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

My six year has been back in school for four weeks and has caught two different colds--out 4 days so far. We've had to get two negative Covid tests for return to school.

I was kind of hoping that masking and distancing would prevent some of other kinds of illness, but no.

The quarantine on our daughter's group home was lifted late Tuesday. The outbreak topped out with two caregivers testing positive. Yesterday we visited her for the first time since Sept 12. It felt great!

Of the two caregivers, one had symptoms similar to a mild cold, but the other was "so weak I couldn't get out of bed" and her doctor advised her to go to the ER for more complete evaluation, though she chose not to go. She was vaccinated, too.

Good news re visit

A local Catholic university, Dominican, required vaccines and has hit 100% vaccination among students. A neighboring Lutheran university, Concordia, did not, and is hovering around 42% student vaccination. Why the fuck people won't get vaccinated baffles me.

Lol Concordia is Missouri Synod so they’re all anti-vax cultists.

In the past 18 months my wife's uncle died (lewy body dementia), her grandfather died (heart failure), a very close friend's wife - only married for two years - and a former colleague's husband both died of cancer, our dog had to be put to sleep, my wife had her cancerous thyroid removed, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, her mother's husband was diagnosed with one of the non-trivial skin cancers, and my father was diagnosed with alzheimers. Our kitchen is being remodeled but everything is backed up so we've been living in a weird hovel situation for two months, we had a terrifying covid exposure a week and a half ago, and I broke two ribs in a bike accident last Friday. All on top of the entirety of the pandemic.

Honestly the only thing I'm kind of feeling hopeful about is seeing my 6 year old starting first grade and getting to play with kids in person after being stuck at home with two introverted old people for 530 days. Last year we would have been absolutely horrified at the thought but this year, even though things are objectively worse, it's really the only real hope for the future I'm able to see on a regular basis. Once he gets vaccinated it's going to be a massive positive shift.

jfc joygoat, that's a lot. sending you and yours some good juju.

xxp They seem unpleasant. Everyone knows ELCA is where it's at.

xxxp Fucking hell, jg. Respectfully for the grief of everyone involved, that is an absolute meat-grinder of a time.

joygoat, that's terrible. Wishing for some other bright spots you can latch on to.

joygoat my heart aches for you, that is brutal :(. well wishes to you

Dittos, Joygoat

thanks all - two years ago any one of these things would have like a striking singular moment but they've all sort of blurred into one giant pile of things, you know?

I guess the gist of where I was going was inspired by eephus!:

I have an 11-year-old, I get it. But honestly -- it's OK! She's going to school, she sees her friends, she's gonna go to Thanksgiving -- it is just not the same situation it was last year.

Kid is in school, it's OK! That had a huge impact on us, so long as he doesn't get covid between now and whenever he can actually get vaccinated. But we live in a place where the precincts around his school went 80%+ for Biden last year and everyone seems quite eager for their kids to wear masks in schools. And there's a family from kenya living next door for a year and their son is my kid's class and they just want to play together all the time which is so good for him. Very different feeling from last year.

really sorry to hear about all that joygoat, i can't imagine. take care

Unfortunately, I can imagine what all that feels like. It's kind of like those Ironman triathlons, except it's less physical, and more emotionally and psychically draining. Hang in there, joygoat. Better days will come.

better days to you

So...I waited a while to get vaccinated because I barely leave the house. I got my second shot on 9/10. And a week later, I started coughing up blood. Not a lot, but, like, threads of blood in my phlegm, especially first thing in the morning. Naturally, I was somewhat disturbed by this, so after about four days of it, I went to my doctor, who sent me to get a chest X-ray. That was on a Wednesday. The urgent care clinic I went to three days after that, on Saturday, took more than two weeks to get my results back from the lab, and finally faxed them to my doctor last night. But meanwhile, the blood stopped the day after I'd first gone to the doctor. I was in the shower and I coughed up a pretty good-sized red-brown lump, and there's been no problem since. And my X-rays were negative - no sign of lung cancer or anything else. But it sure feels like the blood clot - or whatever the hell it was - was a reaction to the COVID vaccine. And I had no other reaction: none of the fatigue, or sore arm, or swelling, or fever, or anything else anybody has reported.

Weird indeed. Maybe just a strange outlier?

Will be getting my booster shot tomorrow.

Damn, unperson. Be well.

Ned, be prepared!

xpost - Oh wow, that sounds stressful, but I'm glad you are doing better and that it doesn't seem to be anything severe.

Huh, that's weird. Honestly, the one time I ever had anything like that happen was when I had pneumonia. After a night spent more or less banished to the basement, feeling like shit and coughing, waiting for my giant antibiotic to kick in, I finally coughed up this huge, gross ... well, basically what you described, unperson. And after that I was mostly all better.

Some time around the start of the pandemic I began giving myself a haircut. I figured I had the clippers, I don't have too much hair and I keep it pretty short, anyway, so how hard can it be? It turns out (in my case) not that hard. A few youtube videos later I was off to the races and have been cutting my own hair ever since, with pretty consistent results. There's something satisfying about giving yourself a haircut every few weeks, or whenever you feel like it, really. Keeps you feeling nice and tidy in the face of so much out of your control. Well, today it finally happened. I spaced out and forgot which clipper attachment I had on the clippers, and before I knew it, the damage was done. For the first time since March 2020 it actually *looks* like I gave myself a haircut, in the worst possible way. Like, scissors and no mirror bad. Like someone pulled a prank bad. Like I just got out of the hospital for a procedure bad. OK, maybe not quite as bad as all that, but still not good. Though honestly, I find it pretty funny. It was perhaps inevitable, and I have no one to blame but myself. I wonder if my family will even notice? It's just about hat season, anyway.

Go like Monster-era Stipe and let it all go!

Got my booster this morning, along with a flu shot. Amazing how simple an experience it is, didn’t even feel a jab.

I'm going to start airbrushing a streak across my eyes and no one will even notice my hair.

i started shaving my own head in apr 2020 and have just been a soccer hooligan looking ass dude ever since, honestly fine with it

has definitely led to some confusion as my employee badge is like a cheery bearded guy with a full head of hair, not someone that'll glass you for chatting up his uhhh bird or w/e

Allowing foreign fingers to style my thinning hair remains one of life's lasting pleasures
.

I cannot wait to get a professional beard trim again, sigh. Maybe in 2023.

My wife shaves my head for me about once a month.

https://www.remingtonproducts.com/products/mens/clippers-and-trimmers/hair-clippers/hc4250-shortcut-clipper-pro.aspx

i got this guy and honestly it rules

same! i posted that on your favorite little gadget or tool hoonja-doonja (physical world edition)

Ha. I bought the exact same one at the start of the first lockdown last year. Less than £30 in the UK

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Remington-Clippers-Lengths-Trimming-Detailing/dp/B012F8MS9A/ref=sr_1_6

I've been using the same Remington scalper for years. Once a week. Beard once a month or so. Job's a goodun.

I went to a work event this week - 30-40 people in a relatively airy room ... but not ventilated enough really ... so I felt a bit anxious - and I really noticed that others weren't wearing face coverings and so didn't myself. I think, in hindsight, if I'd walked into the room with a face covering, it might have changed the dynamics/expectations ... in a slightly different way than being in a room and thinking "Oh, I need to cover".

Officially boosted, thus immortal. (This may be wrong.)

good morning!

I should hope!

UK doing a disservice publishing raw case rates for vaccinated vs unvaccinated in age groups where (locally) vaccination is widespread.

and my god people want to be sure their vaccine lot number and middle initial are encrypted. they put the information requested on a goddamn card you leave in your glovebox.

FDA approves Pfizer jabs for kids.

hell yeah

jon! Good news!

Haha I've been paying close attention, believe me. To be fair, not full approval just yet (recommendation comes before final full approval), but an important milestone and full approval imminent. Definitely good news though!

Which isn't to minimize the great news at all, just noting.

Fwiw, the clinic I volunteered at during the earlier days of the vaccine is supposedly gearing up to get going again the second the approval formally comes through.

they've had storefronts with "Pediatric Covid Vaccine Clinic" signs set up around here for a month or so

Though of course "pediatric" means anyone under 18, and 13+ have been able to get the shot for months now.

I really doubt it's going anywhere, but there has been growing resentment around my workplace about masks for folks in private offices versus those working in open offices. It's probably a 60% private / 40% open office split here and, perhaps understandably, the private office doors are increasing shut for almost all of the day so people can keep their masks off. The people who don't have that option are starting to complain more publicly, pointing out that they too would like the option to take a break from the mask, but I doubt anything will ever be done about it.

My friend was in a similar situation, no masks for private offices, and the result was that everyone realized if they were alone in their offices with their doors closed, they might as well just stay at home. Of course, they had that option.

I was just up in Wisconsin, where mask wearing appeared to be very much on the wane, assuming it was ever in the majority to begin with. When I mentioned it to my wife she told/reminded me that Illinois is one of I think just four states with any real sort of indoor mask mandate anyway, so maybe our perspectives are just skewed.

Kids are getting it this Sunday.

I'm kind of wondering at what point the school will end masking, distanced lunch, etc. I suspect most of our school will be vaccinated by January or so. Spread is extremely low where I live. As always, it would be nice to have some kind of more concrete metric/goal line.