I still hadn’t decided my comfort level now that I’m three weeks post fully vaccinated. I was thinking I’d stick with doing things I have to do, like see a tax preparer next week, rather than things I just want to do, like outdoor dining, for a bit longer.
Then I was forced into a have-to-do when my heat/air quit working last night. A tech came today and was here for five hours! He was only the second person to have been in my house in over a year. We both wore masks (double each). But it was very stressful, especially as solutions evaded him. I spent a lot of the time on the porch with the door open letting in fresh air. I finally did ask him if he had been vaccinated and he said he had, since he is in so many homes every day. This made me feel better since he had come down from the attic a few times with his mask on his chin. Now that I think about it, that’s the longest I’ve been around someone since all this started. Anyway, hopefully this jump into the deep end will come to nothing and I’ll feel more relaxed about interactions.
It did make me wonder, though, about asking someone if they have been vaccinated when they are basically working for you. Would it be appropriate to ask the tax preparer next week? I could kind of mitigate the circumstances in my own home but I’ll be in his/her office. I won’t leave if they are not but I would be a lot more comfortable if they were.
This question came up in Miss Manners’ column in WaPo last week and she (and many readers who commented) said that was too personal to ask someone. That it constitutes personal medical information. I strongly disagree! Yeah, it’s a personal health issue, but more than that, it’s a public health issue and it absolutely affects me.
I would not hesitate to ask my tax preparer what their vaccination status is. Or anyone else whose presence I’ll be in for more than to drop something off.
My husband is well past his second shot, and I’m three weeks past my first. We did something momentous yesterday: we dined inside a coffee shop. We were going to sit outside on their patio, but we had gotten there early, there were no other diners inside. They had the front and the side doors open to the breeze, and the waiters were well-masked.
We sat down at a booth and had breakfast brought to us. What a treat - a simple meal at a basic coffee shop! By the time we left there was only one other table occupied, on the far side of the restaurant.
The whole experience felt minimally risky to us and is a way to ease back into normalcy. Had the place been crowded, even outside on the patio, we would have skipped it and gotten an egg mcmuffin at a drive-through.
In my family, all but my eldest nephew and his family are either fully vaccinated or close to it. The last straggler is my sister, who goes on the 28th for her second Pfizer.
Eldest nephew invited everyone over for Easter. Only sis and her husband went. He’s invited everyone over for a BBQ. No one went. While he has not asked wtf, his dear wife posted all over fb memes about sheeple, it’s not serious, family is more important, blah blah blah. I think I’ve noted before, he manages a mall. His wife works in a manufacturing shop in a suburb where there have been anti-mask rallies. They spend a lot of time with her sister’s family, who are strongly anti-vax.
For me, while I love him dearly, he and his wife have shown their ass this past year and I don’t know how comfortable I’ll feel around them for quite a while.
I’m following the same mask and distance protocols because we still have 80% of the population that hasn’t been able to get vaccinated yet. However, when we reach the point where the only people not vaccinated are not vaccinated by choice, that ends. I’m not accommodating people who refuse vaccination. That’s on THEM.
If family is more important, then shouldn’t it be important enough to them to see their family that they’d go get vaccinated in order to do so?
There will always be some people who can’t get vaccinated.
Granted, when that number gets low enough because availability is widespread and easy and all age groups are approved including children, we’ll probably reach a point at which masks aren’t as a rule needed. But lumping in people with genuine allergy or immune system problems with deliberate refusers is unfair.
I didn’t. My statement specifically said that I would not accommodate people who REFUSE (not “can’t”) vaccination. If he is a friend in a small group setting, I can certainly see accommodating him because we, his friends, want to see and interact with him.
Even so, people who cannot get vaccinated have to be realistic. If there is a wedding reception and someone like that wants to attend, he can’t expect 300 people to wear masks because he cannot get vaccinated. If he wants to attend a Hawks game, he cannot expect all the people in the stadium to wear masks because he can’t get vaccinated. He has to accept the fact that, in a fundamental way, his life has been changed forever. It’s not fair, but life often isn’t.
As William Munny said in the movie, “Unforgiven”; “Deserve’s got nothin’ to do with it.”
Using the much (MUCH!) smaller example of my ladies’ lunch group (which, BTW, is meeting today for the first time in a year), the one anti-vaxxer was willing to attend and “take her chances.” Until she decided to skip the event because she “didn’t want to be around the negative energy.” Saved the rest of us from major awkwardness.
I’m guessing the wedding invitee would just take the “I’m fine! I feel healthy!” approach and not expect anyone to wear masks around them. (I’m speaking of an anti-vaxxer, not someone who can’t get the vaccine due to allergy. THAT person should attend and wear a mask, or a double mask. IMHO.)
This one is annoying. 576,000 dead in a population of 328.2M is one death per 570 people. A little bit of math on probability says that (for example) if you know 100 people personally, there’s an 84% chance that none of them will have died of COVID.
COVID deaths also aren’t distributed randomly, age being the primary factor. People are going to tend to know more people personally that are their own age. Other sorting by personal habits, risk takers congregate with other risk takers. So this is going to increase the number of people who don’t know anyone personally that died of COVID.
I personally know/knew two people who died of COVID. One around age 90 (older than me, in case anyone is wondering), one 60-ish (that’s about 10 years younger). I know at least three people who had a mild case and recovered (verified by tests).
Fortunately, my family is all pro-vax, and while a few haven’t gotten it yet (not everyone is eligible yet, here) I expect them all to start the process within a few weeks.
In all seriousness, if you like these people, perhaps use the “family is important” back at them, and beg them to be vaccinated so that the rest of you feel safe visiting them. Or just as a favor to allay the concerns of the rest of you. That’s not a huge thing to ask of them, and maybe they’ll do it if you give them a strong enough excuse.
This. If I’m potentially going to be spending time with someone in an indoor space, you bet your sweet bippy I’ll be asking their vaccination status. And if they think the question imposes on their privacy, I’ll find someone else to do business with.
If family is more important, then they can show it by being considerate of the feelings of their family members concerning the pandemic, even if they personally believe it’s bullshit.
Family’s important enough to me that I want all my family members to still be alive and healthy when this thing is finally under control. If that means I have to see a lot less of them than I would like, that’s the way it goes - and has gone for the past 14 months.
When we all get through this, there will be plenty of opportunities to see them in the future. If we do stuff that gets us all sick and dead, there won’t be.
I’ve heard the name of somebody who’s heard the name of a decedent? Or I’m blood-related to somebody who’s blood-related to a decedent? Or what in between?
Not trying to pick on you, just asking what you think constitutes enough connection to be a “degree of separation”. I know there are dead people in my zip code even if I have no idea what their names or addresses might have been.
The real problem is I have no idea who my first-degree friends, acquaintances, cow-orkers and neighbors do and don’t know. So I have no way to evaluate whether any of those first degree people have first degree decedents. Unless they happen to tell me.
There’s a chart in this paper showing the number of deaths in each year from 2015-2020 and those from several of the leading causes.
Short version: deaths per year in the U.S. went from 2,712,630 in 2015 to 2,854,838 in 2019, an increase of 142,208 over a four-year period, an average increase of 35,552 per year over that time period.
In 2020, 3,358,814 people died in the U.S., an increase of just shy of 504,000 from 2019. Something was damn sure mowing down a lot more Americans than before, over the past year or so, and my question for anyone who says Covid deaths have been wildly overstated is, WTF was it? And if they don’t know, why aren’t they scared shitless by this unknown mass slaughterer of Americans?
Saved the rest of us from major awkwardness.