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

Well, about 10 days after getting the new vaccine ... my wife has covid. Thanks a lot, Fauci.

My least favorite relics are the sneeze guards, often crudely made and intrusive. They never did anything! Why are they still around?

I do love the old signs and have been slowly building a photo collection of them.

I'm scheduled for a booster tomorrow AM and I'll probably add on a flu shot, too. I'm hoping it will be no more trouble than the previous injections, but I'm planning on taking it easy for a couple of days, just in case.

I got the new one a couple weeks ago, and the only side effect besides the sore arm was feeling a little muscle-achy the day after.

And on the relics front, many businesses when they did open kept their restrooms locked. Now that there are no restrictions on any other aspect of having a store, the restrooms are still off limits. I guess they discovered it's easier/cheaper to not have them for the public.

Starbucks still reluctant to leave cream out. They fucking pour the cream into the coffee as if they were Dunkin Donuts. Judging from those portions, I didn't realize Americans prefer a side of coffee with their cream.

i got the novavax and felt nothing.

^^ Camus novel opening

Huh, I haven't polled which version of the jab they got, but seems like most folks I know have reported being hit way harder by this one than the other rounds.

Novavax m/l universally reported as having no side effects and little to no arm pain.

Starbucks still reluctant to leave cream out. They fucking _pour_ the cream into the coffee as if they were Dunkin Donuts. Judging from those portions, I didn't realize Americans prefer a side of coffee with their cream.

We both did.

I have to wait until early November to get my next covid booster (4 months), but plan on getting the covid, flu, and RSV shots all in the same day.

The Shingrix vaccine (which I got with two other shots) made my arm hurt the most of any I can remember, but I have never had any other side effects from vaccines.

Friend of mine is traveling and just posted a picture of a portable CO2 monitor he carries with him. This is while the plane was idling on the ground:

https://scontent-dfw5-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/395318428_10161359009294085_6501657829487761960_n.jpg?stp=cp6_dst-jpg_s1080x2048&_nc_cat=107&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=5f2048&_nc_ohc=vLrCAi2xpxUAX-1pnXd&_nc_ht=scontent-dfw5-2.xx&oh=00_AfA9sVbd8F8zxkfiHDv7cQp6fU06zO8KhS13YuTwmU9NTw&oe=653C3705

Hence my masking on planes.

supposedly once they turn the engines (and therefore the hvac system) on, planes are one of the safer places to be. but just sitting at the gate they are bad news.

yeah, my dad, who works in AOG, says planes do an outstanding job of filtering air, but even the best systems get taxed when every seat is filled

when every seat is filled

So literally every flight I've ever been on in my life.

OSHA limit is 5,000 ppm for 8 hour periods of exposure.

I do miss the days of flying in half-empty planes.

I caught covid over the summer after flying home; my family, seated near me, did not get sick. My wife caught covid after coming home on a flight last week; I was sitting next to her, I did not get sick (yet/again). Maybe she got it on the flight. Maybe she got it in the airport. Maybe she got it at her doctor visit last Thursday, or maybe at the Taylor Swift movie Friday. By the standards of circulation, yeah, planes are supposed to be pretty safe, but at this point it's just one giant public pool of potential exposure.

It's unpredictable. I flew pretty much throughout the pandemic, hence my comment about half-empty planes. (Don't even get me started on empty LA freeways.) AFAIK, the only time I caught it was when my middle schooler brought it home.

It's weird, my flight from Dublin to Washington three weeks ago was only half-full, which I have not experienced on a plane for a long time.

My second bout, this summer, happened after international travel.

But here is the thing: there will never be a way to know if it was the hotel shuttle, the other hotel shuttle (that we had to switch to because the original shuttle broke down), the line for customs and immigration, the line for security, the VERY intimate security screening I got the gate, the plane, the other gate, the other plane, the OTHER other plane, the taxi home, or some random sneeze in the restroom or the bar the night before.

Maybe it was all of those places!

I took my youngest to a birthday party this past weekend at a video arcade/bowling alley. I could practically feel the viruses and bacteria seething around us.

something i have gotten used to in the last 3+ years:
don't touch anything
don't touch face
repeat to self as many times as needed

esp as someone who works with numerous people in a room in two public-facing jobs

two nights ago at the restaurant i served a couple that were clearly on a first date. three hours later, she went to the bathroom and he chose that opportunity to blow his nose -- twice! -- into his cloth napkin and then place it on his plate. he looked around to see if anyone was watching. i did not touch his gross snotty napkin.

Everyone in my family has had covid at least once. Two of us have now had it twice (that we know of). To date, none of us have ever had it at the same time.

just had to explain to my mom, in 20-fucking-23, that people can be totally asymptomatic and still transmit COVID. sigh.

boomers do not understand epidemiology!

This new vaccine kicked my ass. I got it at noon and had full-body chills all night starting at around 10 PM. Woke up this morning completely drained of energy. Breakfast helped, but I'm still shivering somewhat.

re: "covid detritus" upthread:

https://covid-signage.net/

OK, here's some anecdotal data. I watched the football game with friends Saturday night. There were five of us in the living room, total, including the host. He was sipping tea because we was feeling a little run down, but had tested negative for covid, and wasn't coughing or sneezing or anything. The next day, however, Sunday, he was feeling worse and *did* test positive. So far the rest of us are negative. But here's what's (perhaps) useful to know. I asked him if he had gotten the most recent vaccine, and he said no. In fact, he had only gotten the first two, apparently. He's not an anti-vax guy, just lazy, but two things. One, fwiw he and his family have had covid more than almost anyone else I know; they are all more recently vaxxed than he is, and so far no one else in his family is sick. And two, he says this most recent bout has been the worst one yet. So ... get vaxxed! You heard it here first.

Also I've been seeing an uptick of local mask wearing, too.

Sounds very similar to what I posted in one of the other covid threads:

Completely anecdotal, but I thought it was interesting nonetheless. Back in early December I went to go watch a friend's band play in a local, small bar. It was unannounced and a pretty small bar, so I went (unmasked) figuring it was relatively low key and a rare risk I was willing to take. And it mostly was, the bar stayed pretty sparse, though near the end of their set the bar was crashed by a very large group of folks on some ugly sweater bar crawl type thing. It got crowded fast and I was kind of kicking myself for not at least having a KN95 in my pocket to pull out, as I usually do.

Fast forward to a few days later and my buddy texts me to tell me that the guy who owned the bar (a friend of his) heard that the travelling ugly sweater thing was rumored to have turned into a super-spreader and that we should test. Long story short, of the group of 8 people that we were with, 4 ended up getting (fortunately mild) cases of COVID. The other four of us never fell ill and never tested positive. The interesting part though, was confirming that of the 4 who tested positive, 2 had never gotten more than the initial two vax doses and the other 2 had only gotten the first booster. The 4 of us who never tested positive had all gotten each booster as they'd come available.

Coincidence? Luck? Probably. Maybe. But still served as a good reminder to stay current. (Also learned that folks I knew who I'd assumed were vigilant about boosters were actually not - fortunately they all agreed to get back to getting boosted.)

I think I already posted the same thought in one of these threads, but my big COVID conspiracy theory is that staying up to date with the vaccine does actually help protect you from infection

I don't wanna jinx myself, but aside from an asymptomatic infection in September 2022 (not so much a sniffle, detectable only b/c my doctor gave me an antibody test a month later) I haven't gotten sick after seven jabs.

one concern w/covid is the possibility that multiple infections can fuck you up over time. anecdotally the people i know who have had it a few times have been increasingly sick w/not-covid illnesses as well, just really knocked flat by various viruses.

meanwhile on my local next door someone is claiming they'll never get a vax because they know five(!) people who died right after they got a shot. i have my doubts about that tale.

i'm really fortunate to WFH, i feel terrible that my poor kid is on the front lines, especially with the new Cali guidelines which give full permission for covid-positive but asymptomatic kids to be sent to school.

A good friend of mine's son, after catching covid some three years go, lost a lot of his sense of smell and taste, and when it came back there were certain things he mysteriously could no longer stomach, like eggs and meat. Well, three years later and his taste for eggs and meat has returned ... after he got back from a semester in China! Maybe they engineered a new counter-virus?