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

Michigan changed their mask policy this week and when I went to whole foods yesterday there was a sign that masks are optional if you’ve been vaccinated. Everyone in the store was still wearing a mask, other than four white guys between 45 and 60 or so, shaved bald heads, all wearing goatees and muscle t-shirts. It was kind of hilarious how totally on brand they all were

Feel like it's all still very region-dependent. The numbers here certainly seem to be on the decline but it's been a very slow decline. We're still averaging almost 600 new cases/day in Cook County.

― Slime Goobody (Old Lunch), Sunday, May 23, 2021 5:06 PM bookmarkflaglink

It's actually a pretty expedient decline! It just doesn't look like it when we're dealing with smaller numbers, but Cook County's trajectory is very good. for example, only one month ago, Cook County's average was 1,149, and as of today, it's 577, which is a 49.8% reduction, which, while isn't as impressive as the national decline in that same timeframe, is still very good. and over the last two weeks, Cook County's 7-day moving average for daily cases has decreased 33.6% from 868 to 577. Again, behind the national rate, but still very good.

same thing with Florida - the case average is still really high, but it's declined 56% in the last month, and 32.2% in the last weeks.

Of course, one question is whether numbers will spike up again significantly come fall, just like they did last year. Probably, but it might be restricted to even fewer pockets.

In other news, a friend told me she went to Trader Joe's the other day and, being fully vaccinated, asked if she needed a mask. They said, nope, if you're vaccinated it's optional. So she didn't wear a mask, which she said felt weird but felt even weirder when she was saw she was literally one of two without a mask in there. The one other guy without a mask at one point ambled up to her and sotto voce made the same observation.

It depends what we mean by a spike. I'm no scientist but we're not going to see January or last July's numbers.

In other news, a friend told me she went to Trader Joe's the other day and, being fully vaccinated, asked if she needed a mask. They said, nope, if you're vaccinated it's optional. So she didn't wear a mask, which she said felt weird but felt even weirder when she was saw she was literally one of two without a mask in there. The one other guy without a mask at one point ambled up to her and sotto voce made the same observation.

xpost I have no idea. I do remember how last summer looked OK and then suddenly turned worse again. Unless I saw the wrong numbers, the number of new cases in Chicago, for example, was almost exactly the same yesterday as it was last July 11, 2020 (to pick a random summer date). Last I saw only 38% of Chicago had been vaccinated.

Last summer looked OK and then became worse again because we had no vaccines and states re-opened despite few if any of them meeting the Federal requirements for re-opening. and a lot of people were forced back to work prematurely. everybody reacted like OH HEY PANDEMIC'S OVER and predictably we had a second wave that led to a new baseline and then a third wave.

virus has far fewer places to go right now, as this week we're going to hit 50% of American with one shot. I do think states that are extremely far behind the curve on vaccination MIGHT see a slower decline for their numbers or possibly an uptick (Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, etc), and I plan on boycotting those states for a while.

Today in anecdotal data, no one at Trader Joe's without a mask. More surprisingly, no one in the garden section of Home Depot, which is open air, was wearing a mask either, on a 90 degree day no less.

Yesterday in Trump-voter Hudson Valley, everyone at the grocery store was wearing a mask except 4 teenaged boys who looked like date rape waiting to happen, tan and tousled little princes of the world and obviously too hot right now to wear masks.

Also my checkout person was barefaced even though all her colleagues were still masking. The assholes are really outing themselves.

I take it back, I saw one guy at Home Depot without a mask. He looked like he could have been 20, had a mullet, and his shirt just said Oklahoma.

Oh, What an Ignorant Asshole!

Lol that one took me a second.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/25/health/cdc-coronavirus-infections-vaccine.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage">CDC will no longer investigate mild COVID cases:

Julie Cohn was fully vaccinated when she went to cheer at her 12-year-old son’s basketball game in March. Midway through the match, he asked to remove his mask because he was getting so hot. She thought little of it.

Three days later, he had a sore throat. He tested positive for the coronavirus, as did his younger brother a few days later. Ms. Cohn cared for them, thinking she was protected, but she woke up with what seemed like a head cold on March 28. The next day, she, too, tested positive.

No vaccine provides perfect protection, and so-called breakthrough infections after coronavirus vaccination are rare and unlikely to lead to serious illness. Federal health officials have told fully vaccinated people they no longer need to wear masks or maintain social distance because they are protected, nor do they need to be tested or quarantine after an exposure, unless they develop symptoms.

Now, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has stopped investigating breakthrough infections among fully vaccinated people unless they become so sick that they are hospitalized or die.

Earlier this year, the agency was monitoring all cases. Through the end of April, when some 101 million Americans had been vaccinated, the C.D.C. had received 10,262 reports of breakthrough infections from 46 states and territories, a number that was very likely “a substantial undercount,” according to a C.D.C. report issued on Tuesday.

Genomic sequencing could be done on only 555, or about 5 percent, of the reported breakthrough cases. Over half of them involved so-called variants of concern, including the B.1.1.7 and B.1.351 variants.

Some 995 people were known to have been hospitalized, and 160 had died, though not always because of Covid-19, the new study said. The median age of those who died was 82.

The numbers suggest that the vaccines are highly effective and generally working as expected.

^ Confirms the results from the original trials and every report I've heard for months. The vaccine is extremely effective, more than good enough to achieve herd immunity and stop the pandemic once everyone eligible gets it, but it doesn't confer 100% immunity and shouldn't be viewed as such.

Any American ILXers still waiting for their first jab?

Today in random anecdotal data, every single person at a run-of-the-mill grocery store and also at Costco was wearing a mask. Oddly, there were two people at Costco wearing half assed gaiters, which is weird, because the mask is totally optional now anyway, so if you're going to do it at all, why half-ass it?

At Target this morning around 8:30 I saw three unmasked employees and a handful of unmasked customers. So: more than the weekend, far less than I feared two weeks ago.

This weekend was the first time I've noticed a big drop in mask usage around here. At my son's baseball and soccer games, less than half of the parents were masked, despite the league having yet updated their original policies from March that require masks for all participants and spectators. No one was really enforcing it on the parents, just on the field and dugouts.

On two separate trips downtown, I'd estimate that 60% of the people I saw out and about were wearing masks but almost zero mask usage among college students.

were the parents outside?

My boyfriend's dad came for a visit for a few days and at dinner one night says (you have to imagine this in a heavy Polish accent) "I read on internet that masks not even work!" and I was like I AM NOT HAVING THIS CONVERSATION RIGHT NOW THANK YOU FUCK ALL THE WAY OFF.

Where did he read it? Who the fuck knows. This is the man who gave me a copy of The Closing of the American Mind and told me if I read it I would understand everything that's wrong with the world.

were the parents outside?

Yes and, to be clear, I'm not faulting them. The science backs them up, just noting that they were technically in violation of the league's rules.

I should add that the store I was at had an updated sign outside that said masks are required for unvaccinated patrons, but the sign looks almost identical to the old time, so maybe people just weren't reading it?

It's just all over the place right now. My son's soccer team (all 8 and 9 year olds) had their final game Sunday, so they gathered them all for a quick team picture in the goal. They took a bunch of photos, then one parent asked them all to pull down their masks for a quick maskless photo. Two parents very loudly and quickly objected, one of them screaming hysterically about it. Again, not passing judgment on anyone, it's just a weird time right now and reactions are all over the board.

his is the man who gave me a copy of The Closing of the American Mind and told me if I read it I would understand everything that's wrong with the world Allan Bloom.

The Trump numbers here seem to actually be pretty good, at least quite a bit better than I'd expect

The partisan vaccination divide, per new The Economist/YouGov polling:

Among Biden voters:
Fully vaccinated 76%
Partially 10%
Plan to get 7%
Won’t get vaxxed 2%
Not sure 4%

Trump voters:
Fully vaccinated 54%
Partially 6%
Plan to get 3%
Won’t get vaxxed 26%
Not sure 12%

— G. Elliott Morris (@gelliottmorris) May 26, 2021

Part of what's interesting about this is that the emergency authorizations of Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna and the massive pre-purchases of these vaccines were both done entirely under the Trump administration, while the most publicized hesitation expressed about this fact came from Kamala Harris.

as of today, we're now at 49.7% of Americans with 1 shot, 39.7% fully immunized. we'll hit 50% either tomorrow or Friday.

but the slowing continues - average is now 1.7 million shots a day, and yesterday's numbers were 898,000, today's only 1.42 million, very very low. not sure how much higher we're going to reach unless we release pre-12 vaccines. had hoped opening to 12-15 would give a boost but doesn't seem to have done so.

might just eventually hit a floor that it never goes below but still says relatively low so we eventually get to 60-70%, but idk. on the plus side, the case decline has continued this week (dipped under 25k/day).

getting to the point where I might just stop refreshing this shit daily and just look at weekly data.

I'm fine with just over a million a day and no herd immunity.

and a glass of bone-chilling chardonnay

The optimistic view, which is not totally unreasonable, is that we are ALREADY at a level of population immunity (vaccination + people partially protected by virtue of already having had it) which makes large-scale outbreaks impossible, so the speed of vaccination is merely affecting whether the exponential dropoff takes a month or takes three months, not whether it tips back into surge mode. The former matters too, but -- not as much.

Melbourne is back in lockdown after and outbreak of the B.1.617 variant. It did mean that I’m now eligible to be vaccinated and, after a 5 hour wait in line, I now have a first shot.

Good for you, I guess.

It is good!

The dawdling over the vaccine rollout in Australia is infuriating. We just hit our March target for doses yesterday. The prime minister and health minister have told people ‘it’s not a race’ and ‘it’s OK to wait for the vaccine of your choice’.

I was in the same convention centre for a conference a week ago and dropped by the vaccination Center and there was no line at all, one could walk in no trouble at all. I did ask about a dose of the feared and dreaded Astra-Zeneca that the government has been so busy in undermining the confidence in, but no dice.

Anyway it’s done now and I’m glad I queued yesterday because the computer systems broke this morning and everyone’s vaccine is being processed by hand today and waits are even longer.

I have my Astra-Zeneca booster shot today! Not expecting to die of any blood clotting disorder tbh. Am expecting mild fatigue.

wait are we on to boosters now?? i didn’t think that was a thing, yet

2nd shot I mean, although elderly people of my acquaintance are down for the autumn booster already

Anti-Lockdown protestors in Westfield this afternoon. In somewhere that obviously wasn't locked down, at least not until their protest caused it to be.

Hanging by a lake for a function in the northwoods of Wisconsin, people are pretty chill. Most have had two shots, some just one, mask requirements in the bits of civilization we've seen have been lax, but still lots of masks, considering shots more or less negate the most pressing need. All feels almost... normal.

Re Australia, my SiL is scheduled for her first Pfizer in June, which is earlier than she was expecting.

At a restaurant last night, I saw unmasked waiters for the first time, which knocked me on my heels.

I ate at a place for lunch today where most servers were unmasked but one or two still were.

Also seen lots of joyful hugs the past couple of weeks.

Anti-lockdown dorks all along the north side of Hyde Park and on the Central Line after their demo; my friend and I were in Hyde Park having a meet-up for our puppies, who are litter brothers. As soon as we saw them - loads were dropping in and out of the demo to sit in the park - we very pointedly put on our masks. Tube VERY crowded with them afterwards, and most of them were crusties or those weird middle-class white women who exude mediocrity and winter colds.

most of them were crusties

like... punks? Maybe I don't know what this word means now

Anyway why are there anti-lockdown protests in places that... aren't locked down

They’re anti-vaxxers and pRoTeSTiNg aGAiNsT tHe SyStEm too. A Scottish friend went to photograph the demo today and got a good vantage point on a centre island, when all of a sudden this old man surrounded by a dozen young women asked if he could take that spot; friend was like NAW, GET TAE FUCK to none other than Piers Corbyn.

Anyway why are there anti-lockdown protests in places that... aren't locked down

OK I'm sorry I read Hyde Park and thought you were in Chicago, but you're talking about London, which I guess is actually more locked down than here, my bad

FL officials indicated they aren't reporting any COVID case data this weekend and presumably a few other states are in the same boat.

Can't wait til everyone freaks out at the 'spike' when a three day backlog gets reported all at once