I’m with your stepmom. I don’t think it’s unfair at all.
She can always offer to meet them outdoors for a brief in-person visit, always 6 feet apart, no eating or drinking.
The entire family is with stepmom, who is 85 years old. I can’t quite put my finger on why she won’t get a shot. It mostly seems like she’s afraid of doctors and she “doesn’t want to be told what to do”.
The kicker…the late sister died in 2014 from complications of the H1N1 flu and wasn’t vaccinated. The anitvax sister had been keeping a secret that she doesn’t even get flu vaccinations.
Time to out her to the rest of the family before she kills somebody. And your crew should stand by their guns; no vax, no contact.
I wasn’t clear. She was keeping it a secret but we recently all found out.
I’m not sure if their thought process goes that far. And if it does, they genuinely don’t seem to care. It seems to be an unholy mixture of “don’t inconvenience me” + “everybody dies from something.”
My brother (in his 40s) posted all over his social media in November that we needed to “sacrifice the old and weak in order to move on with our lives”.
He seemed to be blissfully unaware that my parents (80s one with diabetes the thief with severely limited lung capacity) could see this directly or indirectly. Why my mother challenged him about it he told her that of course he didn’t mean them in particular. He meant old and weak people in general.
Yeah, not thought through at all.
One of my co-workers is kinda like this. He’s neither hardcore nor an evangelist about it. But despite being in his late 60’s himself he takes a very fatalistic view that “it is just nature” and hey diseases come and go. He has been reluctant to get the vaccine but might cave if it becomes necessary to travel internationally (which he does a lot), though he resents it being “forced on him by colluding governments.” He’s actually a smart guy, but he is notoriously a can’t see the forest for the trees sort. And aside from being deeply right-wing who absorbs a lot of propaganda from his 24 hr a day right-wing radio habit, he’s physically a machine and always has been. I think deep down he simply can’t imagine being laid low by a mere virus.
Well, Mother’s Day is just a bit over two weeks past my second shot, so for the first time in over a year I will be willing to give her a hug. (She’s also been vaccinated.)
I was almost hoping you’d go on to report that he was in ICU right now. Old and weak indeed. If you aren’t before you catch COVID, you may well be by the time it’s done with you.
Natural selection sounds all natural and good and shit. Until you’re the one naturally selected for culling. Then it seems … unfair.
The entire field of medicine is dedicated to the proposition that we should not simply lay down and let nature take its course. The human race doesn’t need medical interventions to assure survival of the species; we need it so we can live longer, better lives with less suffering.
Interesting question. My firm has basically said no one will be required back in the office until September, at the earliest. But while they are strongly (and I do mean strongly) encouraging everyone to get vaccinated, there hasn’t been any suggestion that people will be polled about it, and it’s hard to imagine them doing so.
I imagine there will be plenty of folks who continue to wear masks around the office for the foreseeable future if they are likely to be in close contact with others. And I imagine I’ll be one of them, to avoid situations exactly like your trial prep scenario.
Well, for one thing, I certainly hope there will be some movement toward requiring people to leave the office if they are showing any kind of COVID symptoms that can’t be explained by something else (like allergies). In my office, anyway, the vast majority of us can work remotely the vast majority of the time. There’s no reason to endanger others. My former employer, which also had a significant immigration law practice, did something similar during the H1N1 flu - if you had a fever or flu symptoms, you were required to stay out of the office until you had been fever-free for 48 hours without medication. I am sure they did their homework first to verify whether that was legal.
Found out what it would take for my eldest nephew to get over himself and get the vaccine: $250.00.
Paid for by his employer.
Don’t know about his wife or oldest daughter, as prior to his shot we had a pretty big blow out over it. I do know they’re planning on going on vacation next month and when it was pointed out to him that airlines and hotels are private businesses and can refuse service for whatever reason they want he said he didn’t know that.
I go see my 86 yo Mom in her apartment. Go to bar/restaurants and not wear a mask when service people come inside our home.
Funny. There’s a thread right now (here) on the ethics of paying people to get vaccinated.
I’m in Texas, where there’s no longer any mask mandate and employers and businesses and organizations are free to make up their own COVID policies.
My employer had some pretty good COVID policies, I thought, that I felt okay about. Just this week, however, they have relaxed the deep sanitation policies back to just regular for most areas and are allowing us not to wear masks when we’re working outside or if at a desk with social distancing space.
I’m kinda nervous about this. IMO it’s still a bit soon to relax much. Things could go sideways pretty easily. It just seems like a slippery slope that will make it easy to forget to put mask back on when indoors in common areas.
We’re pretty lax at our office. We’re at 1/4 capacity, at most, so there aren’t many of us here. No one wears masks at their desks, and we don’t always wear them when running to the restroom or the snack room. Yesterday about 5 people ate lunch together in the conference room. Everyone’s fully vaccinated, so that’s one answer about “social comfort level once vaxed.” Other than masking at stores, we’re pretty much “post-COVID” around here.
We are back from the East Coast where we ate in restaurants and saw groups of people and flew on planes. Most activities were done masked (except with eating) with tables spaced out. But there were a few strange moments of being packed together masked (people seem to have dropped six feet in boarding an aircraft, for instance) - multiple people will get in an elevator (although if I’m entering an elevator with strangers already there, I ask if they mind if I join them).
I’ll keep wearing a mask indoors in public for a while yet. I’ve enjoyed a few things about it. I haven’t had a bad cold in a year, and my annual bronchitis was much milder. I enjoyed Winter when I got to breathe warm air.
We are a week and a half away from our first D&D together - everyone will have had two shots that meets in person. Our youngest - the one on the East Coast - we’ve set up a camera for them so they can continue to join us virtually.
I am grateful that no one I regularly socialize with is anti-vax…we were the “stalking for appointments” crowd.
Both my adult children are one shot in now. I have my delayed mammogram scheduled and need to make the delayed eye appointment.
Early on, those “deep sanitation practices” made sense, because we didn’t know much about how the infection was transmitted. Now, however, we know that transmission is primarily through the air. While it’s theoretically possible to catch Covid from touching an infected suface, it’s highly unlikely—I’ve seen the odds reported as 1 in 10,000.
So, personally, I’m not worried about touching surfaces, and I’m perfectly comfortable with “just regular” sanitation policies. If I weren’t fully vaccinated, however, I’d definitely be worried about being around maskless people. (Since I am vaccinated, I’m going to trust that the vaccine will keep me protected, but I’m going to continue to wear a mask in public places until we get the all-clear not to.)
I think that’s so interesting because AFAIK one can catch a cold (some of which are from coronaviruses) pretty easily by touching surfaces and then your eyes or nose. But I haven’t been really worrying about surfaces this whole time, oddly enough.
Not sure who all is vaccinated here. I know some who are. The building has been kept pretty un-full so far and all tables in break room for single eater only and all distanced.
I guess I have really been enjoying the lower cold and flu rates also. Kind of sad to let that go but def want an end to masks when reasonable. Just not sure that is now when we don’t even approach herd immunity in US, much less world.