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

take it to the gay thread, sailor

Lol

I'm just as God made me,sir, despite an appreciation for Fassbinder, Sirk and The Great American Songbook.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbaq_qxjmPw

boy, I'm wearing my first N95 ever, and, wow, it does shut off smell. I can't smell a single thing in here.

― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, January 13, 2022 2:44 PM (fifty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I bought a pack of n95s this week too. Whereas cloth mask burps were moderately unpleasant, N95 mask burps are a distressing event. Gotta watch what I eat before I go out into the world, I guess.

boosted this morning, Moderna after two lots of AZ. 5 minutes in and out.

been twelve hours now and it's just kicking in. time for paracetamol and bed...

nice going koogs

Alice in Chains (2022): Here we come to get the booster

— KKUURRTT (@wwwkurtcom) January 14, 2022

t/s

some kind of booster

vs.

when the world is a booster
bad to swallow you whole

try to see it once my way

hit me with your boost shot

inject away

don’t stop
doin what you’re doin
don’t stop, baby
get your shot

Don't bring me down.

Boost!

booster jab as bad as the first two.

went to bed with paracetamol about 10, 12 hours after jab when I'd started shivering and aching, woke up at 3 with the worst of it gone, but didn't get back to sleep.

went to bed before 9 the second night, woke up several times sweating, but i guess I gained back some of the sleep. another day of taking it easy, i guess.

I really braced myself for my booster (five days ago) because it was my first Moderna shot, and so many people I know were knocked out by that. (First two were Pfizer.) My arm was a tiny bit sorer, otherwise nothing.

I heard a rumor that one factor in how badly the MRNA vaccines laid you low was one's testosterone levels. btw, all three of my Pfizer shots were uneventful. Figures.

I still got hard after exposures to Jamie Dornan photos!

koogs i also had bad side effects for all three shots, cool club we belong to!

2 and 3 kicked my ass, 3 less than 2

Cool. My work just sent out an email that essentially boils down to "wow, contact tracing with this many cases is hard, so we're not gonna do it anymore, make sure you guys notify all of your contacts yourself, good luck!"

thought this was good
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFRvOgqsTUQ

I can say that being in SF right now is a combination of

1) car horns, cheers and fireworks

2) my entire Twitter timeline dunking the fuck out of Aaron Rodgers with every COVID/vax joke known to humanity.

:)

been playing pretty much by lockdown 1 rules since this started, wfh, not seeing friends, no pubs or gigs, 2 tube journeys, one bus ride total. but had a family funeral on Friday that meant 90 miles on a train and it was fine, Paddington booking hall was empty, concourse fine, carriages ditto. and pretty much 100% masks apart from all 8 people who got off at kemble, strangely.

nobody at service was wearing masks, but it was an abbey so plenty of ventilation. crematorium less so, but a 20th of the people. but the wake, fuck me. 200 people, no chance of distancing, no sign of increased ventilation, nobody masked. did eventually find a quiet spot and kept with family. the only plus side was that nobody there was young, very much a 45+ crowd and hopefully they were all vaxxed up.

I took a series of COVID-19 tests at a next door facility last year. I stopped going to this place because I didn't feel like the way they were taking proper scrapes of my nose (and this was a pop-up facility which made me nervous), but nonetheless, I went.

Previously, my insurance company actually reimbursed the entire amount charged for a same-day PCR, which kind of surprised me as most won't. But this test, a rapid antigen, was only covered at $77 of $138. I've been fighting them for months, and their response, even after I filed a complaint with the Department of Insurance, is always the same: we paid 100% of the allowed amount, but you went out of network, so they charged more than the allowed amount. I.E. "reasonable and customary charges".

I've read the CARES act multiple times and it specifically states that the carrier can't do this, that it must reimburse up to the amount of the provider's advertised price of the test if there is no negotiated rate. Additionally, the carrier's website (United) claims all tests, in or out of network, will have a $0 cost share until April 2022. This is under the assumption that you're testing for reasons of exposure or symptoms, and not like to get secured for travel. But I was testing due to exposure! and they didn't ask me this question.

So today my claim with the Department of Insurance in Illinois was closed with them once again repeating this to me, and denying they ever paid a previous claim. I found the claim in 5 minutes, and reattached the CARES act section that goes over out of network charges, as well as their own website screenshots.

this much effort spanning over a month and a half to get them to pay 61 fucking dollars. what a racket.

how's testing in Sanford, Neaderthal ? I can go whenever I want now.

It's much easier to do now. And finding at home tests is much easier

I saw them stacked at my Walgreens on Wednesday.

> but the wake, fuck me. 200 people, no chance of distancing, no sign of increased ventilation, nobody masked.

news from home a week later and cousin, uncle and brother i'd shared a table with have all tested positive, with minor symptoms luckily. mother and father ok so far.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/02/08/carolyn-hax-couple-productive-pandemic-relationship/

Dear Carolyn: Before the pandemic, my wife and I — early 30s, both lawyers — had long working hours and frequent business travel, with weekends spent largely on family events and cultural activities. Once our respective firms sent us to work at home, we calculated we would gain 30-plus hours a week, even while still working full-time, due to not commuting, traveling or socializing in person. We promised each other we would use that time to be productive in ways our prior schedules did not permit.

I kept up my end of the bargain: In six months I read 25 biographies, developed decent conversational skills in two foreign languages, upped my running program to the point that I am marathon-ready, and started volunteering for voter registration advocacy, all while continuing to work full-time. My wife has done … not so much. She has been reading fantasy novels, occasionally watching a History Channel documentary, and has generally used the time to “unwind.”

I have confronted her several times, and she tells me she is “rejecting productivity culture” and doesn't feel like improving herself right now. We share housework, cooking, and other practical matters, and she does exercise, but I'm getting increasingly frustrated — disgusted, even — that she would waste this gift of free time just to watch TV and read books better suited for children.

I have asked her to get counseling and a depression evaluation, but she has refused and thinks she is conducting herself “fine.” Do you have any suggestions, other than divorce?

— Productive

the first lines of the response:

Divorce might be her best option, so do I have to leave it out?

Wow.

Christ, what an asshole

wife otm

oh, i see there's a follow-up:

Hi Carolyn - I'm the lawyer-husband who wrote in some weeks ago about being frustrated that my wife (also a lawyer) wasn't taking better advantage of the extra time we had gained from not commuting and traveling for work to do more productive things, such as intellectual reading and more intensive exercise. We did subsequently attend a few sessions with a marriage counselor which were very helpful. In particular, we identified that a big part of the difference in how we wanted to spend leisure time was a direct result of the specific demands of our (paid) work. Although we are both lawyers, my work at the moment involves working on routine contracts, for the most part, that are not particularly intellectually challenging; on the other hand, hers involves clients who are much more emotionally demanding, plus high-stakes pro bono work with lifesaving implications - so she ends up feeling drained and wanting to take it easy during non-work time. Ultimately, we also figured out that I am just a person who likes to go on all cylinders all the time (which makes my current work all the more frustrating - although I'm glad to have it at a time when a lot of law firms have been doing layoffs), while she prefers cozy quiet time in her personal life. After the counseling sessions, we did decide to separate/divorce due to not really having compatible outlooks and priorities, but are doing so from a much warmer, friendlier place, without resentments and blame. At the core, we are just very different people, something that didn't really come to light while we were so, so busy finishing law school and singularly focused on building our careers, but the close quarters of the pandemic made it obvious that we would be happier going in different directions.

A: Carolyn Hax
Even an amicable divorce is grueling, so, I'm sorry you're facing that, though it sounds like the right thing for both of you. Thank you for the follow-up.

"rejecting productivity culture”

I'm using this

I've done it already!

I've seen 2 couples that I'm close with get divorced for pandemic-related reasons. One was a due to an otherwise-reasonable & intelligent spouse going full antivax/antimask Q-adjacent conspiracy theory brainworms. But the other was not unlike that letter, just two people who hadn't spent that much time together in many years and found they couldnt relate to each other anymore.

every advice column should begin "divorce your marathon-ready lawyer-husband"

Lol

https://www.filmlinc.org/daily/dana-stevens-and-imogen-sara-smith-on-the-legacy-of-buster-keaton/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7p9701sv-c

Which mentions yet another, older Keaton book.

works in this thread

Lol, sorry.

Looks like Pritzker is dropping the indoor mask mandate any day now, or maybe by March 1. (Schools keep masking, or at least the state is appealing a judge's decision to reverse the school masking mandate.) Brings back memories of the one or two times I went into a store last summer during the brief window where they did not require a mask. Ah, the good ol' days.

It certainly feels like some sea change this week, between the blue states dropping mandates and scientists on the talk shows saying we don't need masks. I'm as ready as anyone else to not be sitting at my desk in a mask 8 hours a day, but the part of me that has been battered by the last two waves is worried about ripping the band-aid off and watching us get slapped with another wave all over again.

I mean, England will have no rules at all from two week's time, no masks, no isolation after testing positive, so...

we need a week of no number bumps post unmasking for this to feel real
best case scenario it's gonna be a year before the majority of the over 30 public in nyc can make the shift without agita

the part of me that has been battered by the last two waves is worried about ripping the band-aid off and watching us get slapped with another wave all over again.

The US is averaging nearly 2,000 deaths a day at the moment, with peaks over 3,300, so can’t wait to see what counts as a wave after this version of normal

come on, he never said we were out of the current one, but cases/hospitalizations are on the decline nationally and deaths are a trailing statistic, representing where things were 2-3 weeks ago. he's saying "please don't relax restrictions too soon and find us going back the other direction real quick".

pedantry for cheap gotchas really getting old itt

Honestly it's all I expect out of sic at this point. While I've seen really good sic posts elsewhere, it seems like this thread really brings out the bad faith responses.

As a thought experiment, try reading the words of my post as if they are exactly agreeing with and echoing the sentiment of jvc's post, instead of deciding that they disagree with it.