Dealing with COVID-19

[Mary Terry]

I'm tired of the pandemic isolation, too. In desperation for a change in scenery, my husband and I drove to New Orleans day before yesterday, the first trip we have made since March 2020. We're vaccinated and knew that we had to show our vax cards to enter restaurants there. I wanted to eat lunch at a famous restaurant called Commander's Palace.

The trip was awful. The city looks like a bombed out war zone due to Hurricane Ida hitting it a couple of months ago. There are blue tarped roofs everywhere, blocked streets still full of fallen trees and stuff people hauled out of their houses when it got wet, huge potholes in the streets. Although New Orleans is a major tourist destination and famous for its food, very few restaurants were open. We finally found a tourist trap restaurant in the French Quarter where I could have chargrilled oysters and a shrimp Po-Boy sandwich. I don't know if the restaurants will ever reopen. Covid may have killed them off for good.

So.... before we travel out of the country, I must investigate what covid has done to the destination. Are there restaurants open or stores where I can buy ingredients to cook myself, are museums and other places we like to visit open? The world is so different now.

 

[Aspychata]

True. The pandemic has been a curse and a blessing.

I now speak up to rude strangers in stores now. That's a great change.

But prices are so much higher and scarcity is now a common word in regards to many things.

This has even changed my personal relationships. Some of my friends are more distant and others now value me more. Go figure that out. It's like what we truly need in one lifetime became magnified in a nano second and l am a little bit unsure about this new existence.

And restaurants are a whole new ball of wax, as owners are struggling to stay open. Then there are those like me who hate zoom and miss out on that connection. Now l actually have to make an appointment at my DMV for something that's their screwup.

Just as long as l don't have to stand in line to buy bread like in a very distant past in another country l remember reading about.☺

 

[Sherlock77]

And I'm depressed again... For a second year in a row there are effectively no public Remembrance Day ceremonies, even the outdoor ones... *sigh* I feel like Covid is continuing to ruin my life, and everything I enjoy and am passionate about, it's been almost two years of this and I'm starting to have my doubts about any return to normal, ever... And I don't want to live a life where I have to "social distance" forever, show my vaccine passport everywhere I go (I am double vaccinated), that isn't much of a life...

And watching a ceremony on a TV screen just doesn't do it for me, when I know I can be there...

 

[Varzar]

And I'm depressed again... For a second year in a row there are effectively no public Remembrance Day ceremonies, even the outdoor ones... *sigh* I feel like Covid is continuing to ruin my life, and everything I enjoy and am passionate about, it's been almost two years of this and I'm starting to have my doubts about any return to normal, ever... And I don't want to live a life where I have to "social distance" forever, show my vaccine passport everywhere I go (I am double vaccinated), that isn't much of a life...

And watching a ceremony on a TV screen just doesn't do it for me, when I know I can be there...

It'll get better, and some day will just seem like a blip in your life. An event you'll be able to tell the youngins being born during this time about as they'll not have experienced it.
Sort of like 9/11 was a really significant event in a lot of our lives.
Admittedly, this one is of longer duration, but it too shall pass. And we'll get back to Remembrance Day ceremonies, and all the good stuff that we once enjoyed without the bureaucracy of vaccine passports and such.

 

[Magna]

It'll get better, and some day will just seem like a blip in your life. An event you'll be able to tell the youngins being born during this time about as they'll not have experienced it.
Sort of like 9/11 was a really significant event in a lot of our lives.
Admittedly, this one is of longer duration, but it too shall pass. And we'll get back to Remembrance Day ceremonies, and all the good stuff that we once enjoyed without the bureaucracy of vaccine passports and such.

I'm expecting that we'll get "back to normal". Anything less will be unacceptable and dystopian.

 

[Ronald Zeeman]

things just changed here in Ontario, looks like the rural area not getting vaccinated extended before Halloween extended Covid a further month. fortunately the world is one big fractal when n it comes to Covid. We survived thanks-giving people got vaccinated for the sake of their family. Halloween parties killed us for now. Tomorrow should tell the tale, looks like a possible inflection point tomorrow.

 

[Sherlock77]

And the fence is back, skating around at the downtown skating rink surrounded by a fence, after you get past a security guard, yuck! I hate it, just continues to show the state of the world, will it ever end? I know I keep saying that, but it really does get me depressed...

 

[Aspergers_Aspie]

I'm in a bar in Belfast, Northern Ireland, no one is wearing a face covering, staff nor customer, earlier in Belfast Frankie and Benny's people were.
In Perth Scotland, people in some bars frowned upon face coverings.

 

[Mary Terry]

I wonder how Omicron has mutated. Is it more transmittable than Delta? Make people sicker? Guess we'll find out eventually. Meanwhile, we skipped a Thanksgiving dinner last night at my niece's house because half of them are not vaccinated. I blatantly lied to my niece, told her my husband is sick (he's not) and that we didn't want to infect anyone, because I didn't want to hear the political and misinformation hogwash about vaccinations. I was worried about THEM infecting US with covid.

 

[Judge]

I wonder how Omicron has mutated. Is it more transmittable than Delta? Make people sicker? Guess we'll find out eventually. Meanwhile, we skipped a Thanksgiving dinner last night at my niece's house because half of them are not vaccinated. I blatantly lied to my niece, told her my husband is sick (he's not) and that we didn't want to infect anyone, because I didn't want to hear the political and misinformation hogwash about vaccinations. I was worried about THEM infecting US with covid.

Guess more will follow in the coming days.

"this variant has been detected at faster rates than previous surges in infection, suggesting that this variant may have a growth advantage."

Classification of Omicron (B.1.1.529): SARS-CoV-2 Variant of Concern

 

[oregano]

I wonder how Omicron has mutated. Is it more transmittable than Delta? Make people sicker? Guess we'll find out eventually. Meanwhile, we skipped a Thanksgiving dinner last night at my niece's house because half of them are not vaccinated. I blatantly lied to my niece, told her my husband is sick (he's not) and that we didn't want to infect anyone, because I didn't want to hear the political and misinformation hogwash about vaccinations. I was worried about THEM infecting US with covid.

Once, adversity brought Americans together. During the Great Depression, if you drove past a hitchhiker, especially in the countryside, you picked him up because he was a fellow American on hard times, like everybody else.

Today, people can't eat Thanksgiving with their families because half of them are never-vaxxers and half are science lovers and everybody is at each other's throats with the turkey cutting knives a quarter of the way through the meal.

 

[Nitro]

Guess more will follow in the coming days.

"this variant has been detected at faster rates than previous surges in infection, suggesting that this variant may have a growth advantage."

Classification of Omicron (B.1.1.529): SARS-CoV-2 Variant of Concern

That's simply amazing that they were able to work all that out in only two day.

Got to love the science, huh?

 

[Judge]

That's simply amazing that they were able to work all that out in only two days.

Got to love the science, huh?

Could be worse. At least it wasn't distributed using Fort Detrick's letterhead.

No telling how long they may have been sitting on this. But then considering the proverbial need-to-know basis, the public at large is last to be told much of anything. Nothing new about that. However that's more a matter of policy and less a matter of science. Compounded by competing medical bureaucracies.

I doubt anyone in authority wants to admit that a lot of what is happening in real time is improvised rather than a result of complex research and development that much of the scientific community was accustomed to. So I expect more of the same...for the duration.

 

[Bolletje]

It’s funny how my perspective has changed. Spring/summer 2020 I was slightly worried about the rising infections but overall I was doing pretty well, mental health-wise. I liked the hard lockdowns because it took the pressure off social interactions. I just did my own thing from the comfort of my own home. Being on a sick leave at that time, I just lived in my own bubble.

Now, with cases surging again, my nerves are frayed. The government keeps balking at implementing restrictions and as a result the infections are out of control. Restrictions that are implemented are too little, too late. What my country needs is a full lockdown, but the government doesn’t like taking unpopular measures.

Working in healthcare is no picnic in normal times, but it’s brutal now. Workloads are double, some days triple, what they normally are. I work my ass off and make long hours. And I feel guilty, still.

I’m not in the trenches, so to speak. I regulate treatment for hundreds of patients daily, coordinating anticoagulants, antidiabetics and working on cardiovascular risk reduction, which is important work, if not very heroic. I can do my job from the comfort of my own home with a purring cat on my lap.

Whenever an old employer asks me if I’m available to work on one of the covid wards because they desperately need doctors, my heart aches, because I feel like I should be helping out somehow. I cry because I feel powerless and inadequate in helping fight the pandemic. I’ve been in that situation, being overwhelmed by the amount of patients and lack of staff, working grueling shifts where you’re so tired you wonder when you’re gonna make a serious medical mistake. It’s the reason I left the hospital behind. But knowing this is what my fellow medical professionals are going through now, part of me feels guilty I’m not there to lend them a hand.

Hospitals are so overwhelmed in my area that all non-emergency medical treatments have been stopped. That includes chemotherapy and cancer surgery. Meanwhile people are rioting because they are angry they don’t get to go out drinking and clubbing at night and they don’t want to get vaccinated. I am so disappointed in humanity.

 

[oregano]

Nurses and doctors in hospitals have gone from the unvaxxed lamenting not getting jabbed as they took their last breath to angrily accusing their carers of deliberately murdering them as part of some byzantine, nonsensical conspiracy they read about online. Health care workers can't go to the grocery store after work because they'll be called murderers by the families of the plague dead if they're seen in scrubs.

I'm shocked at how quickly civilization has come unraveled, not only in North America but in Europe and Latinoamerica. Fleeing to the hills to live off the land is the only rational solution I can see at this point. I knew it would happen eventually, but I thought it would largely be confined to the continental US. I thought the trigger would be economic, not biological, with a medium-distant second being a cyberattack or other mass infrastructure attack.

 

[Progster]

So much panic about the Omicron variant, when actually it's actual level of threat is yet to be determined- it may turn out to be more severe, it may be roughly the same, or it may turn out to be milder - and therefore actually help the situation somewhat. People assuming it is more severe, when at this point it's known to have more mutations, but it's too early to say how severe it is or what it's impact may be.

 

[Ronald Zeeman]

I have comment I will make on my Covid thread after I get Todays numbers you are correct do not believe media hype.

 

[Magna]

So much panic about the Omicron variant, when actually it's actual level of threat is yet to be determined- it may turn out to be more severe, it may be roughly the same, or it may turn old to be milder - and therefore actually help the situation somewhat. People assuming it is more severe, when at this point it's known to have more mutations, but it's too early to say how severe it is or what it's impact may be.

Yes, the outcome is not yet known (ie worse, same or improved), but the media is perpetuating fear, so that means we're all supposed to be fearful of it since we're all supposed to react to things and believe the things the way media wants us to...

 

[Varzar]

Yes, the outcome is not yet known (ie worse, same or improved), but the media is perpetuating fear, so that means we're all supposed to be fearful of it since we're all supposed to react to things and believe the things the way media wants us to...

I would like to see more people using their own head instead of listening to the media in general.

And also read more literally what scientists actually say..
For example, "suggesting that this variant may have a growth advantage."
"may" is a word scientists use to mean, "we don't know yet". If they actually knew something, there would be numbers. A estimated percentage increase.. Something that isn't just fluff words like "may".

 

[QueenOfFrance87]

I posted this in a different thread here, but I think this is worth mentioning again.

I have very high anxiety over the Omicron virus. I am vaccinated, yet didn't get a booster shot yet because I am not sure if I qualify for one in my state. I also read that Moderna (the vaccine I got) may not be effective against it. I am really concerned about Christmas being canceled here because of the new virus. I am looking forward to visiting family members on Christmas, and even bought everyone presents. Now I am scared that my plans will all be in vain, and won't happen at all. We may still have a small party at my house, but at least one person may or may not show up, making it not so much a party.