Exactly. I can either go to work with an illness and die and infect other OR pay rent and buy milk for the baby. I was lucky when I thought I had it (I didn’t). Wrap myself in a comforter for a week and tell the wife she’s cooking her own dinners. Isolate in the spare room, work remotey and wait for my test result.
I don’t want to go on a rant here but. Oldest son was diagnosed so wife had to get tested to go back to work. He needs test and other son got really sick. I get free testing so I got the Q-Tip lobotomy again. Because of the spike no one was offering free drop-in testing despite what they were advertising. I get it - it caught you unaware but change your fucking website. We tried 4 clinics advertising free drop-in no-referral test and drove over 80 miles around No Colorado for nothing. Boulder County Public Heath thank you. They opened a free drive-through testing center that next Monday. Line was over an hour and well worth the wait. I had already gotten my test and results back. Everyone except Oldest and his wife were negative and update he got his first clear test (he needs two) for going back to work.
Yep. I lost my sense of taste on October 29, and immediately went in and got a test. It came back positive on November 1st.
I travel throughout the state for my job, and I had spent the better part of the previous month in hotels for work. I had been doing field work since Covid started in March and have always been super careful; wiping down items in the rooms I stay in, masking up, washing/sanitizing hands. I still got Covid. I’m actually surprised I didn’t get it earlier this year.
I’m lucky- my worst symptom was lack of taste. My sense of smell was diminished, but it only disappeared totally for a few days. I had fatigue and slight headaches/body aches, but it wasn’t terrible. I slept a lot during the two weeks of work I missed.
In a way, I’m relieved I have had it. I’m still very careful as I’m back to work now, but until a vaccine comes out it isn’t at the top of my “bad things that can happen to me” list anymore. So much is unknown about this virus. I’ve heard so much conflicting information about if I’m immune or not, and for how long.
I wouldn’t count on immunity for long. My housemate’s father, a respiratory ICU nurse, has had Covid twice in 6 months, both confirmed by hospital lab tests. I think that is happening more than we hear about.
One of the managers at work had it. She mentioned in an off hand way that her sense of taste still hasn’t returned. (We all work remotely, so we weren’t exposed through work contact)
I’m finding that a lot of us people who were careful and consistent about masking up and the rest have been coming down with covid since late October. I’ve also heard that the latest variant is more contagious than the first, which makes the sudden surge in cases make sense. Our efforts diminished the virus strains that didn’t transmit as well, leaving only the more contagious ones to survive.
Remember, this disease is just short of a year old. We just don’t know because it hasn’t been around long enough. No one knows if natural immunity from an infection last five years because no one is five years past infection yet.
In addition to two coworkers, I Iearned a contractor got diagnosed. He hasn’t been in the office for the duration, but his wife brought it home.
Fortunately he case was mild.
Talked to my parents and they said that they are also are hearing about a lot more cases recently. Not sure if it’s due to people getting more lax about precautions, more time spend indoors or if it’s that much more contangeous than the initial infection.
AIUI there’s now good evidence of small community spread in Italy in October & Nov 2019, so the disease is now at least 1 year old.
But your overall point certainly stands. We can’t know anything about the long term whatever until that long term has already happened to lots of people and we can count the whatevers.
I’ve got a couple of those cousins. Where did that come from? Lunacy.
You have my deepest sympathies.
Oh jeez, she’s totally screwing up. There’s a daily screening that you are supposed to take that includes if you have symptoms and the like, plus temp checks at the door. If she’s lying to those, that might come back to bite her as a firing offense. Wait, this is Walmart, never mind.
My had finally heard about the first person he knows personally to have died from covid. This is an 80+ year old, so high risk group, but it touches home for my dad, who turned 80 this year, and commented more than once he wasn’t sure he’d make it that far because of the virus.
Oh jeez, she’s totally screwing up. There’s a daily screening that you are supposed to take that includes if you have symptoms and the like, plus temp checks at the door. If she’s lying to those, that might come back to bite her as a firing offense. Wait, this is Walmart, never mind.
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Yeah. They DO take their temperature. Twice per shift, actually. But, the thermometer thing that they point at your forehead, is set so low, a slight fever doesn’t even register on the stupid thing. I think they set it that way on purpose, honestly. I don’t know. Anyway, yeah. They do ask all those questions about symptoms. My daughter has been coughing an awful lot. She told them she was. They could also see/hear her doing it, at the times they asked. So, they didn’t send her home. They wanted her to work. That’s just real life, these days. They don’t care about anyone, or anything, other than their next dollar.
If it’s like my store, and I assume it is, they are using a commercial IR thermometer to measure body temp. Presumably the thing is properly calibrated, I’m not aware it’s user adjustable. It reads your temp, though I do not know the accuracy of those things. They have a threshold set for what constitutes a fever, and the thing shows a red screen when the temp is above that value. I think the value is 99°F, or maybe a hair higher. I’ve used it to screen people.
Well, there is room for interpretation in the symptoms question. It refers to new symptoms without another known cause, so if she claims it’s allergies or a sinus infection then there isn’t much they are going to do.
As for wanting her to work, that’s just the reality of the job. I’m an Academy Trainer for the Front End (it replaced CSMs in a revamp of management structure this year), so I see the impacts that call outs have on the workday.
Yeah, there’s a lot from the corporate level that could be better. It’s part of keeping everyday low prices. Stores are wound tight on employee work hours driven by store sales, so worker scheduling is tight. That means the day starts with not enough people to do everything that needs done. Then call outs eat us up. It’s a shuffle of who is there and prioritozing tasks and deciding what doesn’t get done.
Employees do earn sick leave, though it’s called PTO - personal time off. Still, the incentive is to be there, because of attendance policy necessary to incentivize employees to show up when scheduled. Surprisingly, getting paid isn’t enough to do that. Higher wages would help that. Oh well, I’m blabbering.
And this, in a nutshell, is why the USA can’t have nice things and will have an economic Depression AND an generational disaster in education AND a massive die-off kill-off of citizens young and old AND uncontrollable levels of Federal debt . For at least 2 or 3 more years. All the worst of everything.
Within the past week, one of my dad’s friends, a former co-worker who was 78 years old, obese and diabetic, went from otherwise healthy to dead in less than 3 days He’d gone to a casino a couple weeks earlier, and my parents think that’s where he got it. Didn’t help, anyway.
I was chatting on Facebook with my BFF last night, and he said that his dad, who’s in poor health, and his stepmom, who isn’t, both have it but were never seriously ill and are on the mend, and his sister and BIL also have it. Interestingly, BIL isn’t sick but lost his sense of taste. (His mom died in 2013 and his dad remarried 2 years later.) His sister is an RN and thinks she may have gotten it at the clinic where she works.
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Friends of mine, a couple, both of them: both apparently feeling quite sick but not in hospital (at least yet) last I heard. One apparently caught it from someone he works in the same office with: they weren’t masking because their desks were 12’ apart. Distancing isn’t enough on its own when you’re in the same enclosed space for hours on end, folks –
Am really pretty worried about these guys; they were able to marry a few years ago and are so happy together; the one I’ve known longer had had bad luck with relationships much of his life but finally found a good one.
(I’ve known a couple of other people who may well have had it but weren’t tested or, in one case, had all the symptoms in the middle of an outbreak last spring but tested negative. May have been a false negative, but whatever it was she recovered. Also know of two close friends of close friends though I didn’t know either directly, one recovered and the other one died.)
Elederly Aunt with multiple medical conditions has been in her home supported by a younger releative for a couple of years.
She had one fall, went to hospital for check up and released, then had another fall a few weeks later and was taken to hospital and kept in overnight for tests - apparently some sort of electrolyte imbalance - potassium - whatever that may imply, so she was retained for further checks and observation.
She was put on a ward where another patient turned out to be asymptomaticly infected - and its passed on to quite a few other patients, those patients including my Aunt have been dispersed to the Covid ward - which I thought was not the best idea since it will increase viral loading and there are quite a few of the single rooms unoccupied.
Anyhow, thats the situation - no idea how it will turn out and things may change from day to day, a positive test is only the start of it.
The place is poorly equipped to handle remote visits with video links or barrier visits and she does not handle reality well and needs constant contact to keep her in this world to drag her back to us.
Even if she does recover this could completely disconnect her from reality - which is a road she is already travelling anyway.
About a month ago the adult child of one of my neighbors contracted COVID and later died. Age 60-ish, in chronic poor health living in assisted living. Contracted COVID there.
Learned yesterday that the brother of another neighbor has died of COVID over the weekend.
Again 60-ish in poor health but living at home. Obese, diabetic, kidney failure, massive edema, the whole 9 yards. Has a heart attack at home, 911 drags him to ED. COVID test negative. After stabilization from heart attack and admission for everything else determine a couple days later he needs dialysis. COVID test now positive. Dead 5 days later. Contracted in the hospital, or contracted a couple days before admission? Hard to say given the incubation periods involved.
My wife’s grand-niece, who is an ER nurse, has caught it. I have to say, though, that during her off hours she wasn’t very discreet about her contact with friends. She told her mother “Well, sometimes you just want to have some fun.”
Learned today my brother’s mother-in-law has got it, in the retirement home she moved into a few Months back after her husband with Alzheimers died in there. They kept it out all this year, but one of the workers brought in, it seems.
My housemate’s Arkansas nurse father (twice :eek:) and last week my granddaughter’s three year old preschool classmate.
Now they are sequestered at home, wearing masks around each other and sleeping in separate rooms for 3 weeks. I can’t see her til then and a final negative test. Wasn’t going to spend Thanksgiving with her anyway but I always luxuriate in her presence the full day with her every.single.Sunday and now I can’t. She is literally the only other living human I touch or am hugged by, or who touches me or I hug. It’s hard.
He’d gone to a casino a couple weeks earlier, and my parents think that’s where he got it. Didn’t help, anyway.