COVID-19 Check-In Thread Part IV

[robkelk]

If you weren't here, we'd miss you.

Meanwhile, our (Conservative) Premier wants everybody to get a booster. There aren't any appointments available within 100 kilometres of where I live.

[classicdrogn]

Was curious about local case rates today and put it into Google since the town info page (once home to a weekly report) hasn't updated since May. According to the little interactive graph thing compiled by ... I think the NY Times? ... Plymouth County is spiking to about twice the April 2020 levels, with the daily high a couple days ago as bad as the worst this time last year and the weekly average about as much higher as that was from the former.

Fuck fuck fuckity fuck FUCK.

Fuck the stupid fuckers waving one of those desecrated Trump-supporter flags and holding signs about "medical freedom" in the town square while unmasked and coughing loud enough to hear from inside the car driving past especially. Fuckheads.

When is the robot rebellion scheduled to wipe out humanity arriving again? I'd like to upgrade to expedited shipping if possible.

e: because at least it's a more dignified end than sheer stupidity

[Dragonflight]

Err... I kinda lost track of time for a while there.

I'm still here. Scheduled for my third shot after Christmas. Otherwise, life is normal-ish. Well, normal-ish for me, anyway. @_@

[LynnInDenver]

Ugh. Still here, still watching things off and on, tired of the whole thing... and hoping Omicron isn't nearly as bad as the lab results thus far are making it seem. If it is, then we're looking at another year, maybe two, of not adding old stuff back on our plate. That COVID can now use animal populations to breed mutations means we are literally now stuck with it.

There will be a point where we'll just give up looking at resuming attending events like conventions, because it'll be too heartbreaking.

[Inquisitive Raven]

Welp, my housemate is off to her potential superspreader event. I'm trying to get some things done before she gets back and I have to effectively quarantine for two weeks.

[LynnInDenver]

Welp, my housemate is off to her potential superspreader event. I'm trying to get some things done before she gets back and I have to effectively quarantine for two weeks.

Yeah, we basically had that ourselves, but that's because a couple of my coworkers came in symptomatic and later tested positive (one of which I'd had contact with), so we had to really act as if we might be spreaders, including me postponing a dental appointment and us holding off from a planned restaurant outing for three weeks. :/

I'd be questioning the future of said housemate, under the circumstances. "I might as well just get it now and get it over with," isn't a good idea with this thing. I can understand the frustration, but it's very much "cut the nose off to spite the face".

[Matrix Dragon]

The NSW state government is trying to kill us all. Their highest daily cases yet, and they've scrapped masks, capacity limits, and QR code sign ins.

[Umbire]

VP Kamala Harris:

“We didn’t see Delta coming. I think most scientists did not — upon whose advice and direction we have relied — didn’t see Delta coming.

August 10, 2021 at 7:34 p.m. EDT:

More than 175 public health experts, scientists and activists on Tuesday demanded that President Biden take urgent steps to confront the global spread of the coronavirus, warning that without immediate action to inoculate the rest of the world, newer variants are likely to emerge — including ones that may evade vaccines’ protection.

So fellow Americans, between this and the quote tweets pointing out the same, how ewedscray do y'think we are?

[classicdrogn]

We've been screwed since the beginning, because the problem was always the people who refuse to follow quarantine instructions or vaccinate. "It's always been fine before," "It won't happen to me," and lack of a visible threat combine to make a large segment of the population impossible to convince they need to change the way they act. I have more sympathy for people whose livelihoods depended on travel or servicing people-in-large-groups but that doesn't change what behaviours hasten the spread of infection.

[Umbire]

We've been screwed since the beginning, because the problem was always the people who refuse to follow quarantine instructions or vaccinate. "It's always been fine before," "It won't happen to me," and lack of a visible threat combine to make a large segment of the population impossible to convince they need to change the way they act. I have more sympathy for people whose livelihoods depended on travel or servicing people-in-large-groups but that doesn't change what behaviours hasten the spread of infection.

I don't know, considering experts have constantly warned about the potential for variants while our various policymakers and business heads drag their heels...

What I'm saying is, it's easy to forget that for everyone who can easily afford to quarantine/vaccinate but refuses to, there's someone looking to profit off them that benefits the most from these forced "return to normal" attempts.

EDIT: On that note, a useful thread.

[classicdrogn]

Those are included in "people who refuse to change their behaviour." It's not like them doing anything to make a buck unless forced is new. This is getting well into Politics forum territory, though, and I skip that one for good reasons.

[Umbire]

Completely fair, glad to see we're more on the same page than I initially assumed (also, apologies for said assumptions).

[Inquisitive Raven]

Welp, housemate is back from the potential superspreader event and quarantine has been effectively thrown out due to issues with the heating system. Also, I need to pick up a goose tomorrow.

[Mamorien]

Got Moderna III: Revenge of the Booster about an hour ago, and it may have gone to my head, but it didn't go right to it. Flu shot a week ago, contemplating shingles vaccine, generally alive, well and of normal size.

[Inquisitive Raven]

The heating issue has been dealt with. I've been spending way too much time running around to prep for Christmas dinner and I have some things to mail that should have gone out before the holiday. I'm going to see if I can get ahold of some home Covid tests and once I've mailed the late Christmas presents, I'm going to try to avoid going out for the next couple of weeks.

[classicdrogn]

Aaand everyone in the house is showing cold symptoms. Lovely.

[Dragonflight]

Still here, still surviving.

Got the booster shot today. Just like all the others, I could tell the moment the immune system sat up and said "Something's afoot!" After that, though, it seems to have largely said "meh," aside from a little sore spot on the injection site.

[DeputyJones]

Still alive and kicking.

Here's to hoping 2022 is better than the previous two.

Happy New Years, everyone!

[classicdrogn]

Well, maybe, but Twenty-Twenty and Twenty Twenty Won got a lot of mileage, so Twenty Twenty Too may still be too soon to hope for a franchise-killer. I'm not saying I want to see Twenty Twenty III: With a Vengeance or Twenty Twenty Four Ever, but at this point I wouldn't rule out the Carbon Plague or the Andromeda Strain with the way things have been going.

Though at least the sneezing and scratchy throats among my family have all passed by and test results say yes, it was just a normal winter bug. We're still quarantining anyway, because an already stressed immune system is more open to other infections, but no particular cause for alarm at this time.

[Cobalt Greywalker]

Oh, hey.  Sorry, not really thinking about this.  Have my third jab at this point, which was the only one I had any reaction to (sore arm and a bit of the shivers).  Cleared up in 48 hours.

Hope everyone's doing wll at thiis point, and if not get well soon.

[Inquisitive Raven]

I thought I'd posted an update for this week, but apparently, I wrote it and failed to hit the post button or something else went wrong.

Housemate has acquired a bunch of covid tests. I figure she owes me at least one for heading off to a potential superspreader event last month although she apparently lucked out and only picked up a more mundane con crud.

[LynnInDenver]

So for the time being, we're assuming that we might as well be under lockdown again. We have surpassed the previous high of cases by at least half again as much (over 11,000 vs around 7,000 in November of 2020), and the positivity is up well over 20% like it was back in April of 2020. And over 90% of it is Omicron at this point. Hospitalizations are creeping back up.

Generally speaking, for us it means that all we're doing is going out for work and coming home. I got us in a couple of packages of N95 masks (oh my aching wallet for what amounts of a one month supply), since the recommendations have gone out that multilayer cloth masks aren't really good enough now, just based on the current data on Omicron. No friends coming over, our last visitation was Christmas Day by family members, and even that may well have been too risky in hindsight.

And to top it all off, the biggest grocery chain in the area looks like the workers may well be going on strike by next week.

We are now firmly into the territory of "no conventions likely for us this year too." That'll make it three years thus far... odds are if this keeps up and we get into "five years or more without", we may well decide it's just not worth keeping those as part of our hobby list anymore. It's an unfortunate reality that, after a certain point, there's little point in maintaining the effort to look at conventions with the idea that we can get back to it, because the data is starting to point more and more in the direction that it's no longer a viable option.

[Umbire]

The fact that people are still expected to work through this and the CDC had to be practically 'bullied' into realizing the 5-day thing make absolutely nonexistent sense is pretty fuckin' grim if you ask me,

[classicdrogn]

It occurs to me that Prince was eerily prescient, if a couple decades early... but "two zero two zero, party over, oops out of time/so tonight I'm gonna party like it's twenty nineteen" doesn't rhyme.

[DeputyJones]

Still here. Still working. Still healthy.