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

We went out to dinner last night for the first time in a year, basically. Originally the meal (with about 18 guests) was supposed to be outside, spaced. But the temp last night dropped into the 40s, maybe even cooler, which was too cold, and with the added threat of rain it was moved inside, still spaced, with the windows opened but the heat on. The temperature was kind of an ordeal, and about a third of the people there put on their coats before the owner (masked, like everyone working) came out and asked if it was ok if they closed the windows. Everyone seemed OK with it, but by the end of the night, while the owner made the rounds from table to table (unmasked, after asking; she was double vaxxed) it seemed like everyone there had had at least one shot already, if not both. Def. a bit weird, but pretty smooth evening, all things considered. Food kind of sucked, but that had nothing to do with covid.

Related: I saw an act I like announce some upcoming Chicago shows, so I looked into buying a ticket. There was the ticket price, plus I assume a few taxes and fees, and the audience was limited and spaced, so you more or less had to buy a pair of tickets to get a little two-top table. Masks required away from your table. But I noticed that in addition to the ticket price they were asking guests to spend an additional $40 a person on food and drink, which I totally understand, but which kept me from pulling the trigger. The tix themselves were $45 each, so that would have about around $100 for me and a friend, but then essentially close to another $100 on food and drink, which suddenly would have made it a $100 evening per person, which was ... I dunno, it felt a bit much. Plus the food there sucks, too. Still, I assume we will start to see similar additional fees as things re-open. Just as the dentist charges extra for PPE, I bet other places may start doing the same, or at least tacking on or incorporating other charges in the check, more than the couple of bucks I've seen added to take out bills.

We went out to dinner last night for the first time in a year, basically. Originally the meal (with about 18 guests) was supposed to be outside, spaced. But the temp last night dropped into the 40s, maybe even cooler, which was too cold, and with the added threat of rain it was moved inside, still spaced, with the windows opened but the heat on. The temperature was kind of an ordeal, and about a third of the people there put on their coats before the owner (masked, like everyone working) came out and asked if it was ok if they closed the windows. Everyone seemed OK with it, but by the end of the night, while the owner made the rounds from table to table (unmasked, after asking; she was double vaxxed) it seemed like everyone there had had at least one shot already, if not both. Def

I can see myself accepting this situation in Miami come July when the heat is brutal. I mean, that's what the jabs are for, right? If the windows are open, staff is masked, and maybe most of the other diners are jabbed too, it looks like minimal risk.

yeah, summer heat (and mosquitoes) are going to test even people who are totally on board with all the social distancing measures.

I hadn't even thought about additional fees being added to concert tickets, but I'm still anticipating that pent up demand is going to make it extremely difficult to get tickets for things for some time.

I know this isn't exactly an apples to apples comparison for most touring bands, but Dead & Company announced a destination weekend set of shows in Mexico in early 2022, as they've be doing for the past few years pre-COVID. As I understand it, the entire weekend (every ticket, every single package, every option) sold out in something like four minutes during one of the exclusive credit card pre-sales. Didn't even make it to the advertised general pre-sale, much less a public sale. Now, obviously, the world of rich Deadheads traveling for a destination weekend is it's own weird little ecosystem and can't be mapped on to every other touring artist, but I do think it speaks to how absolutely insane demand is going to be.

They're apparently cramming us back into our sardine can of an office on 6/1. No slow transition from a year of WFH, no staggering of WFH with in-office days to help maintain some social distance, just...absolutely everyone back at their desks all at once. And regardless of whether you've been vaccinated or not, which is the real kicker. I cannot stretch my arms out to my sides at my widdle workstation without hitting a coworker. There is no physical way to maintain distance with the way our shit is laid out (they mashed two floors worth of people into one a couple years back). The managers (who have their own offices, natch) insist that everything will be juuuuust fiiiiiine. I'd been so impressed with the out-of-character common sense measures they'd taken over the past year so it figures they'd so something real fucken dumb in the homestretch to completely undermine their actions.

i am having nightmares more or less every night about being surrounded by unmasked people and i've forgotten my mask. it's gonna be a transition.

That sounds annoying OL, I'm really surprised when I hear stories about workplaces throwing things open like that but, sadly, they are becoming more and more common. It doesn't make sense to me at all why places are so ready to just immediately launch back into business as usual, as if nothing as been learned over the last year. But.. capitalism, I suppose.

My stepdad's company demanded him back in the office full-time exactly two weeks after his second shot. They were pressuring him, daily, even before that, but he held firm due to some underlying health conditions.

That sucks, OL. Our return date has been pushed back to October, but I don't want to go back at all. In a meeting last week, the head of my department reported that "full-time telework will not be an option when we return." I wrote a long letter to our Covid-19 committee in HR outlining my thoughts on the matter and have encouraged others to do the same. I can't go back to the commute, I truly can't.

I asked my wife when she thought her office might go back to work, and she really had no idea, saying no one had even raised the subject. She was, however, pretty certain it would not be before October at the earliest.

It just makes no sense at all. AFAICT our business hasn't been impacted one iota by the sudden shift to WFH, so really all they're doing is a) increasing the odds of unvaccinated people getting sick and b) increasing the anxiety of anxiety-prone people (like moi) who will now be focused more on the travails of a two-hour commute on a packed train and an eight-hour stint in a packed office than on, y'know, my goddamn work.

I've been sick as hell of this place for years so, yeah, this might be the time to cut the commuting cord by whatever means necessary.

I have no idea when we will go back. I gather it'll be some time yet, since they *JUST* announced forming a committee to discuss what it will look like. I'm heartened that my direct supervisor has said that, regardless of the overall plans, he will encourage a more flexible schedule with some WFH days.

Given my role, I'm still going to have to spend time on campus, but it will be nice to not have to be there every single day in person.

Our fun continues on the homefront: Our other kid tested positive yesterday (after testing negative on Saturday). He's now isolated at his mom's house, while we have his brother isolated here. They both seem fine, fwiw. The older one, the second to be infected, did get his first dose of Pfizer, but literally just the day before his brother started showing symptoms, so obviously he hadn't had a lot of time to process the vaccine. My wife and I are still negative as of yesterday, we had our first doses about three weeks ago. But we were heavily exposed to our older son this week, because all three of us were clustered downstairs with his brother isolated upstairs. So we'll keep doing regular drive-thru tests — our one permissible outing from quarantine — and see what happens. Definitely taking the first dose for a serious test drive here.

I can't be the only one who feels that a shift that sudden is unnecessarily disruptive, if only on a psychological level. Like working from home was a big adjustment, but...we got to do the adjusting in the privacy of our own home. I haven't really been around very many people for a year, and now one day soon I'm going to very suddenly surrounded by ALL OF THE PEOPLE ALL OF THE TIME. That thought is making me clench up harder than I thought I could clench.

xposts

Sending good thoughts to you and your family tipsy.

I agree, it is unnecessarily disruptive and will probably do more harm than good.

They opened the office back up* on monday (this is London) when the non-essential shops reopened. and then closed them again yesterday because of the surge testing in south london so...

*optional, distanced, limited places

I might be teaching a course in the fall, which would be in-person, but would require the students to have been vaccinated. Otherwise, the line of work I picked up during the pandemic can be done from anywhere, really, so...

My university eliminates social distancing in classrooms but will keep masks starting in mid June for the second summer term, during which I'll be teaching. I'm slightly nervous but most students anecdotally have said they will or have gotten jabbed.

The university where I work will be doing the same (eliminating distancing, but keeping masks) but not until fall semester.

I am trying to change jobs over the next 3-6 months because I think once silicon valley offices have firm reopening dates (September? January?) the number of people willing to hire fully remotely is going to go waaaay down (maybe not quite pre-pandemic, but not far off), which is going to make getting hired remotely harder (and so average wages available to remote tech people will go down).

friend on Facebook just posted a video from the ICU...been in 6 days. he looked and sounded so bad, I hope he makes it. one of those super extrovert, energetic person normally....feel like I got the wind knocked out of me

oh jeez, ums, i'm so sorry. i'll add him to my healing vibes shrine/collage for what little it's worth.

re: all these employers dragging escaped souls back to hell bringing workers back to the office when they could be as or more productive from home, they are bad bastard people and it'd be cool if the workers could come together in an informal kind of way and discuss their shared goals and desires vis-a-vis employment and whether there might be some low-key perfectly reasonable way to approach management to, like, "bargain" in a sort of "collective" fashion aha ha just kidding... unless? 😳

the company i work for is selling their office space & we’re all remote for like, ever, now

The company I work for owns our building and so we're all gonna be chained to our desks for the rest of our working lives.

We are at our downstairs friends house right now (today we hit our two weeks after the second jab milestone; our friend just reached the same point) and I am feeling a strange euphoria... super emotional. My brain, my cognition, feels immediately nimbler just being here and sitting at her dining room table. My life experience prepared me unusually well for pandemic life but this has all, nonetheless, been absolutely fucking terrible for my mental health. Painfully obvious observations part 36.

The fire alarm just went off at my daughter's school, so she and her 13 classmates on Zoom have been stuck watching an empty room while the alarm rings, waiting for the 6 in-person kids to return.

My employer's contract with the FAA required us to work in an office within a mile or so of the FAA's DC offices. Before the pandemic working from home was available only under extraordinary circumstances. Our HR people had to negotiate for a couple of weeks, even as the Federal Government was starting to send its workers home, before we finally got clearance to WFH. I assume at some future date the FAA will insist that we return to the office part if not full time.

Oh fuck, I didn't think about that. My employer does a lot of work for the federal government as well. I could definitely see that presenting a problem, although in contrast we got our WFH orders before a lot of federal agencies did.

And another SF vaccination update. The city has now broken the 60% mark for people receiving at least one shot; for completed regimens it's almost at 40%. For 65-and-up, nearly 85% with one shot and 70% completed regimens. In terms of neighborhoods, Excelsior, Portola, Potrero Hill and Bayview-Hunter's Point still among the most vaccinated neighborhoods. All absolutely good signs: https://data.sfgov.org/stories/s/COVID-19-Vaccinations-Progress/7mye-zncy/

Meanwhile in Canada, Ontario specifically has increased police enforcement of people breaking the stay at home order while our hospitals collapse :/

wild how many places had distinctly, aggressively incompetent and corrupt leaders in place at this moment, who all quadrupled-down on their incompetence instead of going "I'll just focus on the corruption for a while and let someone else save a few lives" - Ford, Trump, Bolsonaro, Morrison, Johnson/Cummings/Hancock/Sunak

I just want to congratulate myself on having absorbed so many COVID takes that I now simultaneously feel like I am being shamefully overcautious and shamefully undercautious.

congratulations! you are now free to toss them all out and start afresh

no more card metaphors please

Well, well, well: Jess (Strongo), James (Nnn Oooh) and Trife - I'm making your cards.

I was at my first full-on child birthday party since the pandemic started today. All outdoors of course. I realized I had never met almost any of the parents in my kindergartner's class, and it was simultaneously nice and surreal to finally meet them (I've also never been able to set foot in her school).

Seemed like everyone I spoke with was vaxxed or nearly vaxxed. We all wore masks and no one ate or drank, but it made me wonder what the tipping point will be for when people are comfortable not wearing masks even at an outside party where everyone is vaxxed.

the number of new cases per day in my state is still over 1,000 so i'm not letting my guard down yet. maybe when it drops down to a few dozen.

Yes, it's pretty frustrating that cases have been plateauing or rising most places. Don't know what level of vaccinations we need to see those numbers start ticking down again.

an extremely stable 20-25% of people say they won't get vaccinated.

if *everyone* else gets vaccinated we should be good. that will be the trick.

Seemed like everyone I spoke with was vaxxed or nearly vaxxed. We all wore masks and no one ate or drank, but it made me wonder what the tipping point will be for when people are comfortable not wearing masks even at an outside party where everyone is vaxxed.

for groups of vaccinated adults, probably pretty soon. but it may not happen for parties with unvaccinated kids until we're at israel-like levels of community transmission (which may not happen until 10 year olds can get the shot here).

i think masks are coming off for outdoor life (parks, walking down the street, etc.) pretty soon though, whether we like it or not (i'm fine with it as long as people aren't assholes about it, which i guess means i'm not fine with it).

Got my first dose of Pfizer yesterday, keeping an ear out for when my friends get dosed so I can count down to having them over, hugging them, etc.

I remember in high school when me and all my friends would get dosed together

i think masks are coming off for outdoor life (parks, walking down the street, etc.) pretty soon though

One good thing about a multi- or at least bi-national geographically dispersed board like this is you're constantly reminded of the huge regional variation of "normal" behsvior -- here in the Midwest, the outdoors has been mask-optional from the very beginning. I mean, you see people walking down the street in masks, especially if they're in groups, but more not in masks. Joggers don't wear masks. I carry one in my pocket and put it on if I'm coming to a crowded shopping area with a lot of people on the sidewalk.

Second Pfizer yesterday. Got some fever, chills, and nausea, and spent about 12 hours in bed. Still a little hung over from it but am starting to feel human.

Did you have any reaction to your first Pfizer?

US just crossed 26% fully vaccinated and will probably cross 40% with one dose tomorrow or Tuesday

*25%

Flip side, jfc, India at 275,000 new cases today

Been feeling pretty fluey or something 3 weeks after the jab which was Astrazeneca. Not sure how much to worry about it.