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

Are you worried about yourself, or infecting others?

Tbh, mostly myself. I am only on the slight side of immunocompromised-- my WBC count is on the low end of normal, which is pretty good for a cancer survivor-- but I'm just trying to gauge how to approach these sorts of events. I miss my friends, and want to promote this new book of mine, but I also don't want to get laid up.

I went mask-free at Trader Joe's yesterday, sort of a test the waters thing. Most of the staff was umasked, most of the customers were masked, with about a 15-20% exception in either case. I kept my mask in my hand the entire time, in case it ever felt or got weird, but it went OK. At the checkout the staffer was wearing a (cloth) mask, so I asked him if he would feel more comfortable if I put my mask on while I was around him, and he said nah, it's cool, don't worry about it, but thanks for asking. That might be how I play it from now on, depending on where I am.

At TJs a week or so beforehand I asked the (different) person checking me out how she decided not to wear a mask. She told me earlier that day more of the staff was wearing them than later, but her decision to go mask-free came because she was vaxxed, boosted, masked and careful for months and *still* managed to relatively recently get covid, so figured at least for the time being, what's the point?

Yeah that's tough table I'm sorry. Just this constant weighing up of risk.

Yeah. I do think that if I end up doing these events and everything goes swell, I will probably feel a little more relaxed for the next events-- I'm doing two readings in the south (but in outdoor venues) in April, and an outdoor event in NY at the end of April.

Fwiw, one of the events I'm reading at in Philly is continuing with vax requirements and Kn95 mask requirements, but the organizer of the event is immunocompromised and is in a similar spot as me-- he wants to have a return to some semblance of normalcy but is also very worried about how all this is going to play out.

I still wear masks going into shops/on public transport but not in restaurants as I will be taking it off sooner or later, same for pubs. I generally find this hassle-free with the exception of Tuesday morning when I was flying back to the UK, having to wear a mask while trying to sleep on a plane was very hard. When I go home to Ireland masking is still prevalent & you had to wear them in pubs outside the main areas etc- well it was in February anyway. The only place I never wear one is outside.

Oh yeah I should say wearing a mask for 99% time in my daytime flight when I was wide awake the whole time, while not 100% comfortable for eight hours, was at least bearable.

At TJs a week or so beforehand I asked the (different) person checking me out how she decided not to wear a mask. She told me earlier that day more of the staff was wearing them than later, but her decision to go mask-free came because she was vaxxed, boosted, masked and careful for months and *still* managed to relatively recently get covid, so figured at least for the time being, what's the point?

did you explain to her what the point is?

the "protects other people" aspect has been largely forgotten (or in many cases, deliberately ignored).

The last thing I'm going to do is go to someone's business, let alone a supermarket, and yell at an employee for not wearing an optional mask.

I'm not gonna yell at anyone about anything. I was joking with my wife that we should order some fabric masks to go over our N95s that say My Body, My Choice. Someone's probably making them on Etsy.

I agree, actually, I would assume also that retail staff are a much greater risk from members of the public who are infected than vice versa. It’s how it played out in the UK.

my generic comeback when someone tells me i don't have to wear my mask anymore is "what? you do everything the government tells you?"

The last thing I'm going to do is go to someone's business, let alone a supermarket, and yell at an employee for not wearing an optional mask.

how do you get from "politely answer a sincere question a person you are already talking to asks" to "go to a place and yell at somebody unprompted" so quickly

the answer, my friend....is blowing in the wind

More than a week post removal of indoor mask requiring, still seeing equilibrium of most people wearing masks, some people not, among both customers and employees, nobody hassling anybody about it or even talking about it, everything chill

Multiple x-posts:

"And if you’ve ever tried to swim in a public pool there [in France] you’ll know how seriously they take their rule about Speedos."

Ha, yes. This made me chuckle.

Some x-posts:

I can't remember where I read it but isn't the idea that "outside is safe" a fallacy? "Outside is safer", yes, but there are also other factors ... So, for example, there's a big difference between being sat outside with someone for 20 mins and being sat outside with someone for a day etc, etc.

I have also traveled a decent amount to places in the US with no mask requirement, have worn masks into stores and buildings where no one else or nearly no one else was, nobody said boo

I mean to some extent I suppose this is because I am a white male of a certain age and strangers don't feel primed to feel they can/should put me in my place

droplets fall to the ground sooner without internal airflow.

there's not 'no risk', and people definitely catch it outside, but it's definitely significantly lower risk

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/01/21/1069904184/omicron-outdoor-transmission-risk

"my generic comeback when someone tells me i don't have to wear my mask anymore"

mine is "lol i have the coronavirus"

the "protects other people" aspect has been largely forgotten (or in many cases, deliberately ignored).

you can't count on any particular person to care about protecting others, but 99.9% of the time they will care about protecting themselves, so the emphasis on masks protecting yourself is the better sales tactic. in reality, the protection provided to any one person masking themself is limited. otoh wearing a mask only protects others when it is being worn by someone who is an active vector. if you aren't infectious, there's nothing happening from which anyone else needs to be protected.

it's the cumulative protection provided to everyone when everyone wears masks that is hugely effective and slows transmission down tremendously. that's what never came across to the public, partly because the selfish ones were so incredibly focused on their own petty annoyance with being asked to do something inconvenient without being given an instant reward for it.

the emphasis on masks protecting yourself is the better sales tactic.

I think this has absolutely proven to be the case and frankly I'm disappointed in us

fwiw N95s DO provide a pretty significant amount of protection for the wearer, as do KN95s, but the protection would be astronomically higher if all in the building were wearing them rather than just the one wearer.

but you’d need an absolutely enormous mask

i just don’t think that would be practical

everybody climb inside

wait you weren’t proposing that the entire building wear a building-sized mask i guess okay

TS: them vs it

oh shit did I just get cancelled

The local school system lifted its mask mandate about two weeks ago. One week ago, my daughter brought home a sinus cold that had her and I both very sick for a few days (we tested negative for covid). All her friends have been out too. This is exactly what I expected to see when mandates were lifted.

I still notice some other people wearing masks at the supermarket, but when I went out to the record store and comic shop during the lunch hour today, nobody had them on. The record store guy had been particularly stringent about masks and social distancing during the pandemic too - he had kicked people out of his store on more than one occasion. I am definitely continuing to wear mine because I'm still getting over this cold.

Yeah. As my COVID fears recede, sinus colds and colds general, after three years, start to worry me more

We are 8 days out from lifting the mask mandate and 0 cases in all three schools. We had two of my daughter's friends over for dinner indoors, first time doing something like that, and happiest I have seen her since this started. Next day I heard from the parents of one of them that the brother was sick, but test negative, turned out to be a cold. Our kids also got colds a bunch of times when the mask mandate was in place.

Living someplace where most people have mostly not been wearing masks for months, I haven't had any problem being the only or one of the only masked people in many situations. But when our county ticked over into yellow last week, I figured, what am I waiting for? Our daily numbers are back down to very low. I mean, we all draw our lines different places and that's fine, but as fucked up as the CDC is it's still been my basic guide in the absence of anything better. So, I'm back to mostly not wearing masks. If I find myself in a setting where a lot of people are masked — like our local food co-op — I'll put one on mostly for other people's comfort. And I'll go right back to it if/when we climb back to red status.

In the meantime, our kids are still wearing masks at school because the school board is under a federal court order to mask, which has the local anti-mask brigades just freaking the fuck out nonstop, but they can't do anything about it because — as they have only slowly and reluctantly realized — you can't tell a federal judge jack shit.

And to Alfred's point, my recent bout of Disney World-induced food poisoning reminded me how much it sucks to be sick from anything. One absolute benefit of everything the last few years is that I hadn't had so much as a sniffle for two years.

I know this is just one person's anecdotes vs another's, but I noticed zero difference in the amount my kids got sick in the last two years, at least once they were back in full time school.

I lunched indoors today, one of the first times since November. Cases and positivity have dropped below pre-delta levels in Miami-Dae, so I figured, "If not now, when?" We may well get another variant, so let me do this now. Besides, everyone in my circle is boosted and still masks (like I do).

To speak to a bartender like I used to felt -- well, I nearly teared up.

I don’t think I saw this story posted here:

NEW: for the first time in the pandemic, a Covid infection now carries less mortality risk than a flu infection in England, the result of widespread immunity and the emergence of a less virulent variant in Omicron.

Our story: https://t.co/BnFWG7xwaS pic.twitter.com/ck4Db9jEjk

— John Burn-Murdoch (@jburnmurdoch) March 10, 2022

JBM's charts are the best

but also, it's a week or two since the mask mandate has been dropped in the uk and, to nobody's surprise:

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/

"Patients admitted
Last 7 days
9,328
There has been an increase of 1,379 (17.3%) compared to the previous 7 days."

Positive tests up nearly 53% in last week.

not sure if it's as simple as that - a thread:

So this is not good.

Both new COVID cases and hospital admissions are rising again in England.

Just how bad this is remains to be seen. But trying to work out how worried we should be (if at all) requires some understanding of *why* it's happening, and honestly🤷

/THREAD pic.twitter.com/9UIwNqGcQ0

— Colin Angus (@VictimOfMaths) March 9, 2022

and he chased it with this:

This also looks like good news - the recent increase in people in English hospitals with positive COVID tests is mostly driven by patients who are being treated for something else, *not* COVID. pic.twitter.com/S617p7hudd

— Colin Angus (@VictimOfMaths) March 10, 2022

I noticed zero difference in the amount my kids got sick in the last two years, at least once they were back in full time school.

My kids have definitely been sick less, and the oldest one I don't think has been sick even once (apart from having to quarantine when he tested positive for COVID, but he had no symptoms. But the younger one has had a few bugs, it's not like it's been a total shut-out.

I have not personally gotten so much as a cold, however. Some allergies is it. (And the aforementioned food poisoning obv.) I can usually count on at least one bad cold a winter. So I think the masks and everything else really have helped on that front.

Yeah we had a strep case and a stomach bug in the last two years, no covid. While none of that was pleasant, it was far less than any prior similar period - bear in mind we were used to getting quite a lot of colds (not to mention head lice, because ugh, don't want to talk bout them).

Distance and staying home and masking have been demonstrably good things from that perspective.

i've had a weird amount of bacterial infections since 2012, and thanks to those not being viruses, those haven't stopped, though I haven't had as many of them.

at least two brutal sinus infections though.

fwiw my lad's group chat is 9 people, 7 in the UK, and of those 7, 5 of them have covid right now.

apparently JBM got a lot of flack for that tweet thread (undeservedly) yesterday. not surprised - his take is basically my feeling on what discourse on COVID has devolved into

Some absolutely wild takes out there in response to our Covid vs flu story.

Increasingly looks like for a vocal minority of people, talking about Covid has entered religious purity test territory.

— John Burn-Murdoch (@jburnmurdoch) March 11, 2022

My company has been saying for three weeks now that our masking guidance will change, effective March 14th.

However, we are currently sitting on March 11th and they still have not decided on what that change will look like. Either way, really not giving folks any time to mentally prepare for what Monday would look like. If my small office group is any indication of the larger population, we have five of the nine who have already (loudly, repeatedly) said they will immediately ditch the masks as soon as even the hint of the chance and two who are furious that masks are going away. It's going to be an interesting week next week.

My company just announced today that the phased return to the office will begin in one month and that masks will be optional for vaccinated employees. We are a large, scientific organization with many public health experts in our leadership. My take on things throughout the pandemic has been grounded in whatever the company has been doing. They've basically said that's it for now, but if shit gets bad again, we may have to change course.

In our school district there was a scheduled vote about making masking optional, but a week before the vote the Superintendent sent an email saying that the mask policy would no longer be enforced. People were trying to figure out what happened, since no one was prepared for the change. The superintendent ended up telling our friend that a bunch of anti-masker parents had sent their kids in without masks and when they were sent to the principal’s office refused to come pick them up. Then the Teacher’s Union had pleaded for an immediate policy change because they were receiving such angry calls from anti-mask parents that they were sure someone was going to come shoot up the schools. So basically bullying works!

The hodge-podge of guidelines and etc was strange for me today. At my gym, they don't check vaccine cards, and there's no mask requirement. Which is why I still wear a mask when there.

Today I visited a friend's gym...and they had a mask requirement and vaccine check, had to search in my phone for a photo of my card.

Not angry or miffed at inconvenience, obv, but more just like— the lack of predictability in guidelines when going out is going to be a headache for a while to come.