Coronavirus general discussion and chit-chat

The Quarantine Zone
223

I’m fully-vaccinated, but still have the vaccination appointment website bookmarked. I was curious and went through the procedure for starting to book an appointment at CVS, and was pleased to see that all CVS’s in California are fully-booked. I was thinking that, at this point, I’d see mostly open appointments throughout the state.

Also, we drove past a Kaiser Permanente hospital the day before yesterday, and their vaccination site in the parking lot had a line of a couple of hundred people waiting to get vaxxed. That was also reassuring.

224

I finally convinced myself that it was no longer rational to be wary of a new vaccine technology, so I had my first Pfizer shot this morning (In New Hampshire). The staff assumed I was there for a second dose because almost nobody is getting a first dose any more. The place was dead. I was fourth in the door, and maybe 3 more people came in in the 20 minutes I was there (5 minutes to go through the process, and 15 minutes observation).

225

Bravo!

What exactly in your internal reasoning process made you turn the corner? Curious, because I know a couple of people who are still planning to skip the vaccine.

226

I was never going to skip it, I was always going to get one eventually. I’ve said since trial results were released that mRNA vaccines likely herald a medical revolution. The development time and effectiveness are unprecedented.

But, I am conservative by nature. I am not an early adopter of anything. I don’t want the latest phone, I don’t typically watch movies in the theater, I don’t buy new cars. I want something tried and true: a known quantity.

Pfizer and Moderna have created something entirely new. Sure, these vaccines were tested - with protocols designed to catch problems we know traditional vaccines can cause. What sorts of problems can mRNA vaccines cause? We didn’t know because it had never been done before. We didn’t know if we were even looking for the right things.

Plus, due to various unfortunate circumstances, getting the vaccine wasn’t going to provide me with much tangible benefit. My immediate family is going to continue to be very isolated, and so long as everybody in the grocery store and doctors office was wearing a mask it wasn’t going to decrease my risk either of catching nor of transmitting the disease very much at all, so waiting was very low-risk and low-cost.

I initially thought that J&J was going to give me a nice way to resolve my general discomfort with the new mRNA tech. I’d just get the more traditional vaccine and be on my merry way. Unfortunately, it turned out to be much less effective, then it caused blood clots, then the authorization was pulled for it, then to top it all off it was pointed out that it actually uses tech very similar to mRNA vaccines and only ever used in the small number of Ebola vaccines. Not comforting at all.

But at this point there have been literally hundreds of millions of doses of both Pfizer and Moderna given. It’s been almost 10 months since trials began with almost shockingly good results. Any potential problems almost certainly would have been found by now. I’m watching the world open up around me, and the number of unmasked faces I see is skyrocketing. I don’t know if these are actually vaccinated people or just selfish jerks who don’t care.

I’ve been living in a world of cognitive dissonance, being simultaneously reluctant to take a vaccine, and angry at everybody else who refuses even as thousands die every week. I’ve been psyching myself up for it for weeks now, watching the vaccinated numbers climb and problems continue to not appear.

I don’t think my hesitancy was irrational. I don’t even think that anybody still hesitant is necessarily irrational. But it gets less rational by the day, and it’s time to at least define your threshold of when you will stop being hesitant. If that threshold is “never”, then that’s irrational.

227

Thanks for that thoughtful answer.

Alas, you sound way smarter than my anti-vaxxer friend. Her position is, “I don’t want to be around that energy,” which I interpret to mean that taking the virus seriously is bad mojo, and positive thinking (i.e. denial) will protect her.

228

Just got an email that my second-dose appointment has been “cancelled please reschedule”. The website showed the appointment still, but I rescheduled for 15 minutes later anyway. I immediately got another email that my appointment has been cancelled. I think I’ll just wait and see what comes of it. The lady said the appointment wasn’t terribly important, I could come in any time of day, really.

229

The day after tomorrow we will… go out to a theater and see a stand-up show!

This has been postponed and rescheduled so many times I’ve lost count, but this time (crosses fingers) it really is going ahead. The theater has a studio and a main auditorium; the show was scheduled for the studio but has been shifted into the big room in order to space the audience out. So there’ll be a lot of empty seats. Don’t arrive early; the bar will not be open; masks to be worn throughout the show. Wow - good luck working that crowd.

I still don’t know exactly how I feel about this - I may report back on it. But as someone said in one of these threads, if not now - when?

j

PS @tofor - yes, it was a very thoughtful answer. Very interesting.

230

Yeah, just show up. The auto-notification system is probably messed up.

231

At that location, maybe. Kids 12-15 have only been eligible for the vaccine for about a week and a half and the percentage of kids who have already gotten their first dose in New Hampshire are in the double digits so some places have to still be pretty busy.

232

I’m in my mid-thirties, and I think I was the youngest person there (other than the kids running the place). Probably because it was 8AM on a Monday.

233

Today was the first day I went to the grocery store since the beginning of mask mandates where there was not a mandate to wear masks. There was still a sign that politely asked people to wear masks if not fully vaccinated, but that didn’t stop me from wearing mine. Until it’s completely under control, I still think everyone not wearing a mask is being a little too gung-ho, even if they’re vaccinated. They clearly only care about themselves (“Well, now that I can’t die from it, I don’t care if I get infected”). Probably 1/3 of the people in the store did not have masks, and that included some employees. Surprisingly, the guy working the hot to-go chicken and sides counter, despite being in a position where he would be directly handling food for current consumption, was not wearing one whereas the cashiers I saw were.

I didn’t wear my mask into work today or yesterday (with yesterday being the first day that I was “allowed” to), but I still don’t feel comfortable going out and mingling with the general public without a mask. Not until covid-related deaths are much lower than they are now. I’m not sure what the point will be for me, but I’m guessing I’ll be one of the last ones to stop wearing them.

234

I went to the grocery store today, too, and 99% of people were still wearing masks. But I saw a couple who weren’t. The store still encourages it.

I was at one end of the paper towel aisle, pondering the many choices, and at the other end was an old guy who was sneezing his head off. And every time he sneezed, he lowered his mask and sneezed into the air! Dang! I left that aisle and came back to grab my paper towels about 10 minutes later (but not near where he had been shopping).

I don’t feel comfortable walking around inside a place without my mask. I’m okay walking outside around the neighborhood. And I’ve eaten a couple of times in restaurants where you walk in wearing your mask and only take it off when you’re eating. On every occasion the wait staff were all masked, the tables were widely scattered, and the places were not crowded. On two occasions I ate at a table outside.

That goes for me, too.

235

I was both excited and nervous about the mRNA vaccines, too. But I correctly guessed that by the time I had access to them, they’d have been in use long enough for me to feel comfortable. I dunno, had I been one of those doctors in the very first batch of doses, would I have taken it? Maybe out of a sense of duty, but it would have scared me. In fact, by April, when I first had a shot at it, I was eager to get it.

236

I ate (at an outdoor table) at a restaurant for the first time in more than a year.

I’m slowly getting more comfortable with being out and not having a mask on always, now that I’m vaccinated.

I’ll still be wearing a mask in many settings, but starting to not feel like I have to always have it on outside the house.

It’s funny that changing the mask mandate to apply only to unvaccinated people mixes up the signaling involved in wearing a mask.

237

I have no problem going outside without one. When I go outside, it almost always to ride my bike, except for things like checking the mail or putting out the garbage. I realized from the start that when I’m on my bike, I’m more isolated than being at home. There was pretty much zero chance I’d catch it there. I do wear them in stores, but I only put them on just before I go in.

Now this has been confirmed for pretty much all outdoor activities except maybe contact sports. You have something like .01% chance of catching COVID outside. That’s even if you’re around other people and no one’s wearing a mask.

238

I got gas today and didn’t put on a mask. In all honesty, I always felt the actual risk of catching COVID put of doors at a gas pump was negligee, but it seemed the polite thing to do. But at this point I think it’s ok

239

Negligee wearing outdoors at a gas pump could definitely lead to catching something. Only Covid if you’re lucky. In Nebraska you could catch your death of cold in the wrong season.

240

Thinking about stuff this morning and feeling quite uneasy…

Many of us are climbing out of hibernation, groping toward normalcy, and feelin’ sorta good about it. As a retired, single, introvert, I was inconvenienced by the lockdown but suffered no real hardship. (Except for extreme loneliness.)

But for the families and loved ones of the 550,000+ who died, the world will never be the same. Not to mention those who lost jobs or whose places of business went under. Whose industries and career fields were torn apart. Who had their school lives upended, whether elementary, high school, or college. Who are still struggling with long COVID symptoms.

This NYTimes story broke my heart when I read it this morning… but there must be thousands like it.

The next story is very close to home. (TPR, Texas Public Radio, is the local NPR station.)

Before the pandemic, the Alamo Community College District actually had food pantries on each campus to help students who couldn’t afford to buy food. Did you know this sort of thing was needed for college kids-- frankly, I didn’t. But now kids have lost their jobs, and so have their parents. With the campuses closed, volunteers have set up tents at the colleges and are working with the San Antonio Food Bank to distribute groceries. I’m sure this story is repeated all over the country, too.

This. Thing. Is. Not. Over.

Even if/when the virus is brought under some control with vaccinations and morphs into an annual flu type of thing, the catastrophic after effects of the pandemic will continue for many years.

In our zeal to resume our former lives (as much as possible) we can’t forget these people…

:cry:

241

It’s also important to remember that given the utter stupidity of our initial leadership and half our population, in the U.S. I think in fact we got off very lightly because we’re rich. We have massive healthcare resources, we got so much of the early vaccine supplies, and we do still have a very robust and flexible economy overall that can take the hits and bounce back.

At the moment, we’re still ranked 5th in deaths (per population), but I think ultimately a lot of less privileged countries are going to be in much much worse shape when they finally get this under control.

242

As there have been a few posts about opening up:

Wednesday we went out to a theater to see a much postponed and rearranged stand-up show. It was our first time back in a theater. It was the theater’s first time back open. It was the first time back in a theater for both the comics. We wore masks for one and three quarter hours of comedy. As I mentioned above, the theater has a studio and a main auditorium; the show was scheduled for the studio but was shifted into the big room in order to space the audience out. So we all sat in the even numbered rows and with empty seats between groups.

It felt remarkably normal. I guess that’s (in part) an indication of how we’re all used to having to adapt. Both acts were rusty - obviously. We were in row 2 (the front row!) and close enough to see that the support had completely covered his left hand with prompts. After a while he stopped even pretending that he had to stop and read his hand once in a while; nobody cared - it was a tough old first night for the guy.

But it was a good night out. Not perfect, but we’re getting there - one step at a time.

j