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

It's amazing how quickly things change. In heavily vaccinated Miami-Dade County two weeks ago I'd see about 60 percent of store customers masked; now we're back to eight or nine out of 10 masked.

masking is utterly shot here. maybe 20-25% in our stores is my guesstimate, in places that even during Delta were maybe 80-90%.

wow -- that high during Delta but not now?!

x-post to kinder: my impression was a combination of a) not enough staff and b) too basic (that is, the treatment was more complex than expected so needed more equipment than you'd realistically put in a field hospital. (With a disclaimer of not a health care professional in this field so might be chatting nonsense).

(UK) Prior to it becoming law again, face-covering wearing had seemed to increase dramatically, here ... in my local supermarket. It had become unusual to see anyone without a face covering, after a period of it seeming to slip a lot.

I think Omicron is moving so swiftly that it hasn't yet sunk in with a lot of people. I heard various holiday anecdotes of friends or relatives making "now that COVID is done" remarks. Masks will probably continue to ramp up as more realize how widespread it is once again.

Masking is so inconsistent, we spent the holiday with family in Ann Arbor and though we didn’t go many places at all, saw very consistent masking. That is until I had to run into the local Meijer to pick up a prescription for my mother in law and maybe 40% of the people in the shop, employees included, had masks on. A few had masks pulled down below their chins, but most didn’t even appear to have masks at all. Didn’t click until the way out that they had no signage posted about masks.

I think Omicron is moving so swiftly that it hasn't yet sunk in with a lot of people.

Where I'm at in NJ it's very much the opposite. I'm seeing more masks, and I'm seeing block-long lines outside pharmacies and lab vans for tests. People are scared here.

x-post to kinder: my impression was a combination of a) not enough staff and b) too basic (that is, the treatment was more complex than expected so needed more equipment than you'd realistically put in a field hospital. (With a disclaimer of not a health care professional in this field so might be chatting nonsense).

Boston area is pretty hard-core these days, I'm seeing runners and bicyclists wearing masks, single people in cars, etc.

I myself am starting to play Sidewalk Chicken again, when passersby approach.

In my part of Chicago (not bougie, lots of first-gen immigrants), I’m seeing mostly masked people even outside now.

wow -- that high during Delta but not now?!

― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, December 29, 2021 2:40 PM bookmarkflaglink

really how it sort of materialized is that mask-wearing began declining immediately after Desantis made mandates illegal, so they were that high during Delta simply because many people were still doing it due to habit, but over time more and more people stopped.

Where I'm at in NJ it's very much the opposite.

well yes, different places are going to have different responses. Also, New Jersey has one of the highest concentration of cases in the country

I've never seen much of anything less than full mask compliance where I am, but today at a (shitty) supermarket I saw three people without so much as a dicknose.

people should wear masks, yes, in this omicron wave

government should be clearer and more forceful to even out the stresses on health provision

but goddamn unless i'm with my immunocompromised mother i am done with being worried about other people masking or not

if you wear a KN95 or an N95, chances are you're well protected. you'd be better protected if others had it on too, but you are still better off (significantly) than if you didn't.

I get more mad that they're not wearing it because they're prolonging this fucking pandemic though.

it is definitely better to mask up, especially right now, but more people wearing masks will not end the pandemic

Yup. But it does slow it down until some of the newer treatments become available.

Xpost it would drastically reduce transmission if everyone was supplied and wore N95s.

The pandemic is not ending through eradication, but containment. Masks are a measure of containment

it will only end when enough people have either been vaccinated, infected, or both

a mass change in behavior isn't going to happen, irresponsible people will continue to be irresponsible

Herd immunity is not happening. Just about every epi has given up on that
Esp when infection from one strain doesn't protect against all.

Containment, controlling the number of cases in circulation is going to be the way out. Countries will decide what acceptable levels of death are

Moodles, I'm not sure what you're arguing?

that masks are decent way to protect yourself and people around you, but they are not going to be adopted on nearly a wide enough scale, and even then, they are probably not the key to actually ending the pandemic.

There is no one key!

This ain't Lord of the Rings.

they are probably not the key to actually ending the pandemic.

No one says they will.

We've become so used to picking off serious diseases one by one, through mass vaccination and improved treatments, that when a new serious disease emerges and becomes endemic it feels like the 'natural order' of continuous medical progress has been grossly violated. It hasn't.

The anti-vaxx idiocy is deeply troubling, but that won't stop the development of new tools and treatments. Those new treatments should help to mitigate the worst consequences of having covid with us for the long haul. One may also hope the anti-vaxx cult will weaken and fade as years pile up, covid vaccines improve, and irrational fears become more and more ridiculous in the face of long term positive results.

I think you overestimate the intelligence of anti-vaxxers

I'm not relying on their intelligence, but rather their attention span.

i'm not saying i'm right

i'm not 'making a case'

i'm just sick of passing judgement

anti-vaxxers will either finally get vaccinated, build up some immunity through repeated infections, or die. The rest of us will muddle through, masking up as needed, avoid infection and spread as best as possible, probably also get covid at some point, and then pray that boosters, etc come through.

masks are definitely needed right now, but given how much Omicron is spreading in states that have previously had solid mitigation in place, I'm guessing they are not as effective as they once were. This is leading me to think that the line of thought that if we just get some more people to wear masks things will be alright is a rather large false hope.

also there's no realistic path to getting more people to wear masks.

Focus on mask wearing and case numbers just seems like anxiety treadwheeling for the sake of it

Things are long past case numbers being a key metric

Maskwatching- and reporting on it- for me at this stage would be almost a compulsive level of covidsharing

No one has ever said "things will be alright."

Masks are to prevent your beloveds and strangers from catching your infection. The science says they still works.

Stop worrying about it.

hypervigilance :(

This is once again the strawman thread

Saying "they're prolonging this pandemic" isn't wrong. Many cases spread at gatherings that would not have if people had worn N95s/KN95s. However I know they are pricy for many, which is what i keep reminding the #COVIDisairborne cult (and why I think the government should supply them). Mask mandates inarguably increase mask adoption - not 100%, or close to it, but higher.

I said masks were "a measure" of containment, not the sole means of containment. Omicron is spreading heavily whether we wear them or not, but in the US, there are regional hospital systems that could break soon, any reduction helps.

YMP btw what you said was perfectly reasonable.

the pandemic "ending" is going to be an arbitrary decision by federal governments, not a clean milestone you can pinpoint in time.

Three posts

Wheres the mods now

haha take it to I Love AFL buddy

I have spent a lot of the post-Omicron timeline getting very mad at people without masks and finally having N95s makes me much more receptive to the chill-about-the-masks vibes being espoused here today

My mom says:

“Yes, I kind of get it — the becoming more like flu thing.

But I have to say, it’s frustrating to be immuno-compromised right now, and because of a condition that is not likely to ever move to a less vulnerable status. Like maybe everyone else is going to kind of drift their way back to normalcy along a winding road. But the elderly and infirm will stay in lock-down. Jim in his mid-80s is just going to keep being vulnerable and more vulnerable from here on out. It’s not fun to think about long-term withdrawal from a world that other people get to move more freely through.

Though reading the above, I think how many disabled people and elderly people have been feeling that for many years …”

My friend (vaxxed, not boosted yet) that recently tested positive, her whole run was one negative rapid test at a clinic, two positive over the counter rapid tests, and three negative PCR tests. Got to love the completely useless inconsistency.

Someone in our immediate friend circle just tested positive. She got it from her daughter, who probably brought it home from high school. Weirdly, the husband, the least cautious (but hardly reckless) among our friend group, the one who has traveled plenty both domestically and internationally, the one whose job requires him to spend a lot of time in restaurants and concert venues, has never tested positive and continues to test negative. Anyway, they were all vaxxed up, now they're all quarantining. The teen's mild symptoms were gone in a day, our friend's mild symptoms lingered for a couple of days.

While I was on hiatus I'm pretty sure my wife had it and I may have as well. She was exposed in close contact (coworker she works with a lot) at work (and I was actually sort of exposed at my work holiday thing, but timing makes it seem like I got it from her). She got the standard symptoms but not very bad, just sort of sniffly and tired and low fever for a few days. I got tired and achy for a couple days. This was pretty much at peak testing time and we had a hard time finding any home tests or centers where we could test, so we just followed the new CDC guidelines and isolated for five days after symptoms resolved. Kids never got it although we didn't isolate from them. Parents visited when our isolation period was over, and we did all mask a lot of the time just to play it safe.

My brother also got it at almost exactly the same time, just as he and his family were supposed to spend a few days with us -- first time I was going to have seen him in about two years, along with first time I'd see my new niece and only third time I'd see my now three-year-old other niece. It got sort of absurd, because we couldn't figure out who should take what precautions or what tests in order to see who, and in the end we settled on a playground meetup with just me and my kids and my brother's wife and their kids (since brother's symptoms hadn't fully resolved). My brother had it a bit worse, apparently some breathing trouble for a day or two, but was well enough to fly home at the end of the break. Holidays felt a bit depressing as a result of all of this but no worse than for most I imagine and better than for many. At least the cousins did get to hang a bit and we saw my folks on NYE.

I have concert tix for next weekend and kind of shocked it's not cancelled. I don't really have a problem going at this point btw vax, booster, kids vaxxed, and most likely having just had omicron as well.

We have concert tickets for next weekend, too, that we got back during the summer lull. So not gonna happen. For us, anyway, but it looks like the show is still going on as planned.

Fwiw I thought I had it last month in NYC but my pcr test was negative so it was just a non-covid sore throat in my case. Pretty standard for me around this time of the year w/ dry air from apartment heating

my best friend's father got his ass beaten in a bar altercation on new year's day, wound up having broken bones in face and brain bleed.

his girlfriend just wrote that he was in the ICU without context, so every one of his friends assumed he had COVID. five of them said to make the doctor give him ivermectin.

any guesses as to who him and his friends all voted for?

damn

(he's going to be ok btw, but my best friend was pissed and wanted to go into the thread and write "HE DOESN'T HAVE COVID AND IVERMECTIN DOESN'T WORK, ASSHOLES", but she was too wiped emotionally)