My comfort level has gone down a lot over the past few days.
We took the calculated risk to go up to Green Bay this past weekend, to see my octogenarian parents for Christmas. Everyone is vaccinated and boosted, but that said:
From what I saw, through brief visits to several retail establishments during the trip (a couple of gas stations, a grocery store, and a restaurant, to pick up a carryout order), mask-wearing in Wisconsin is now close to non-existent. I was wearing N95 masks each time I went into one of such places, but I was one of the few (most of the staff were unmasked, as well).
We visited with my niece and her boyfriend over the weekend; they both work in hospitality (her at a restaurant, him at a bar), where, again, there is likely very little in the way of mask-wearing.
My wife and I had some plans for this week – I was going to go visit some friends today, and we have two different invitations for small get-togethers for New Year’s Eve. But, after we discussed things today, we decided that we are going to just stay home for the next few days, to make sure that we didn’t pick up an infection, and if we did, we won’t be spreading it to others.
Was just listening to a report as I drove home where the expert essentially said just that, once you settle on what is your comfort/risk level, you can and should budget it – it is not an “all or nothing” thing across your entire range of life activity.
Right – the absolute risk of meeting once with my bridge group is comparable to the absolute risk of Christmas dinner, but the latter was more important to me, so that’s where I “spent” my risk tolerance. It’s also where I spent a bunch of rapid tests.
I was one of the first people in my county to get covid. My case was rather mild and my only personal contact with medical people was for the testing. I stayed home on the farm for a few days (saw two bobcats) before going back to the office. At the office, we sent everyone else home and I stayed and worked.
In my county, it is uncommon to see masks now except at the doctor’s office and at the hospital. Sometimes you might see someone with a mask at the grocery store.
When I go to a larger town and see people wear masks, it is pretty jolting because I don’t expect to see them at all.
The last two times I wore a mask were at the grain elevator to reduce the amount of dust I was breathing in.
Today I went to a grocery, to drop off my office rent, to a post office to pick up a parcel, and to get gas. I saw many noses poking over masks Kilroy-style, plus many mask hanging on the very tip of the nose with visible crevasses to either side. Will now stay home.
More encouraging anecdata for those who are vaxxed:
“The general trend that I’m seeing is, if you’re boosted and you get Covid, you really just at worst end up with bad cold symptoms. It’s not like before where you were coughing, couldn’t say sentences and were short of breath,” said Dr. Matthew Bai, an emergency medicine physician at Mount Sinai Queens in New York City.
I had covid in May, 2020, and maybe again in October, 2020, and have also had the Johnson and Johnson vaccine. I found out on Wednesday that I may have been exposed again – my niece has it and my younger brother is sick. Unless my younger brother is feeling much better today, I’m going to be pretty insistent on him getting tested.
Fortunately for me, when I had Covid in May, 2020, I had a very mild case. It was more like a few days of rather mild allergies. My niece, on the other hand, spent a few days in the hospital with it, but has not been vaccinated. My younger brother hasn’t had covid but he did get the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine.
Well as a cautionary tale… my whole family caught covid, including myself, towards the end of our trip to Puerto Rico. We left 12 days ago when positive cases were trending the wrong direction but not quite in the news to the extent they are today. We were conflicted when we left but PR was taking covid very seriously and we didn’t have any kind of trip insurance. My wife and I are boosted and our kids all fully vaccinated, and we have an ample supply of KN95s. We started showing symptoms right about the time PR was requiring negative tests for all travel a few days ago (since our only travel was to leave the island at that point we didn’t need them). I didn’t think it was covid; I foolishly thought that there was no way we’d all get symptomatic covid, including my younger kids, when it’s the only thing we’re all vaccinated against. Our symptoms were mostly mild.
Six or seven months ago my gf paid for airline tickets and accommodations for two weeks in St Martin in January 2022. At the time I thought she was taking a huge risk, but it was also far in the future and we thought things would be better.
So now we are counting down to departure and my gf finally is admitting maybe it wasn’t a great idea. St Martin has been hit hard by Omicron. Visitors have to buy a government mandated COVID insurance. The situation changes daily.
Ordinarily I’d be excited about escaping to the Caribbean, like a kid anticipating xmas and Santa. Instead I’m having nightmares. Vacation traditionally begins the day before our flight. We check into La Quinta near the airport and have dinner at Primanti Brothers (I get Capicola and Egg). We will definitely do that, but who knows if we’ll be flying the next day.
Yeah, we’d like to travel to Oregon in April and scout out retirement neighborhoods, but it’s starting to look too risky. We flew in October of 2020, but it was during a lull, and we felt safe because we kept well-masked and stayed isolated in a rental home during our stay.
Now I’m not so sure. We’ll keep an eye on case and death counts and revisit the subject in February or March.
I’ve been trying to book a vacation for a year now, and every time it’s looked like it would be okay, COVID has then blown up in my face and ruined it.
Now, I went and booked an Alaskan cruise for May just before everything blew up in December. D’oh! This booking is via a friend of mine who organizes these trips, and we’ve got good cancellation policies, but it’s still a gamble if things will have improved by then. I can cancel pretty late though, so if things are still crap in late April, I can make the call then.
I’ve got a heli-ski trip in BC first week of March. The operations protocols are excellent–everybody fully vaxxed, pre-arrival test, test on arrival, test on departure. All staff lives on site and will be tested weekly. I still don’t see how they can avoid Omicron with 20 guests arriving every week. Or if I can avoid it or get it in time to recover. Not comfortable.
I was planning a trip to the U.K. and Germany in the fall of 2020, and bought my plane tickets two months before it all hit the fan. It took many months, but I eventually got a refund (first an airline credit, which I was fine with, and then the whole amount appeared as a credit to my card one day). Thought I might do May 2021, then October 2021, then May 2022…currently I have October 2022 as a target date, and hope to bring my gf along. We’ll see what travel restrictions around Europe are like at that point. I typically book stuff months in advance; this time I’m sure it’ll be August before I commit to anything.
We had a talk last night. My gf has been chatting with friends in St Martin and things are not going well. She has an appointment for a phone call with the airline to see if we can salvage any of the flight cost. As things are looking now, we are not going.
ETA: I should get some kind of award for never saying, “I told you so”.
Oh yeah, I forgot we had a credit with Hawaiian Airlines. I reserved the seats a couple of months before the pandemic hit. My husband was two years younger when I made that reservation, and now that he’s turned seventy, five hour flights might be getting to be too much for him.
We have to use the credit by May 2023. It might very well be that I’ll fly there alone just so that the credit doesn’t go to waste.
Four people around me have had covid recently that I know of – two who have had covid previously but no vaccination and two who haven’t had covid but who have been vaccinated. I’ve had covid at least once and had the Johnson & Johnson vaccine last spring. I’m thinking of going in for the booster.
