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

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)

As if there were any doubt the deluge has begun, not only do I have a close friend currently getting over covid that had been super cautious but is nonetheless not yet boostered (couldn't get an appointment), not only do I have a second good friend with covid that has been a little less cautious but not reckless and is double vaxxed and boosted, I now have a neighbor who tested positive in another country that has to wait it out with his partner in quarantine before coming home. I do think there are a number of factors at work here. Of course there's a more transmissible variant (though who knows which strain any of them caught), but there's also waning vaccine strength (for those not boostered), and then inevitably there's just the general sense of fatalism and letting down of guard after two years of this bullshit. Let's see what happens once the holiday numbers start rolling in.

My brother in law (who is an idiot and antivaxx) picked up his two youngest kids from the airport where they flew in from colorado where they were with their mom (who is an even worse, evangelical antivaxx idiot) and the kids were utterly sick, daughter vomiting everywhere. tested positive of course; mom put them on the plane ill (perhaps hoping they would fly back an infect her ex husband and kill him, honestly). Im assuming he'll be positive within days if not already.

Jesus it's like the plague plane in 12 Monkeys

I suppose the only advantage South Florida's got over other regions is being able to socialize outdoors. I attended two parties with 15+ guests, all jabbed + boosted, about five days apart before Christmas Eve. So far no infections. Before leaving the office for the last time on Dec. 20, I reserved a series of rapid + PCR tests with Curative, who run two sites on campus. Since that date I've had three PCR and two rapid tests, with another scheduled tomorrow. My friends, including the ones in own, started a WhatsApp thread on which every morning somebody opens with, "Well, my dad tested positive" or with a photo at a testing site with a three-hour line.

So, while I can't say the holiday's not been free of tension, I'm glad that until this point I enjoyed some semblance of normality.

Next week class resumes. This week, though, I retreat into my burrow.

*the ones in town

Should also note: at both gatherings the hosts allowed no one to enter the house without a mask and because these things were held in blessedly large backyards we stood, like, 10 feet apart.

Since that date I've had three PCR and two rapid tests,

This is more tests than I've been able to locate in the entire last two weeks and more than I've had since the start of the pandemic.

It's impossible now -- the next available slots are for next week. Like I wrote, I reserved them before omicron dug in its claws.

I've tested every 7 to 10 days since November 2020 because I deal with students.

I went to visit family in northern MI over the last week and hung out with my parents and at my sister and cousins houses for the first time in two years - every adult is vaxxed and boosted, all kids have had second shots, etc. No real worries and it all felt pretty normal.

My cousin’s husband told me he was going to visit the town I live in to go to a hockey game with friends and go out to eat and stay in a hotel which is something I wouldn’t do at this point but he was doing it after we left so whatever. Yesterday I saw a pic of him at a bar with like a dozen unmasked people, and today my cousin texted that he got covid which is utterly not shocking to me at all but really messes up their first week back to school.

Btw, of the two families I know with any covid-positive members, for whatever reason only a couple of the family members have it. One family, it's the dad but no one else, not his partner, not his 3 kids (though they are all quarantined together by default). In the other, it's the mother, daughter, and a young cousin who was visiting, but not the cousin's father or mother or their other kid. Either the test didn't pick up asymptomatic cases, or covid is picky about where it settles in.

After two days of symptoms and negative home tests, spouse tried to get a PCR test at our healthcare provider's site. The line was many many blocks long and they had to close down and send everyone home. We've had a week of nasty weather and icy streets with it starting to defrost yesterday, so that might also be part of the equation.

yikes. yeah that concerns me, the difficulty of getting a timely PCR result.

I've been telling friends and relatives to not bothering getting tested if you have cold-like symptoms unless their pre-existing condition or a boss demands it. Stay home, especially if the backlog is so extensive.

I have two shows the weekend after next, one in WI and one in Minneapolis, and neither show any signs of getting canceled so far so hey we'll see how all that goes.

I'm not particularly concerned about it personally, but it's just hard to get a sense of how differently things are being handled in different places.

part of me wants to keep proactively testing and part of me is like...unless I feel sick why bother now? I tested religiously through all of 2020 and on and off in 21 even after getting vaxxed, but mostly only when I felt ill. We tested before hosting friends for the holidays, but at this point with tests hard to find, I feel it's best to not take up time doing it when people who are actively ill should be able to get them more easily. also, selfishly, I'm afraid I'll test positive while completely asymptomatic and then feel compelled to stay home.

to be clear, the only reason I would want a timely positive PCR test is to have documentation for any long term issues with insurance coverage

our daycare just announced they're going to require a negative PCR test taken on friday, saturday or sunday to return to daycare the following week.

so we're making plans to take out 4 year old and our 20 month old to get tested every friday morning (has to be friday am to have even a chance to get results by monday) to get tested for the forseeable future. call it two hours waiting around and ~$1000/month, so we can be confident the kids *didn't have covid four days ago*. great stuff.

^ that sounds like a classic 'legal liability nullification' move by your daycare provider and therefore it has no resemblance to sensible harm-reduction policy, but it certainly makes a good cover story if a child there catches covid and is hospitalized or worse.

It's impossible now -- the next available slots are for next week. Like I wrote, I reserved them before omicron dug in its claws.

I've tested every 7 to 10 days since November 2020 because I deal with students.

― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, January 2, 2022 4:52 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I was in Florida over Christmas and had to book the PCR for my return to England a week in advance. While there though I thought I had Covid (lol it was good poisoning from bad Bailey’s) and got a test at the health department 30 mins after I called them. No lines - results in 15 mins. Florida is wild though. Not a single one of my dad’s friends give a shit about it anymore and his neighbors are all unvaxxed. Honestly after working in a hospital through all of this, traveling, and being in Florida I kind of can’t believe I haven’t had it yet.

What part of Florida?

Miami-Dade County's gotten serious again. Until the second week of December, I noticed masking at stores had dropped to about 60%, yesterday closer to 8 or 9 out of 10. The young (18 y/o to 35) do not give a shit though.

i think rapid tests in the parking lot in the morning 2-5 times/week would be more protective but i'm not going to argue this because they've simultaneously made a separate change that i think is actually justified, and probably going to be more disruptive.

i.e. no exceptions/no wiggle room stay home policy on "the sniffles" (i.e. any mild unexplained symptoms). based on the previous three months and how often kids get colds, i would be surprised if we have daycare more than 6 weeks out of the next 12, even if we don't get covid.

After the flight back I got a notification that someone on the plane had tested positive but I’ve done a PCR And two LFTs since and all we’re negative.

After the flight back I got a notification that someone on the plane had tested positive but I’ve done a PCR And two LFTs since and all we’re negative.

Al - Vero Beach. I’d say about 30% of people in shops were masked. Def not more than that. Coming from London where it’s all been so strict it was like being on another planet.

(Sorry for the double post. Don’t know what happened.)

Thankfully as you said we were almost always outside. Think I’d have been more freaked out if we had been indoors the whole time.