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

Best of all possible wishes

Hope Redd gets the green light asap.

Get well soon.

hang tight jredd!

Thanks, everybody.

Weirdest thing is my wife’s test came back negative. I thought there was a chance I had gotten it from her, since she goes into work a few days a week. I guess you really can catch this being inside a store for a few minutes.

Wishing a quick recovery for you.

You can totally get it through your eyes. A friend chided me for starting to wear eye-guards over glasses for grocery shopping in december, his point being it's been safe the last eight months, so why go paranoid now... but as rates go up, odds go up. a friend who got it last april mentioned the only place it could have been was one of three masked visits to the corner convenience store.

So masks are no guarantee (I love how Tucker translates this fact to 'masks can't help you' when in fact they keep people from getting bigger exposures / viral loads). Batten down & shrug this fucker off and please keep us posted

Air quality makes a huge difference. If you're inside a poorly ventilated grocery store, your odds automatically go up.

be well, James. since I'm only weeks away from getting a vaccine, I've decided to go into lockdown pretty much... curbside grocery pickup, and no socializing at all. the final sprint of isolation, as it were.

Best.

Best of luck, James. Kick its ass.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/covid-19-research-heart-institute-1.5885347

Interesting. Anyone been following the South African studies on ivermectin?

Some good news: My friend who I posted about farther up in the thread is finally off a ventilator completely for the first time in about 6 weeks. She was moved out of the ICU several weeks ago when she appeared to be stabilizing, but was still on the vent as long as her blood oxygen level stayed low. Just came off today. She doesn't seem to have suffered cognitively during all of that. She is of course very weak, and it will be a while until they understand any possible long-term effects. Still, her husband and son are greatly relieved. It is the closest I have come to having anyone close to me die from this, and way too f'n close at that.

Oh thank God. she had been in the back of my mind, if that's not too weird. Hope she's doing well.

Aw, thanks for thinking of her. She's had a big community pulling for her, hopefully she'll be able to actually get home in the not too distant future.

Glad to hear that bit of good news!

Same. A relief.

Newsom lifting statewide stay at home order for California because ~reasons~

i’m so fucking tired of this shit I want to cry

So after 10 months away from school, camps, most sports, etc., my 8- and 10-year-old go back to school tomorrow. The former full time in person, the latter two days a week in person, three remote.

I'm sending them because they want to go and I guess I'm trusting decision-makers and hoping for the best, but inside I just don't understand the timing of this. Our numbers are as bad as they've ever been (or close to it) and our teachers are literally getting their first doses of vaccine this weekend. I understand the desire to get kids back in school, but I don't understand why we don't just wait until a few weeks after the teachers get their second doses.

Granted, that adds 6 weeks to right now ... at which time there'll be two months of school left ... but we've already waited this long, and we're so close to vaccinated teachers. I don't get why we're jumping the gun. To me, this seems like a classic "I've waited this long, I can wait a bit longer" situation.

Am I wrong here? Someone make me feel better about this.

No, that does seem a little crazy. Why not wait at least two or three more weeks to give the protection offered by a first dose time to come into effect?

I'd worry more about kids asymptomatically bringing it from home than the faculty tbh

otm

I guess I'm trusting decision-makers

I don't know where you are, but have the decision-makers been, generally, correct up until now?

Good and welcome news on your friend tipsy.

Good luck to James R and everyone else fighting this thing.

I finally got confirmation I'm in the "clinically extremely vulnerable" list so I'll be vaccinated with the over 70s. Just need to avoid infection for 6 weeks of daily hospital visits...

You've made it this far, the hospital's resident luck elves are obviously on your side. Fingers crossed for you.

My parents are getting their initial Fauci Ouchies(tm) today

I'd worry more about kids asymptomatically bringing it from home than the faculty tbh

― meticulously crafted, socially responsible, morally upsta (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, January 25, 2021 2:33 AM (five hours ago)

I very much am!

I don't know where you are, but have the decision-makers been, generally, correct up until now?

― shivers me timber (sic), Monday, January 25, 2021 2:40 AM (five hours ago)

I guess so, yeah. Mostly. They caved to parent pressure before Christmas and set a return date, and then cases spiked and they had to roll it back. So they avoided judgment on that one. Otherwise, they sent the kids home last March and haven't brought them back till now.

They've got the kids more or less in bubbles over there, as far as I can tell. Like I said, I'm hoping for the best. The overarching theme of the past year, imo, has been that I just don't really know anything ... none of us do. I didn't know if sending my kid to a camp was OK, I didn't know if swim lessons were OK, I didn't know if flying was OK, I didn't know if flag (non-tackle) football was OK, and I don't know if going back to school now is OK. My wife and I are just trying to do our best based on the best assumptions we can make, and so far it has worked - no COVID in this family. (We decided yes on swim lessons and flag football, no on a camp. We flew once because we had to.)

Trying hard every day to do your best when you really don't know anything is fuckin' mentally taxing, I guess is what I'm saying.

Avoiding contact with strangers, or with people who you know are associating with other humans, and not sitting indoors for minutes or longer with other humans, is safer than doing any of those things.

that doesn't sound like in-person school to me

https://i.imgur.com/vI9v7sv.jpg

Re: trusting decision-makers, this is probably stating the obvious but I think it's important to keep in mind that their decisions are based on calculations about the population as a whole - how many people can we afford to have get sick at a time, what are the communal costs of keeping schools closed, how can we weigh that against the dangers of opening them up, etc. It doesn't mean they're certain that you and your family specifically won't get sick.

I think the motto of life right now is just, "everything will always get worse". I'm honestly shocked, at this point, by how much worse every consecutive month has been since March of 2020. I mean, I sit here on January 26th, and would give anything to go back to how comparatively well I had it back in December. I am terrified about how awful February will be.

where do you live, jon?

Illinois, which only has five states worse than it, in terms of vaccine administration.

But, it's not just that, just a whole pile of COVID and not COVID related things are conspiring against me and my family right now and I'm nearing a breaking point with my mental health.

Not that a world without COVID would have solved all of these problems, but it would make things considerably easier and less stressful right now. I really could use something to break in a positive direction for once, but sorry to gloom things up.

All I can offer, man, is to keep following your personal safety measures that have worked since March. I expected vaccine distribution to be at best chaotic given the last four years, but I also expect improvement by early summer.

xpost

I wish it were as easy as just waiting it out, tbh. But real life keeps intruding in ways that make that very challenging, to say the least.

hugs

So after 10 months away from school, camps, most sports, etc., my 8- and 10-year-old go back to school tomorrow. The former full time in person, the latter two days a week in person, three remote.

I'm sending them because they want to go and I guess I'm trusting decision-makers and hoping for the best, but inside I just don't understand the timing of this. Our numbers are as bad as they've ever been (or close to it) and our teachers are literally getting their first doses of vaccine this weekend. I understand the desire to get kids back in school, but I don't understand why we don't just wait until a few weeks after the teachers get their second doses.

Granted, that adds 6 weeks to right now ... at which time there'll be two months of school left ... but we've already waited this long, and we're so close to vaccinated teachers. I don't get why we're jumping the gun. To me, this seems like a classic "I've waited this long, I can wait a bit longer" situation.

Am I wrong here? Someone make me feel better about this.

― alpine static, Monday, January 25, 2021 3:56 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Well, my Kindergartner has been full day in person for four months and my 3rd grader half day in person for the same amount of time. There have been cases in their school, and in the middle school, and in the high school. But there has been zero documented spread within the school. And, in fact, it's more frequently staff than students coming to school with the virus. Globally, the stats are pretty good on school transmission, i.e. it's low and doesn't seem to do much if anything to accelerate community spread vs having schools closed. I'm an advocate of having as much in-person school as possible for kids ten and younger.

Also, I mean, if you're worried about your kids, their risk of severe illness is EXTREMELY low unless they have multiple major risk factors, and the risk of them getting it in school and spreading it to you is also low.

As far as timing, I don't believe there was any reason even to wait as long as we have -- in fact we squandered a lot of time when spread was extremely low and kids could have been in school (at least in some parts of the US). And as far as waiting until teachers are vaccinated, I guess the question is what percentage of teachers need to be vaccinated for it to be ok, and how long will that actually take in light of hiccups and shortages?

Thanks Alfred, I just need a positive break for once. Feel like every day is just a ceaseless avalanche of bad news, with absolutely no good swings or positive news.

my partner's charter school just re-closed in-person today on the week before they were supposed to open. The key person who had been training everyone, including my partner, had her husband test positive and now everything's on hold until she gets tested. We're understandably uncomfortable.

Understandably so.

xxpost, thanks man alive. that helps.

i'm of course worried about my kids (always) but in this particular case, i'm more worried about them bringing it home to me (who could be healthier) and/or my wife (who has a very manageable but chronic disease and has been on immunosuppressants in the past, but i'm not 100% sure if she's taking them right now).

it's gonna be fine. i'm just a worrier.

best of luck to everyone else.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/cdc-school-virus-spread/2021/01/26/bf949222-5fe6-11eb-9061-07abcc1f9229_story.html

Obviously that said you have to assess your personal risk. “Could be healthier” = still not likely a massively increased risk from what I have read (don’t take my word for it). The immunosuppressants thing maybe makes it worth talking to a dr. You might also want to get a home portable air purifier, they’re not expensive.

To provide a happier note, perhaps -- I have been lucky enough to get my second COVID vaccine shot just now. I am deeply aware of my good fortune, always. Please get it at your soonest chance; of course it should be quicker for us all. Hope to see every one us of on the other side of this, sooner rather than later.