing we'll be 50% of the eligible population with at least one shot and we're definitely about to hit 25% with a completed regimen.

(it should be noted that both i and my friend are two weeks past our second vax)

I think Ned's taking precautions because he has seniors to worry about

Srsly thinking about going to see Nobody tonight.

so basically what we've been doing for the past year?

i forgot you work with an older population Ned. Better days soon!
I'm gonna see "The Assistant" which I have been assured is not a date movie but i believe was one of alfred's faves.

Indeed!

Moodles, this is a ymmv situation. I have started dining out again, albeit outdoors. I will likely see more friends.

Starting to think all the vaccine-love and reopening talk needs to be taken to the KIP thread and leave us miserable morlocks alone.

Just saw well-known bell-end David Goodhart, who I suspect was involved in the report, say that there are proportionally more Pakistani origin people living in the poorest areas of the country, but in terms of actual numbers there are more white people living in those areas. I mean...

Sorry, wrong thread, fucking browser playing up.

First shot of Moderna yesterday, looking forward to going on dates again, traveling, hugging, etc.

Starting to think all the vaccine-love and reopening talk needs to be taken to the KIP thread and leave us miserable morlocks alone.

― the last unvaccinated motherfucker on earth (PBKR), Wednesday, March 31, 2021 12:25 PM (one hour ago)

otm. I am genuinely thrilled people are getting vaccinated, but this thread is getting hard to read

i forgot you work with an older population Ned. Better days soon!

Thank you but not strictly true; the library is for all and it's been closed anyway since last March. However, my parents are 80 and 76 respectively so yes, I am extremely anxious not to be a carrier even slightly. The fact that the vaccine apparently does lock down transmission per that study result yesterday is a huge relief, of course, but even so, I'd rather not pick up anything in the meantime. After our get-together and depending on how things are looking by then, I'll maybe relax some.

(We're not planning on returning to onsite work until at least in July and even then it'll be staggered. For non-COVID reasons (there's a massive software upgrade happening that will go into effect late July) I'm hoping I won't have to go back until maybe September or so; while my particular library is not tied into the wider academic year, there'll be more activity regardless. The decision will also partially be the city's as much as the institution's.)

Does it help if I note that the vaccines may only be effective for nine months, so even double-jabbed US-based people itt might be back in purdah for Thanksgiving?

xp re kip

I mean I'm operating under the assumption that annual COVID shots will be a thing, like flu shots.

Moderna shot number one done.

Yeah, I assume some sort of annual/booster type thing will be part of the routine.

xxxp Where are you reading this?

https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/two-thirds-epidemiologists-warn-mutations-could-render-current-covid-vaccines

In a survey of 77 epidemiologists from 28 countries, carried out by The People’s Vaccine Alliance, two-thirds thought that we had a year or less before the virus mutates to the extent that the majority of first-generation vaccines are rendered ineffective and new or modified vaccines are required. Of those surveyed, almost a third gave a timeframe of nine months or less. Fewer than one in eight said they believed that mutations would never render the current vaccines ineffective.

Basically, we're going to be getting booster shots for years because many western governments didn't want to shut down their economies for too long.

This “rule of six” returned this week (for non UKers this means that different households can get together outside and talk about what a great job the LOTO is doing) and coincided with the first really nice spring weather in many places. The sense of release has been tangible gotta say - the last 4 months of lockdown have been brutal here on rainy fascist island

Part of that is winter always being shit, partly Britain is just miserable anyway, & a big part I think is the half-arsed nature of our Covid response - four months of (varying degrees of) lockdown is much harder when you go into it knowing it’s to some degree a failure from the start and all your sacrifice is facilitating is an “acceptable” wave of death. To sic’s point itt passim it has been fully internalised that any response to the pandemic will just have to entail constant circulation of the disease and we have to kind of wilfully forget that other countries have managed it a different way (it is btw generally a point well taken but I have to say the very idea of saying to Johnson & Patel “can we make uk more like Australia pls” makes me want to step in front of a bus), we have never had a functional test & trace system & prob never will at this point

It takes a toll. We had a minute silence to “reflect on” this shit the other day but I think ppl here have barely begun to process any of it, vaccines will not bring 150k people back to life... I kinda lost the thread of what I was saying, was trying to say why I was in a good mood in the park today lol

xpost - I'm mean I'm as cynical about the shitty job western governments have done as the next guy, but I don't think that is the reason we'll have boosters.

Well, there's that and the gross hoarding of vaccines and primacy of pharma iNtElLeCtUaL pRoPeRtY over non-Western lives, too.

By that article, we’ll be getting boosters because rich countries won’t share with poor countries, not because of a lack of shutdowns now.

see my second post.

Also, let's not pretend like my first point wasn't also true.

Then there’s Brazil, where even if the US/EU weren’t evil, the Brazilian right is hellbent on turning COVID-19 into an unstoppable plague.

Does it help if I note that the vaccines may only be effective for nine months, so even double-jabbed US-based people itt might be back in purdah for Thanksgiving?

Great, so some lucky sob who got the vaccine the first time around can muscle me out of line for a second go round.

This is like someone winning the lottery and then trying to explain to me how to win the lottery. Just buy winning tickets, duh?

table, I absolutely do not disagree with either of your other points regarding shitty management and vaccine hoarding by the West, both are absolutely true.

What I'm saying is that even if, by some absolute miracle, the US and UK managed well defined and well funded shutdowns that kept everyone home and that significantly slowed the spread, leading to several hundred thousand fewer deaths, I still think we would very likely be looking at necessary boosters.

allow me to humbly pimp my thraed:

what are your plans for when we STOMP COVID'S STANKASS INTO THE MFING DIRT

though with the 4th surge i am feeling a bit of the despair myownself, the happy glow of my pfirst jab last week fizzling out. urgh, fricking disease, maybe consider fucking off already ye spiky prick

and this is admittedly turning a blind eye to the criminal actions, war crimes? genocidal sadism? committed by the pharmcos & my government that led to the privilege of me getting vaxxed in the first place because what the hell can i even do about any of that aside from hate them more

yr welcome guys :)

I'm as cynical about the shitty job western governments have done as the next guy, but I don't think that is the reason we'll have boosters.

You think the Kent variant would be on its way to being the most prevalent strain in the US, and now basically the only one arriving in Australia at all, if Heathrow wasn't open with no checks, tests, or quarantines?

I'm saying that I still think variants would have developed somewhere on the globe no matter how good the US/UK did and, to some degree, boosters would still be part of the solution.

I don't know why you guys seem to think I'm defending the shitty job the US and UK have done, I'm not by any means!

I don't think that, I just don't think that there would be so many variants abounding if we would have actually shut things down properly in the first place and put the lid on this shit. But yknow, another day another dollar.

Fewer, presumably less rapid spreading variants for sure. Zero variants? Unlikely. S'all I'm saying.

Oh, for sure— the Brazilian variants would be flourishing, as others have noted

IANA epidemiologist but we are opening up again having half-vaccinated half the population with a vaccine that is 70% effective after one dose and the cohort most likely to be on that 30% side were recently told they should be less cautious wrt Covid restrictions, this is the kind of thing that worries me re creating a variant Petri dish

Brazilian variants would be flourishing

the UK has actively pursued multiple policies designed to spread and mutate the virus too. not as aggressively as Brazil, but they literally paid people £849 million in vouchers to go out and spread it in Summer!

Ontario has just passed their previous peak level of COVID ICU admissions.

It seems odd taht the virus did seem to be pretty stable at one point. I thought it was teh nature of viruses to work through populations and in the process mutate just as a matter of course. So weird that it took a while for major variations to show.
I was also thinking that Covid probably wasn't going to be the only disease breaking out that man hadn't had contact with so would have a heavily negative effect.
Are things finally working themselves to a point that once thsi specific pandemic becomes less all pervasive anywhere is going to be ready for a different one. I'm glad the US is finally at a point where teh importance of science has some hold though it also has a great deal of opposition, but are other places in anyway prepared for a different disease to become widespread or preferably not, which would hopefully be the case if people were remotely prepared for it.

The virus seemed stable at one point because no-one was doing much genetic sequencing, especially the US. Once sequencing started becoming routine the variants started to be identified.

Does it help if I note that the vaccines may only be effective for nine months, so even double-jabbed US-based people itt might be back in purdah for Thanksgiving?

― armoured van, Holden (sic),

yah, doomposting!

tbc "A second booster [if you count the second Pfizer/Moderna jab as a first booster] in the next calendar year" /= "purdah"

Bring on the boosters, I have no problem with becoming a human pin cushion.

ppl were complaining about the thread being too posi!

I assumed "purdah" was australian slang for "hell" or something but apparently it means something else