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

Unrelated question: American Airlines doesn't require COVID testing before boarding a domestic flight, no?

just dropped my daughter off at her first day of school
pretty hard but thankfully minneapolis public schools seems to be doing as much as possible.

mask mandates for students and teachers. we actually gathered on the playground field and all the classes lined up, then they let them in one at at time like boarding a plane to minimize hallway traffic. they are doing spaced, assigned seating in the lunchroom, so if one kid gets it they can contact trace to exactly who was sitting where.

i dunno, fingers crossed.

a big part of parenting has been discovering these glib cliches like "they grow up so fast" and "you can't protect them from everything" are so terrifyingly, profoundly true and you feel it so deeply

Unrelated question: American Airlines doesn't require COVID testing before boarding a domestic flight, no?

no, we just did back and forth between ORD and DFW and didn't have to show proof of vaccination status or any COVID tests (we could have provided both due to the international elements). Totally normal flights except masks and particularly surly flight crews.

no masks at all in my sons’s primary school, on anyone. deputy headteacher shook my hand. no testing. i guess this is the do it and be legends school of thought.

i'm sorry tracer, we are lucky in our district

I'm sorry Tracer, that sounds stressful.

ums is absolutely otm, it's been really hard to adjust to sending our kid back. Some days I just have to distract myself from wallowing in all the things I can't control and just focus on how visibly happy he's been to be back with his friends and getting out of the house.

On a much less intense note, but still frustrating: the various tour postponements and cancellations going around have finally hit my ticket schedule, with Gary Numan saying yesterday his fall tour will be ported over to 2022. Can't help but feel there's much more to come.

I know stats aren't always comforting, but the risk to most kids from COVID is not much different than that of flu, RSV, or any other common virus that was around pre-COVID, probably even less. Everyone has their own risk tolerance, but I lost more sleep over buying a trampoline than I did sending my kids to school in person this year, and the anxiety I have is largely from quarantine potential rather than health risk.

Yeah you know, it's not more feelings than some sort of rational tallying up of factors but I get it

TBF, it also helps that I am in a super-highly-vaccinated area with people who are largely conscientious. I might be a little more worried if I were in Florida.

Kids back in school, feels very normal tbh (but I am in a high-vax district with indoor masking in school and some reassuring HVAC upgrades they did when the buildings were empty)

eh, if you live in the US you're not in a high vaccination district.

I'm not sure how much it's penetrated US news coverage that America is now thoroughly mediocre in its vaccination rate compared to most of Western
Europe and Scandinavia pic.twitter.com/NCXMFBsVzF

— Dylan Scott (@dylanlscott) September 7, 2021

We live somewhere with 'high' vaccine rates and I'm aware of at least three rabid anti-vaxxers living in our building alone.

I don't know what anybody in my building thinks about vaccination, because I never talk to any of them. I do know that I have never seen any of them wear a mask, ever.

I'm not sure how much it's penetrated US news coverage that America is now thoroughly mediocre in its vaccination rate

America is now thoroughly mediocre in everything, so this isn't news.

not to defend the US, but we do have 333 million people living here as well.

Of the other countries in the top ten in world population, the US is only beaten by China in terms of % vaccinated. granted, we SHOULD be doing a lot better, and a lot of the reason for the other countries have to do with supply or infrastructure, but by comparison, Singapore, who is 79% fully vaccinated, has just under 6 million people.

again, we should be doing better as we have the capacity to deliver many more vaccinations per day, and we do seem to have the greatest proportion of COVID denialists, but having a huge-assed population doesn't help. and also explains why we're getting our asses kicked now - regional variability.

sure. my point is that americans saying "i think x will not happen because i live in a high vax area" usually live somewhere that has a significantly lower vaccination rate than somewhere x has already happened.

yeah and I agree with you there. it's sort of why I became disheartened at looking at the vaccination stats for the US - because I look at countries far more vaxxed than us and see that they didn't bat back Delta themselves, so how could we ever hope to.

yes, I was under the impression that I was in a fairly high vaccination area, but it's clearly not high enough to keep us from having hospitalization rates that are practically as high as they were at the beginning of the year.

The UK got through a huge delta wave this summer never getting close to the (proportional) death toll the US is now experiencing. Is it really so impossible that the parts of the US with relatively high vaccine prevalence might do the same?

The US might get through the summer without experiencing as high a death toll as the US?

cases went back up in the UK after the initial dip, though hospitalizations were more de-coupled second time around

"relatively high vaccine prevalence" relative to what? the UK average? the US average?

Not that I endorse reckless social gatherings, but this tweet hits hard this morning:

This messaging from universities that it's safe to gather in large classrooms but not at parties is clearly not landing very well.

I think people are generally very tired of being told that the pandemic is over when it comes to labor but ongoing when it comes to leisure.

— Samantha Joel (@datingdecisions) September 8, 2021

Direct quotes I've heard just this week from senior leaders at work:
"now that we are out of the pandemic"
"since COVID is over now, we can..."
"we need to revert our thinking back to pre-pandemic times"

I'm going to scream in one of these meetings shortly.

I found that tweet annoying because all indications from contact tracing, etc. at universities are that, yes, classroom transmission, EVEN PRE-VACCINE, was not a major issue relative to indoor socializing. It's not valuing labor over leisure, it's the fact that students sitting quietly in a big lecture hall with masks on is less of a transmission risk then students packed into a house unmasked and shouting. Like, I'm sorry if the messaging "doesn't land well" but it is what it is.

There are tons of kinds of leisure that are not overly risky in this respect. Hang out with your friends. Play frisbee. Have sex two at a time.

"relatively high vaccine prevalence" relative to what? the UK average? the US average?

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Wednesday, September 8, 2021 3:19 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I meant relative to the US average.

I found that tweet annoying because all indications from contact tracing, etc. at universities are that, yes, classroom transmission, EVEN PRE-VACCINE, was not a major issue relative to indoor socializing. It's not valuing labor over leisure, it's the fact that students sitting quietly in a big lecture hall with masks on is less of a transmission risk then students packed into a house unmasked and shouting. Like, I'm sorry if the messaging "doesn't land well" but it is what it is.

Oh I agree with this, absolutely, I was just more struck by the second half about how companies are all about pretending the pandemic is over when it comes to getting back to the office or making sure workers stay productive. But I do think messaging has been pretty shit, though my concern has been less about in the classroom than about the big "welcome back to campus" indoor events that involve food and drink while they also shame students for any "unofficial gatherings".

Hang out with your friends. Play frisbee. Have sex two at a time.

PS, yes, I meant these three in sequence. That's how I remember college working, anyway.

I don't understand the need if you're already requiring vaccination to be on campus.

I mean you have a pretty self-contained group of already low risk people who are all vaccinated. If that's not enough to lift restrictions I don't understand what ever will be.

we've done this before. the thing we're waiting for to lift restrictions is case rates not being extremely high.

my university has 50,000 students who are 'required' to be vaccinated with repercussions if you are not, but there's nobody actually checking cards or anything - it's all self-reported. There are repercussions if you get caught but that's only going to happen if you get sick and the contract tracing kicks in.

My students are all wearing masks in the classroom but then I see images on twitter of massive groups huddled together maskless waiting to get into the shitty bar where 170 people got covid last summer with the caption 'looks like everyone is rushing delta this fall' and feel like we're going to be back to online only in a month.

man alive, you do understand how Covid and the Delta variant work, right? and you do understand that "college-age" might be "low-risk," but the behavior of college-age people is generally "high-risk"? I mean I don't know about y'all, but I used to go around drinking half-empties and snorting random bits of dust off mirrors in college.

I used to go around drinking half-empties and snorting random bits of dust off mirrors in college.

"mommy, where do poets come from"

You'd have to include LSD ingestion in that equation too, fwiw

we've done this before. the thing we're waiting for to lift restrictions is case rates not being extremely high.

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Thursday, 9 September 2021 17:26 (three hours ago) link

But even if they go down, they will go back up when we lift restrictions. This is why I have been banging this drum. It's endemic. It's not going away.

man alive, you do understand how Covid and the Delta variant work, right? and you do understand that "college-age" might be "low-risk," but the behavior of college-age people is generally "high-risk"? I mean I don't know about y'all, but I used to go around drinking half-empties and snorting random bits of dust off mirrors in college.

― Kind regards, Anus (the table is the table), Thursday, September 9, 2021 2:04 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Ok, so some vaccinated college students will catch it and suffer cold or flu like symptoms. And very few will go to the hospital or die, certainly no moreso than of flu or other illnesses or drinking half empties and falling down flights of stairs.

I think the problem is that even they don't get very sick they will spread it to the rest of the population, keeping it very active.

"even if..."

very few will go to the hospital or die, certainly no moreso than of flu or other illnesses or drinking half empties and falling down flights of stairs

certainly?? i don't think that available facts back up that conclusion.

Ok, so some vaccinated college students will catch it and suffer cold or flu like symptoms. And very few will go to the hospital or die, certainly no moreso than of flu or other illnesses or drinking half empties and falling down flights of stairs.

Good thing it's well established that the virus knows to stop at the borders of campus and will absolutely not in any circumstances be transmitted to the larger community beyond.

It's like man alive has never heard of schools with commuter populations

Or students who eat in restaurants, go to movies, etc.

Even if they do live on campus.

But even if they go down, they will go back up when we lift restrictions. This is why I have been banging this drum. It's endemic. It's not going away.

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Thursday, September 9, 2021 4:31 PM (fifty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

1. "go back up" is not what endemic means.
2. "they will go back up when we lift restrictions". once again, i am asking people to remember the existence of other countries in the world from which it might be possible to learn something.

"go back up" is the opposite of endemic in fact!

It's like man alive has never heard of schools with commuter populations

― Kind regards, Anus (the table is the table), Thursday, 9 September 2021 20:54 (forty minutes ago) link

Um, I went to one, so yes I'm familiar. But again, vaccination requirement.