I haven’t been on a plane yet. Last year was the first January we skipped our St Martin vacation in 15 years. Over the summer my gf made plans for two weeks in January 2022 which is now rapidly approaching and I’m nervous.
Prior to the pandemic the flight down and back was the worst part of the trip. I usually came down with a cold a few days after coming home. I’m dreading flying. If a variant pops up that causes St Martin to shut down flights from the US I won’t be too disappointed.
We started flying domestically back in May, about a month after all adults in our family became fully vaccinated. Just trips to visit family we hadn’t seen in a year. Almost all flights were completely full, by the way.
We’re planning to travel internationally this spring, if allowed. We were supposed to go to Singapore in April 2020 and I’m still bitter that we couldn’t.
On edit: looks like this is the old South African strain from last February. Sorry!
Double vaxxed, boosters are not available to most people under 70 unless you are in a high risk situation like a medical provider. My wife and kids are 2x vaxxed, and my extended family is all at least 2x with the exception of 3 under 12 where vaccines just started here this week. I’m quickly approaching the 6 month mark since shot #2 and have co-morbidities.
Our social circle is small, as are our kids. I’ve eaten inside twice, no other indoor events like movies. I have met with my executive team at the office - 5 of us - in large conference room twice. Masks are compulsory inside here, with an exemption for food and drink while at the table.
We have a trip to New York City booked for the week of Dec 20, which will be my first flight in almost 2 years. We have inside restaurant meals, theatre, and museum visits planned. This is now up in the air until we know more about Omicron.
This is me as well. We don’t eat out much so that isn’t an issue. I go grocery shopping once per week or so. I’m deep in Trump country so even though the state has a mask mandate <50% of the public actually wears a mask indoors. I always wear mine.
My wife and I are going to a production of The Nutcracker the weekend before Christmas. Were driving an hour north to Eugene where the vaxx rate is significantly higher. Proof of vaccination will be required for entry. My wife, kids, and I are fully vaxxed and my wife and I are on the waiting list to get our boosters.
Obviously I, like every other human being on the planet, wish things were back to “normal.” I’ve sort of come to the conclusion that this is going to be our new normal for the foreseeable future so I better learn to live with it. Choosing venues that require vaxx proof, shopping with a mask on and choosing to do so during the slow times, buying online whenever possible, and avoiding the anti-vaxxers as much as possible guide much of my daily life.
Being an introvert doesn’t hurt, either.
I’m much happier now that I have stopped caring about the anti-vax and mask crowd. I’m fully vaxxed and boosted plus I’ve already had delta. I feel pretty bullet proof and if I happen to catch another variant and pass it around to a bunch of trumpies, I really won’t care anymore about them than they do about me.
This is the time of year that the community has fund raisers to buy toys for local children and such. In years past I’ve always attended and left decent sized donations. Last year folks would ask about masking or social distancing and would be told that if we were scared, we should just stay home. I have taken their advice to heart and stopped attending and donating. Nobody seemed to care about my absence, but it was made pretty clear that they did care about my money. Too bad my money travels with me.
I’ve never been much of a social butterfly, I haven’t been to a movie since the second Star Wars movie came out and don’t care for the bar/clubbing scene so my life has pretty much reverted to how it was pre-covid except that I no longer feel obligated to attend community gatherings or other fund raising efforts.
The supply train issues are more of a bother than Covid IMO.
We’re vaxxed + boosted, but are still uncomfortable. When my unvaccinated nephew was about to fly up here from Texas for Thanksgiving to visit my mom/his grandma, I threw a fit, even though everyone else (all of them watchers of right-wing cable, including my mom) was fine with it. Eventually something came up and he didn’t make it, though he’s still saying he’ll visit eventually.
My best friend just texted to say he’s coming up to see the Christmas Revels at Harvard, one of our favorite events, and I’m about to text him back and say we’re just not comfortable in a room full of people singing at the tops of their lungs, masked or not.
We flew to Texas for a funeral a couple of weeks ago, and I truly hated the whole trip, including having to be around the massive disproportion of unmasked there. At the wake, literally half the family was unvaccinated, and one of them said “oh sure, every family we know has had at least one person with covid, but they all recovered!”
Just me complaining about everything. Long story short, I ain’t comfortable.
No symptoms after my first jab (Moderna), but I knew symptoms are more common after jab #2, and that’s exactly what happened. I was pretty miserable for two days with fever, muscle aches, a cough, and was just very fatigued on Day 3, but as you said, worth the unpleasantness. I had NO symptoms after the booster. I understand it, that’s the norm:
Don’t worry: Compared with your last dose, your booster shot should be a much smoother experience, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“People had fewer reactions after their third dose than after their second dose,” CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said in a White House briefing Tuesday.
That was not at all my experience. Booster was the worst of the 3.
Throughout the pandemic, I’ve felt pretty good about my individual chances against COVID; my caution has been motivated more by a sense of social responsibility than concern for my own health. And frankly, I’m running out of f*cks to give about my irresponsible fellow humans. I keep reminding myself there are vulnerable people doing everything they can, whose lives may still depend on my choices, and of course I’m vaccinated, boosted, masked, and giving strangers 6 feet. I’ll cheerfully follow any additional rules set forth by government or private business whose space I’m in. But beyond that, I’m living my life. Too many people are too selfish and delusional for me to live in hope of vanquishing this, so I’m just going to make the best of this new post-apocalyptic world. I’m still a little hesitant to travel someplace far away where I might get stuck, but I’m back to flying, restaurants, concerts, etc.
Last night I attended the BTS concert in Los Angeles. About 70,000 people in attendance. Proof of vaccine required for entry, and masks compulsory. (People were very good about that; I saw hardly anyone without a mask on.)
Pretty similar to my case.
Was not exactly at ease when traveling to my sister’s in Florida for the holiday just in the sense of the various places and venues I entered where the vast majority of people were going about as you’d expect in Florida, but at the same time the overall attitude from all of us, including my healthcare-providers sister (cancer survivor) and brother-in-law and one immunocompromised nephew was, yes, all precautions available must be taken, but we can’t ask everyone to just continue sacrificing those aspects of life that go beyond existence essentials, on an open-ended until-further-notice basis.
The idea is, yes, for there to eventually be a “new normal”. Because even moderately reasonable people will not endure a state of emergency that never ends.
Like JRDelirious I’m more or less in the same place. And, a few minutes ago, we just learned on the news that two cases of the omicron variant were detected in the Ottawa area.
My wife and I decided, a few weeks ago, not to travel to Quebec City for Christmas, and instead decided to go out for supper in Old Montreal. However, watching the numbers starting to rise recently, we’ve both decided to scrap that plan.
Here we go again, for more months of yo-yoing policy changes as the gov’ts clamp down, then incorrectly ease off, clamp down, ease off again and again and again while we fight against the fucking anti-vaxxers and their fucking ignorant, CT-driven, moronic, selfish, lazy fucking ilk.
I’m still pretty cautious. I’m vaxxed and boosted, but I stay masked, avoid crowds when possible, and, while I do eat occasionally at restaurants, I pick the outdoor option most of the time.
I did go to a conference early this month in Vegas for indie writers. Several (vaxxed but not boosted) folks there came home with cases of COVID, including one I ate dinner with, unmasked, in an indoor restaurant. I dodged that bullet, thank goodness. I blame the booster.
Going forward, I haven’t got a lot of reasons for going out in crowds, so I don’t plan to. The only thing I’m worried about is the spouse’s family’s big Christmas Eve thing, where they all get together inside a house for several hours to celebrate. I’m not at all comfortable with that. The spouse is vaxxed but not boosted, and I know for a fact that several of his relatives aren’t even vaxxed (they’re very conservative). That discussion is going to be interesting, and I’m not looking forward to it.
I have a concert to go to on the 5th and we’re going. I’ll have had my booster by then, I’m not especially high risk, and masks are required, so I feel fine going.
I taught hybrid classes last Spring and have been teaching this Fall. About 12 hours a week in-person and a total of 60 plague rates, er, college students. This Fall, our shitty governor would not allow mask mandates, but I kindly convinced all my students to wear masks. I have good masks so I’ve felt pretty comfortable. Once my husband, Dad, and I got our boosters, I’ve felt even more comfortable. My daughter is getting her booster next week.
Throughout the pandemic, we’ve never hesitated to shop or go on other errands while wearing masks. I’ve gone to three movies in the theaters during slow times. Everyone was wearing a mask. I go to our art museums fairly regularly.
We like to do outdoor things without masks. For example, we occasionally eat outdoors at restaurants. We hike and walk without wearing masks. We go to the zoo or the botanical gardens.
The only really high risk activity I’ve done is eat inside a small restaurant just this past Friday. We went early so it wasn’t crowded. However, by the time we left, it had really picked up. I gotta say, I felt a little uncomfortable. Not gonna do that again in the near future unless Omicron turns out to be a loser.
My guy’s had his booster, I had 3 full doses of Moderna because of a medication I am on. We cruised 3 weeks ago, a neg test 48 hours prior to boarding, and another at the pier. Masks weren’t required unless you went ashore. The crew was fully masked. No one that I know of that was on the boat, got Covid. Supposed to do it again in late Jan. but I guess we’ll see.
I am immunocompromised due to a B-cell depleting drug I was taking (up until Feb. 2021 when I quit—against the doctors’ wishes—because I couldn’t deal with having no immune system during a deadly pandemic).
My current comfort level had been rising slightly over the past month or so (a couple months after my “bonus” third shot but with no way to know if I was getting any protection). For me “rising” isn’t much because before I was not leaving my apartment except to take occasional walks where I was masked and went out of my way to be 10 feet or more away from anybody.
I never really changed my general COVID habits, I just became more accustomed to being out among people and not worrying so much.
We have pretty good vax and mask compliance in the Bay Area but with omicron on the horizon I fear I will have to revert to being almost a shut-in again.
Something I think about a lot is… how and when will I be able to ever have sex again? It’s kinda a big deal to me because I used to participate in those kind of activities sort of often. I’m not married, and I have no girlfriend. I have some women-friends whom I might hang out with here and there if there was no pandemic. But there is.
How can I ever even make out with someone again? How can I even hug? What the hell am I supposed to do about all that stuff?
Thus is the only one I can help you with:
Mazel tov!
Back in June I was able to fly out to see my elderly dad (family and I fully vaxed). At the time, COVID prevalence in Colorado (his state) and Michigan) was low, so I felt comfortable enough to do that, and even eat at a few restaurants out there, no mask. Since then, COVID prevalence in both states has become extremely high, about 4X the CDC’s cutoff for “high” community transmission. I hope I get to see my dad again, but I’m no longer comfortable spending hours in a plane under these circumstances.
Wife and I didn’t used to eat out at restaurants much before the pandemic, now (since March 2020) we don’t at all. We do get call-ahead carryout from a couple of places, which only requires one of us to be in the restaurant for a few minutes while wearing a mask and not spending much time near other patrons. One of these places has closed their dining room and fills prepaid internet carryout orders from their outdoor patio; you don’t even need to go into the restaurant, and you’re not even standing there for more than a minute. Slick.
Still getting groceries delivered, although at this point it’s partly out of convenience. We used to always go grocery shopping together, and having someone else do the shopping for us saves us a lot of time.
Wife has been working from home non-stop since the pandemic started, except for a single day. I have too, but now that I’m vaxed, I feel better about going in to work, and have been doing so a fair bit for the last month or two. It helps that on any given day, our workplace is at about 15% of normal on-site staffing level and requires masks for everyone in the building; I can get through a workday without crossing paths with very many people at all. COVID cases do still pop up. A couple of weeks ago three coworkers tested positive a day or two after being in the lab on the same day I was. This in included one colleague with whom I had been in contact on that day, although in a relatively limited way; we were both masked, and generally kept 6’ or more away, and it probably didn’t add up to 15 minutes together.