What a disappointment 
Depending on the timing, any hope that they might have gotten past the peak (as supposedly South Africa has)?
We’re still planning on travelling in May - bucket-list cross-country train trip. We’ll be able to isolate a fair bit during the trip, as we have sleeper cars; I even booked us a roomette on the non-overnight Coast Starlight part so we could sort of isolate.
The trip is planned around a gathering of friends, which has already been postponed once. If it gets postponed again I guess we’ll just stay in the hotel by ourselves and do some sightseeing.
The only real risk is whether another major variant pops up between now and then. Omicron will have finished infecting everybody well before then.
I’m already hearing rumblings about a new variant identified in France. Womp, womp.
Well, we were due to leave Saturday for two weeks in St Martin, but that ain’t happening.
Things are worse there by the day. France has declared a medical emergency for the island’s French side. There is growing unrest between the French and Dutch sides. Only 40% of the people on the French side are vaccinated.
FML.
I’m vaccinated, boostered, and work in a school district where 1000 kids are crammed together all day long with as many as 33 kids in a classroom. Yes, they wear masks, but they spend 20 minutes a day crammed together in a lunchroom eating, laughing, and talking without masks. These kids are from all different homes and groups of people and, after mingling with one another for 6 hours a day, they go back home to these various different groups of people with whatever germs they picked up here. In short, my job is equivalent to attending a super spreader event five days a week.
So, with all of that, could anything else possible make me feel uncomfortable? Nope. I go shopping, go to restaurants, got to the homes of others, etc, without any fear whatsoever. I wear masks where required for the sake of others, not myself.
Sunday is a memorial service for my recently deceased FIL. He and his wife were vaxxed/boostered, but were strong Trumpists. FIL was kinda a big wheel in various business/philanthropic circles, so I expect the memorial to be pretty big. Wife says she’ll provide a box of masks, “But you can’t require that alone uses one.” 
I’m assuming it will be a superspreader event. If I don’t catch Covid from this, I’m going to suspect I’m a medical marvel!
At this point, anything I do is a potential superspreader event. My kids go to in-person school. I go shopping almost every day (masked). I just shot an unmasked wedding of about 100 people on New Years’ Eve and a wedding earlier in Florida of about three hundred people. I also just flew back from Phoenix, which is largely unmasked. I should suspect I’m a medical marvel myself, but so far, I’ve either avoided it, the vaccines have gotten a hold of it, or I’ve gotten it and simply have been asymptomatic. But, like @Jasmine, there’s nothing else that could make me feel uncomfortable. I’m psychologically fine with the current risk level – far more than I was a year ago. Complacency? I suppose there is a bit of that, but I’m simply just not particularly worried anymore, and haven’t been at all through most of 2021, where I was in unmasked crowded situations every single weekend during wedding season.
Cases in my county are still going up and I have to teach college students starting Jan 18. Not a happy camper right now. I might even end up with an overload so that’s 3 remote lectures, 1 in-person lecture, and four in-person labs. A total of 100 students in fairly small spaces (not lecture halls).
Several colleges in the area switched to remote for the first week or two. No word from my college. We get PCR-tested once a week, which is fucking useless. By the time someone gets a positive test result, they’ve exposed everyone. AND we have no formal quarantine protocol requirement as far as I can tell. One student was told that they would just have to sit in the back of the class away from everyone. What a joke.
I work in Texas so I’m not even allowed to require that my students wear masks. I visit my Dad three times a week to help him out with things and provide company (Mom died last summer). Now I don’t know if I should visit him at all once classes start. Or I’ll have to go back to wearing a mask at his house (which I stopped doing when delta cases dropped and we both got boostered). Last semester, I was able to convince all my students to wear masks to class to protect my Dad. They were great. I don’t know if I’ll be lucky this semester.
That’s exactly right. We have sixteen staff members quarantined, and our superintendent just went home sick. So, they made us all march down to the nurses station and get tested again. If anyone’s positive, it’s too late. Too bad, so sad! 
Oh, I forgot to mention that testing is now only mandatory for employees, not students. 
Our public school system (Chicago) is currently shut down — one of my daughters is there, the other goes to a parochial school which is open. Before the break, they gave out 150,000 COVID tests to mail out by Dec 28 before returning to school on Jan 3.
I couldn’t figure out the point of this exercise. It misses the New Years gatherings. It’s five day old test results. It wasn’t even required — just encouraged. On top of that, FedEx boxes were overflowing in huge piles to the sidewalk on the 28th. So, out of this, about 35,000 tests were returned and, of those, about 25,000 came back as “inconclusive,” partly because of spoiled samples.
Just a total pointless mess and waste of money.
Could be worse. Ontario has essentially given up on testing. Our new guidelines as of last week:
- Symptomatic testing will be available for high-risk individuals, and individuals who work in high-risk settings.
- Individuals with symptoms consistent with COVID-19 are presumed positive and they should follow isolation and/or self-monitoring guidelines.
- Testing for asymptomatic contacts of cases is generally no longer recommended, except for high-risk contacts/individuals that are part of confirmed or suspected outbreaks in high-risk settings, as recommended by public health.
- Positive rapid antigen tests will no longer require PCR confirmation.
- Based on the latest scientific evidence, individuals with COVID-19 should isolate for five days if they are fully vaccinated or under the age of 12, and if their symptoms are improving for at least 24 hours.
Hindsight is always 20/20, but I suspect the amount of $ that has been wasted is quite astounding.
Well, I did feel comfortable here at work, as everyone here is vaxxed and boosted. In addition, many people work from home nowadays, so we’ve got a lot of space in between people.
But one of my bosses emailed in that he had been exposed through his gym trainer. He was hovering over my desk many times yesterday. We were both well-masked, but still.
My husband has a couple of test kits at home which came through his employer. Guess I’ll test once I get home tonight.
Is an alcoholic more vulnerable to severe Covid complications?
Wait a few days after your exposure, if you haven’t, yet. There’s essentially zero chance you will test positive immediately.
According to at least one study, both breakthrough infections and complications are observed higher in those with alcohol or other substance abuse disorders:
I’m a type 2 diabetic and obese, and I’ve gone into near-full isolation mode. I’m boosted and all, but I just am not ready to give it a whirl and see how an infection goes with me. I’m also working on quitting smoking (yes I realize how dumb it is to be smoking in the first place). I went to my doctor yesterday for my regular checkup and asked him what kind of mask he makes his kids wear. He said N95 or KN95. “Those cloth masks aren’t doing shit at this point,” is what he told me. I’ve got some KF94 masks I’m using for now (thanks @puzzlegal for recommending them months ago) until the N95 and KN95s come in. But I haven’t had to go anywhere other than the doctor’s office and city council.
I’m planning on staying isolated through February. I do see my parents but not much. My mom has a surgery planned for mid-Feb and I don’t want either of us to get sick before then.
Dad is still going to the VFW 3-4 times a week. He’s got pulmonary issues. I pretty much only go to my parents’ when he’s not there…I feel like he’s a ticking timebomb of getting it himself and dying and/or passing it to my mom. I at least convinced him to get boostered but he will not wear a mask.
I was fairly lackadaisical until before Christmas. Now I’m really afraid of this Omicron variant and the high rate of transmission.
Your fear is well founded IMO. We should be leaving for two weeks in St Martin tomorrow. We canceled. Omicron has devastated the island. Hospitals are full, state of medical emergency declared, in the past few fucking days.
They were doing fine and we were excited to go there just a few weeks ago.