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

I'm shattered, table. My deepest sympathy. xpost

He basically had to tell her to get a DNR on record if they didn't want her to suffer.

tell his mother, that is.

jesus it's fucked up.

These people are also what I would call "friendly honkies," in that they're not overtly callous or cruel, but they are certainly invested in white supremacy, nevermind the fact that my husband and one of his sister is half Chinese.

I'm sorry table, that's awful.

very sorry to hear this table, completely avoidable and unnecessary. :(

I wish people knew the harm they were doing in spreading their misinformation. or cared. there are a lot of new cemetery plots due to people who were conned by family members or friends into not protecting themselves and it's heartbreaking.

Agreed re quarantine of kids

https://emilyoster.substack.com/p/school-quarantines-should-end

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Friday, 5 November 2021 14:48 (two hours ago) link

The example she gives is not even extreme or unusual. I may have mentioned this upthread, but last year a boy in my daughter's class got a rapid test so he could go to a baseball game. He tested positive. The family subsequently got him MULTIPLE negative PCR tests, he never developed symptoms, and no one else in the class tested positive or developed symptoms. Nonetheless, whole class quarantine ten days. This school year there's a new interim super and he has made policy slightly better by reducing the definition of close contact so that it really means close and not the entire class (I think the county DOH has also revised its guidelines).

my partner's grandma, who also is showing some signs of dementia, is dying of Covid in Spokane right now.

Why did a woman in her late 70s not get vaccinated? Her idiot chiropractor son told her not to.

One of this woman's daughters is a right-wing exec type who helped fund anti-lockdown protests, and the other daughter (my mother-in-law) is a nurse...who won't tell my partner if she's vaccinated or not, which we assume means that she is not.

My partner works in the busiest Emergency Department in Philadelphia, and has seen a lot of shit over the course of the past two or so years. When his mom told him that she had gone to an anti-lockdown protest with her sister, he didn't speak to her for a month, then called her drunkenly and ripped her a new one.

He is beside himself with anger and sadness. If anyone raised him, it wasn't his mother, but his grandmother. A very nice old woman who really knew how to cook, from my limited experience with her.

Rough weeks ahead.

― I'm a sovereign jizz citizen (the table is the table), Friday, November 5, 2021 11:26 AM (thirty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is horrible table, sorry. I find this to be a really hard thing, that sometimes the people who won't vaccinate, even high risk people who refuse, are "nice people." They aren't getting sucked into this stuff because they are evil, but because they are fearful, and perhaps even not so bright, or just have weird cognitive biases/errors that even sometimes very smart people can have. But they're not out to hurt anyone, they believe someone is out to hurt them. And then they wind up hurting others as a result.

We had a friend with a newborn who refused for months, and we really like her, and she has some reasons to be mistrustful of medicine, but thankfully she caved when her work mandated the vaccine. There's only so much you can do to convince someone (my wife, who is good friends with her, tried), and dropping them as a friend doesn't make things better (although you might make a calculated safety decision about how much time you spend with them in certain circumstances).

My personal take on vaccine mandates for school is yes but not until next schoolyear. Too chaotic otherwise, and also by then it should have full approval to further dispel any rhetoric around this being an "emergency approval."

My 7 yo is getting his first shot in an hour. Yay!

Jealous of you guys who were able to get 5-11 appts so quick, we MIGHT get Monday but a week or two from now seems more likely

xpost - yeah, I don't expect it to happen until full approval happens. Once that arrives though, I think it should be a slam dunk. Guessing next school year, should things proceed as with other phases of approvals.

And mandated COVID vaccination for elementary school attendance would create a political shitstorm like none we have seen yet.

as others have said, i don't care, but i also don't think this is true.

I'm volunteering next week at a 5-11 clinic. I was volunteering today at a regular (mostly booster) clinic, and they offered me a booster, but I was literally two days away from the requirement. They apologized and said the system would just deny me until the full six months had passed, to the day.

My personal take on vaccine mandates for school is yes but not until next schoolyear. Too chaotic otherwise, and also by then it should have full approval to further dispel any rhetoric around this being an "emergency approval."

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Friday, November 5, 2021 1:18 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

the state of california's announced plan requires school districts to mandate vaccines for over 5s from july 1 next year. local school districts are free to enforce sooner. LAUSD is enforcing from jan 10 for over 12s, but sounds like they're going to wait for over 5s.

https://www.gov.ca.gov/2021/10/01/california-becomes-first-state-in-nation-to-announce-covid-19-vaccine-requirements-for-schools/

Your kids will meditate in school
Your kids will meditate in school

i repeat myself when under stress
i repeat myself when under stress

Mellow out or you will pay
Mellow out or you will pay

I laughed

Spiked a modest fever last night, a little over 100, enough to feel bad, though other than that no other symptoms. Well, general loss of appetite, too, but not due to nausea or anything. Took a home covid test and it came up negative. Slept the fever off in the basement, feel fine this morning/today. We'll see if my temp creeps up again later. I likely had a mild case of covid in spring of 2020, I've been vaxxed, I've even had my booster, and I have not been recklessly hanging out indoors without a mask with groups of people, so odds are relatively low it's covid, but I still went in for my first ever PCR test this morning. Should supposedly have results in about 12 hours. Better safe than sorry.

new rapid test EUA just dropped https://wyze.com/covid19-test-kit.html. IIUC this is now the cheapest you can get in the US, unless you have access to walmart.

So one thing for me is that I have spent months and months being annoyed with "it's just the flu" types who constantly complain about big-city liberal ninnies who take a kind of mad pride in their hypercautiousness about COVID. But I have to admit -- it's real. Maybe not commmon. But real. Like, read this:

https://slate.com/human-interest/2021/10/trust-broken-parenting-advice-care-feeding.html

Now as a parent of a tween I completely get that it's important that you can feel your kid can be trusted to follow house rules. But I think their house rules are absurd! Their kid is barred from going to school in person. When socializing with another kid, OUTSIDE, she has to be 5 feet away, AND MASKED. The parent says she doesn't know "how to start building trust back" because her daughter "put her life at risk." (Notice that the parent doesn't seem to think, or doesn't consider it work mentioning, that by her risk calculations her daughter put her friend's life at risk!) This having happened, the parent didn't get the kid a rapid test, she quarantined the kid in the bedroom for two weeks! And "cleaned the house thoroughly" -- why?

Is this a big problem compared with millions of adults refusing to get vaccinated because they think covid is just flu or because they think the vaccine is a Big Pharma plot? No. It's a much smaller problem than that. But I guess it just particularly gets up my nose somehow.

eephus, the woman who wrote that letter seems unhinged tbh.

it seems like she wrote it because she was looking for affirmation of her unhingedness

Yeah that's bonkers; how did Care and Feeding not point out or even seem to notice that this parent chose to punish her kid by locking her in her bedroom for two weeks? When the kid has no symptoms, the parents are vaccinated, and they have access to Covid tests, that's not quarantine, that's abuse.

honestly one of the hardest parts of this to me - we have two kids, 6 and 4, and there were times when other kids would come over and we'd try to keep them separated but it was real awkward especially when the less Covid-cautious parents were around. now that a lot of us are vaccinated I don't care as much - we still take some measures to protect them, but statistically isn't pneumonia more dangerous? idk they've just developed so much in the 2 1/2 months they've been in school, I don't wanna take that away from them

Lily Dale otm. I wonder if they received any letters pointing that out— I hope so.

This was doing the rounds a while ago - I'm not entirely sure it's not a pisstake/troll?

I think the letter is probably fake; what alarms me is that Care and Feeding treated it as real and responded as if locking a kid in her room for two weeks was a reasonable response to her having a friend over.

care and feeding is a Bad Column and most of slate is idiotic

the exception being d4nny l4very imho

want to know how to lick boots and wring hands at the same time just tune into the latest weekly installment from william saletan or lili loufborouw (sp?)

yeah the reply is bonkers too

It didn't occur to me that the letter was fake, but when you say it, it makes sense. I sort of feel like the response is kind of "back away from the clearly unhinged person and gently suggest they're overreacting without saying something that will set them off" but I'm probably being too charitable.

PCR test came up negative, no covid detected. Not that I really expected a positive result. Our working theory right now is that any mild symptoms I had (12+ hours of fever, loss of appetite, aches and fatigue) were a delayed reaction from the booster, which I'd had a week earlier. I mean, I suppose it's possible. My wife had a "covid arm" rash show up exactly 7 days after her first shot. Or maybe I was exposed to covid and my body/vaccine/mRNA easily fought it off? Who knows.

Regardless, being banished to the basement got me my first uninterrupted night's sleep in months last night, which is better than any vaccine. I think the cat couldn't find me and bothered someone else.

Is there anything good to read about how to evaluate whether to get a booster? I'm trying to understand (1) how much my risk would have increased by "waning" antibodies by now (2) how much a booster decreases that risk and (3) whether the booster has any benefit in decreasing the likelihood I'd get infected and transmit to someone else, even aside from any risk I'd have of severe illness. If I'm not at a dramatically increased risk myself and it's not going to have a big impact on my likelihood of transmission, I'm not eager to get one.

(1) that's somewhat hard to know and different studies have shown different effects (and different vaccines may be different too) but for (2) and (3) the answer seems to be that the booster very substantially reduces risk of both infection and serious illness.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2114255

I got mine as soon as I could.

why would you not get a booster?

they're free
you might get sick for a few days
but it will help your immunity????

what's to think about???

Yeah, the booster won't do anything but help. Antibodies absolutely do wane, and the only way to know what that means in terms of risk is to be exposed to covid and see what happens, which is a gamble at best. Last I heard, the hope with the booster is that after this one, or maybe one next year, you'll be able to several years without another one. Depending on the state of covid, I guess.

And "sick" is relative. I had chills and night sweats for two nights; my parents and friends felt nothing.

. Last I heard, the hope with the booster is that after this one, or maybe one next year, you'll be able to several years without another one.

got my booster few weeks ago and have been wondering about this

Got the double whammy booster + flu shot combo yesterday. Instantly melted into a pile of goo. Don't even ask what semi-gelatinous body part I'm using to type these words. Gonna try to remove the toxins via borax bath if I can figure out how to turn on a faucet.

Or, rather, I had a little trouble sleeping last night because two sore arms kept me from rolling onto my side comfortably. Otherwise nbd.

Get the goddamn booster, for christ's sake.

Um, is there a way to obtain the regimen where you ACTUALLY get melted into a pile of goo? Because that suddenly sounds attractive.

Asking for a friend

Um, is there a way to obtain the regimen where you ACTUALLY get melted into a pile of goo?

Repeated daily exposures to Jake Gyllenhall pics at the beach.

I remember those all too well

I was going to post a pic or clip from "Street Trash" but ... decided against it.

the problem with the booster rollout is that at first, people were rightfully pushing back on the idea due to the disparity of available vaccines globally, and the lack of data. but a lot of data has come in since then, and some of these same people are still doubling down that boosters aren't the answer. some even calling a booster rollout "immoral", believing getting more people initial doses to be better.

undoubtedly that's true, but the spread of the disease impacts the entire globe, and if getting a booster could curb the spread more, the virus copies itself less, less chance of variants, etc, and less people dying unnecessarily.

I think the booster opposition introduced too much noise too soon - it went from 'wait and see' to "it's immoral to do it" and often a lack of engagement with the new data or kneejerk dismissal.