Sorry to hear this, I can only offer condolances.
Trinopus, I am very sorry.
My mom has been diagnosed. I don’t have a good feeling about this because she has been unhealthy for the last 20 years.
Ouch! Best of luck. Know we all wish we could do more.
FWIW, several of the 80+ yo’s at my 95 yo MIL’s facility have been diagnosed and symptomatic. Including my aged MIL. Many of these folks are in crappy shape for their age, though not MIL.
None have died.
Dee and I have shared an office for six years, though we’ve been working from home since March. Her dad’s health took a turn for the worse last year, before my dad died.
He turned the final corner the last couple of months, and his kidneys finally killed him last week.
Dee and her mom spent a lot of time visiting him in the hospital his last two weeks. And they both picked up covid during one of these visits.
Now they’re both in the hospital, different hospitals, and Dee’s mom isn’t going to make it either. The hospital has given up and she’s on comfort care while they wait for her to die.
So far it looks like Dee herself will be okay, eventually. If you can be “ok” after something like this.
Dee’s a little over 10 years older than me, but 54 is still a bit young to lose your parents. I’ve lost both of mine too, but at least it wasn’t days apart. And I have my brother…her only sibling died before she was born.
I’m so very tired of this pandemic.
I am so sorry to hear about people’s difficulties and tragedies.
Personally I know two people who have died, one 34 the other 55. I also know countless people who have had it, including children and teenagers. I know adults who are currently in hosptial. I’ve had it myself (but with low symptoms).
Where I am in England, it is rife. It ran through schools in December, we could see which classes it was running through,
Yup, I always wondered if keeping schools open was a bad idea but having the responsibility for making that decision is a very tough thing, however in the two or three weeks prior to the Xmas school break they really should have been closed - it is now obvious from the rate of rise of infections that this should have been done.
Of course this is all much clearer after the events, but, whilst I only had an uneasy feeling, there were others such as school boards and Labour politicians and teacher unions were were seeking shutdown.
Having had some small dealings through union work in presenting and amending reports for campaigns in relation to privatisations, all I can say is that even though many competent agencies and groups can develop and present an evidence based case, it is extremely difficult to move a government department or a ruling political outlook in any direction at all from the one that is driven by their political philospophy.
In the case of the privatisations I had worked on, we ggt tacit admission from the ministry permanent staff that we were probably correct - however it isn’t their job to determine policy itself, only to enact it and allow the consequencies to feed into the political arena.
The result was huge harm to the Justice Sector - including the total collapse of non-custodial offender management - very near collapse of custodial offender management and consequencies that are still being adversly felt years later, along with costs in the several £billions.
Why do I say this in a Covid thread ? - well the UK should have shut down probably early December, perhaps December 10th at latest, there were agencies and interested parties who sought such a shut down, but the current political administration has a philosophy that requires them and only them to come up with these ideas and policies and anyone else doing so even with relevant evidence must be sidelined in order to maintain political authority.
We need consensus politics, the UK falls short on that but in an emergency you really cannot ignore competent advice no matter the sources.
…and I got an e-mail last night that Dee’s mom died yesterday morning 
My youngest son just reported to me that he has the flu and he has lost his taste and smell and severe headaches. Tested yesterday.
Sorry to hear that, its hard to deal with when it affect yourslef but its not much easier when it hits friends and colleagues
Update on my cousin. She passed away a couple hours ago.
My condolences. Words are so small, so inadeqaute, at a time like this.
There is a saying that 1 death is a tragedy and 100K deaths is a statistic. But it’s getting to the point that we’re each acquainted with a statistic-sized list of actual individual tragedies.
I wonder if we as a civilization can learn something from this experience? That might become the lasting good legacy of all the fallen. To learn that others’ needless deaths aren’t a statistic. One can hope.
elfkin477, Saint_Cad, paulmarkj, others I may have missed: I am so sorry.
Mom, in memory care and locked down since March, has tested positive 3X. She is still asymptomatic. My sibs in charge (I am not part of that group) have decided she will not get the vaccine. I can’t quite wrap my head around it. If she is + and an unvaccinated, and I, who has managed to dodge the bullet to date, get the vaccines, will I be safe to see my poor ole Mom?
Lost another relative last week (Aunt). She was in all the risk categories, including age.
The people* who say “but it’s only affecting the elderly” are sounding a lot like people in the 80s who told me Aids was “only affecting gays”. There are a lot of people leaving my life – some from the disease, and some from their reaction to it.
*Not you guys.
Here’s some discussion on that point. The thread is sorta mis-titled.
But it seems reasonably logical that if she’s actually had COVID, not just a mistaken positive test, she’s very, very likely to be immune at least in the near term (6 months, 1 year, ???) and once you are vaccinated you will be very likely to be immune too.
So it would be unlikely that either could contract it from the other even if the other is unknowingly carrying the virus.
And it’s also likely that neither are carrying the virus when you meet. If neither are carrying, then it becomes impossible for one to infect the other at that one encounter. Meeting tomorrow would be a separate roll of the same dice since either could have contracted it in the meantime. Net of whatever immunity you’ve each got from prior illness, vaccination, or both.
Want more certainty that that? Not gonna happen in this lifetime. Everything in life is probabilities. We’re just not used to thinking of them that way. There’s always some probability you’ll be killed by their shuttle bus while walking across the parking lot at the old fart’s home.
Youngest’s test came back positive. We did a welfare check last night since he didn’t answer his phone or text back in more than 24 hours. Sick as hell but lungs seem clear and when we woke him up he is lucid. He’s just been sleeping the entire time.
Best friend’s kid is down with a high fever and the family is quarantined. Tests pending.
My granddaughter and her husband have just been diagnosed as positive. She has been posting pictures online of them together with their friends, no one wearing a mask. He is really sick, high fever, chills, congestion. She is not near as bad, loss of smell and taste is her biggest issue. That makes about 25 or so people I know that have tested positive, 2 have died.
Just found out today that a high school classmate and her husband were both down with COVID. They are both public-facing airline employees in Texas, so this is not terribly surprising. She has been complaining for months about passengers who refuse to wear masks, etc. Luckily she and her husband are both on the mend and her grown kids who are quarantining with them didn’t get sick.