How are you all dealing with coronavirus and the restrictions many of us have to live

Here, there’s been happening some cases of bad used of vaccines. In a town they didn’t return the left vaccines and the principal and all the town hall’s members were vaccinated. Then, There’s been some Communities’ Health Delegates who received the vaccine ignoring the order in the protocol. lol! Of course they have been criticised. And they are giving the most grotesque excuses.
I wonder where and why receiving a charge or take the charge onto something begun to mean that you are more irresponsible and you have your hands free to do whatever you will.
But, at this point in time, you already know me. I’m grumpy. lol!

@AzulOscuro Well, we do have this "pastel", as we say here, as our regional health director - El curriculum de Paula Labra, la ingeniera comercial que llego a la Seremi de Salud en reemplazo de Rosa Oyarce

Her appointment was not very well received. A lot of people think she's not the right person for the job. The way they explain her career background, I get the impression she's from a well-connected family. That helps a lot in the labor market.

Well, they gave an emergency authorization to the Sinovac vaccine here. I don't know if they can even call it a vaccine. Basically you can still get sick, but not as sick and probably don't need hospitalization. It sounds more like a treatment than a vaccine. They only authorized it for up to 60 years of age. They are saving the "good stuff" (limited number of Pfizer vaccines) for healthcare workers and the 60+ population. The rest of us get the less effective Chinese option, I guess. From comments I have been seeing online, a lot of people don't want the Sinovac vaccine. The government will have an uphill battle convincing people to receive it.


My sister knows about these things and advised me to get the AstraZeneca one if at all possible. She trusts the clinical trial results for that one and it's easier to store/handle than the Pfizer and Moderna ones. Argentina has ordered a lot and will eventually be manufacturing them. Maybe we need to hop across the border to get vaccinated. I guess I will see what things look like when I actually qualify for the vaccine. I'm about the last priority.

I see. Still seems weird to me to restrict certain items from being sold on the weekends. I get closing non-essential stores but to close off a part of a store that is otherwise open and only on certain days? So supermarkets can sell clothes through the week?

I did a calculation on some website last week to see when it'll be my turn for the vaccine and I got between August 2021 and May 2022. That is still a long time to go And there's delays now because they didn't get enough supply so maybe even later?

I can't deal anymore. My life has just been work, eat, sleep for so many months now - and all alone. And I don't even like my job.

The last concert I had planned has been completely cancelled now. Obvisouly was not expecting it to happen in March but I was hoping it'd be postponed. Now I have nothing left to look forward to and I'm pissed off that I will be donating money to the ticket website again. Not okay with that.

@BreakForTheLight - We ALL think it is idiotic, believe me. All it does is make the stores busier on the days where there is more freedom to go out and when you can purchase what you need. It compresses 7 days of purchases into 5. Because of this stupidity, the malls got even more packed than usual during the week before Christmas, which has probably led to the increase in cases. Many malls weren't keeping track of how many people were going in. Stores were limiting entry, but people had to line up to get in, which defeated the purpose of the limits within the stores.

A few other stupid things:

- Nike announced the launch of a new shoe, and there were hundreds of people waiting outside of Nike stores in malls today to be the first to buy them. They should have made people make appointments or only have sold them online.

- Our state bank announced that people had to exchange their debit cards with the metallic strip for chipped cards. A lot of people can't get a regular bank account in this country. They can only get a basic account from the state bank. So, of course everyone freaked out and went to the bank in person, causing huge lines. Later they clarified that people had until the end of the year to switch their cards and there are ways to request the change online. The bank should have really made it MUCH clearer from the start that people didn't have to deal with it immediately. People here tend to go running right away to the business or government office in question when things like this are announced. It's like when they permitted people to take funds out of their retirement plans. That caused massive lines as well even though you could do it online and have a year to request the transfer. A lot of people interviewed while waiting in line were on their smartphones but said they didn't trust requesting it online. So silly. Both my husband and I withdrew our money online with no issue.


But then this is the government of clowns that bought us the Sinovac vaccines and now is trying to do damage control and tell everyone how great they are. That was the topic of today's press conference. If they are so great, why aren't the healthcare workers getting them? Why aren't the US, Canada, Europe, etc. using them?

I think I am as grumpy as @AzulOscuro haha! I guess after my birthday I am a grumpy old lady!

Don’t even mention. If I have to spend another birthday alone, I’m gonna be the champion of the grumpy people.
Said that with respect to people who lose their relatives and lives.

I do wonder if the push by some in the government and the College of Physicians to send our region back to lockdown even when we are doing better than most other parts of the country has to do with hospital beds. They probably want to use our hospital capacity for patients from areas where they don't have many available beds. If so, it kind of sucks, like we are being held to a higher standard because we have the most capacity and many recently built, modern hospitals.

a lot of people in my area are talking about (or in some cases all ready have) covid vaxeens

noooooooo not me. hate needles, and that's the matter closed.

re: lockdown, the government says it might not be lifted until summer of this year.

happy new year guys. lol...... seriously though, not a great start.

Ha - I'm younger than both of you but I'm grumpy I wonder how many grumpy old people are actually just highly sensitive? Like hearing constant noise from my neighbours just drives me crazy!

Anyway, back on topic. Curfew started last night in my home country and of course the best way to show you don't agree with it is to set fire to a testing location. And the people coming up with god damn excuses for the vandalism "young people have been cooped up for too long" Like it's been easy for the rest of us?!

It's getting worse now People are just using the curfew as an excuse to destroy things and attack police It's making me so sad and angry. And scared. Not for my safety, I live hundreds of km away, but scared for what's going to happen next. Scared that so many people have so much rage.

The youngest person arrested on Sat night was 14. Where the hell were the parents, what are they teaching these kids?!

That sucks BreakForTheLight. Here a lot of curfew violations are for superspreader parties, but crime seems to be on the rise too. There has been a spate of home invasion robberies past curfew in the capital, for example. A few homeowners defended themselves. One killed one of the criminals.

At least I am pretty removed from it too. Our area is peaceful and we have 24 hour security in my neighborhood. A friend that lives not far from where I used to live in Santiago says the city feels less safe these days.

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And now for my rant:


If anyone else that lives in a country that has ordered decent vaccines and whose government is carrying out vaccinations efficiently tries to tell me it will be all over soon, we see the light at the end of the tunnel. I will scream. Here nearly all of the vaccines that have been ordered are Sinovac, which recently only had 50.3% efficacy in trials in Brazil. Basically, a lot of people still get sick. The only advantage is that they generally don't need hospitalization. We will be more likely to get to herd immunity from people still getting sick than from the vaccine itself. Vaccination is going extremely slowly as well. I feel like the pandemic is probably going to last a lot longer here and we could even face travel bans by countries that have it better under control at some point.


Frontline healthcare workers and those over 60 were initially promised the Pfizer/Biontech vaccine. But, due to delays on Pfizer's part, the government now wants to start giving the Sinovac vaccine to some hospital workers. At one hospital, so far, the employee association has come out to say they will refuse the Sinovac vaccine; they want the Pfizer/Biontech vaccine. Our public health institute has NOT received safety data from the manufacturer yet, but still approved it for emergency use. They had the spokesperson for the hospital workers on TV and the program hosts were criticizing her for turning people against the vaccine, even though she said clearly that her reason is that they have not been able to see the data that was used to decide to approve it. Basically it's an issue of sunk costs, the government has spent the money and now they have to try and sell it to the population with the help of the media.


Just one example of why I don't have confidence in this vaccine Like it or not, China does not have a good record of safety or transparency for vaccines:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/l...695-7/fulltext

In July, China experienced its “worst public health crisis in years” as stated by South China Morning Post. Chinese vaccine maker Changsheng Biotechnology was found to have fabricated production and inspection records and to have arbitrarily changed process parameters and equipment during its production of freeze-dried human rabies vaccines. Furthermore, substandard diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus (DPT) vaccines produced by Changsheng Biotechnology were administered to 215 184 Chinese children; and 400 520 substandard DPT vaccines produced by Wuhan Institute of Biological Products were sold in Hebei and Chongqing.

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And this is what the New York Times is saying:

China Wanted to Show Off Its Vaccines. It’s Backfiring. - The New York Times

In the Philippines, some lawmakers have criticized the government’s decision to buy a vaccine made by a Chinese company, Sinovac. Officials in Malaysia and Singapore, which both ordered doses from Sinovac, have had to reassure their citizens that they would approve a vaccine only if it had been proved safe and effective.

“Right now, I would not take any Chinese vaccine, because there’s insufficient data,” said Bilahari Kausikan,an influential former official at Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He added that he would consider it only with “a proper report.”

At least 24 countries, most of them low and middle income, signed deals with the Chinese vaccine companies because they offered access when richer nations had claimed most of the doses made by Pfizer and Moderna. But the delays in getting the Chinese vaccines and the fact that the vaccines are less effective mean that those countries may take longer to vanquish the virus.

Meanwhile, we have this going on:

With First Dibs on Vaccines, Rich Countries Have ‘Cleared the Shelves’ - The New York Times

The U.S., Britain, Canada and others are hedging their bets, reserving doses that far outnumber their populations, as many poorer nations struggle to secure enough.

As a growing number of coronavirus vaccines advance through clinical trials, wealthy countries are fueling an extraordinary gap in access around the world, laying claim to more than half the doses that could come on the market by the end of next year.

While many poor nations may be able to vaccinate at most 20 percent of their populations in 2021, some of the world’s richest countries have reserved enough doses to immunize their own multiple times over.

Rant over for the day!

I know. It's crazy Rechu. We won't be over this until the world is vaccinated.

I was watching TV last night and they interviewed an elderly gentleman who was very grateful to get his vaccine. They asked him if he had any plans and he said he would like to travel abroad. I think many people in privileged countries just don't understand the full situation.

The irony about the vaccines is that many of the top efficacy ones were trailed in Brazil, including the Oxford one.

This one made me laugh

It's so silly that even with strangers I always wonder what they think, or if they think me odd. It has triggered my last panic attack, because I breathed through the mouth (it's just easier when I am tense) and I remembered not long ago when I did that some people I would have passed noticed and said to each other something along the lines of "that one is breathing through her mouth. Let's cross to the other side". I mean I get it, but -_-

Yes, and democracy is already hollowed out in many countries. Let's hope this crisis and the coming economic one don't make things worse. And I hope my country will remember it's history.. the younger generation espacially have no interest in this and rather use it to be scandalous and 'funny'. And the older generation have lost the will and interest to repremand this sort of behaviour. Not that they would be heard anyways..

I once taking my doggies out at night, I forgot the face mask, I was all the time covering my mouth with the long neck of my wool jumper. I felt so out of place and ashamed.

I forgot my face mask, again. Fortunately the store I entered had masks available by the door so I didn’t need to walk back into the cold and get my mask.

I just found out the waiting list site is only good for one week. So next Tuesday I have to enter mums info again, and every week until she gets picked!

I feel you

@Discombobulated - Yeah, they did AstraZeneca trials here too. I know someone who participated. With hindsight, I sort of feel like I should have looked into participating. It would have been a way to get a vaccine, but they were done at a hospital in the north of Santiago, when I live 40 km to the south of the city. I would have had to put myself at risk of COVID on the train and Metro just to get there and back. The AstraZeneca vaccine was approved here today. However, there are production problems and the EU is trying to restrict exports of the vaccine until their orders are fulfilled. I heard a statement from a government official here that made it sound like we are getting doses in a few months, but no one seems to be paying attention to the battle to get vaccines that is going on in the world. As a small, middle-income country with no clout, we are way down the priority list.


The propaganda campaign to get people to get the Sinovac vaccine continues. They have doctors on all the morning news shows trying to shame anyone that questions it. One guy did a short comparison of Sinovac with AstraZeneca and basically glossed over the difference in efficacy. I am sure most of the doctors speaking have already had their Pfizer vaccines. No one has even asked or answered if what we are getting will be useful on new strains. Supposedly, the municipalities are setting up vaccination centers next month. I wonder how many people will actually go. My husband and I are sort of wondering if it's going to be a sort of a elite vs. lower income segments of society issue. People over 60 automatically are supposed to get the Pfizer vaccine, which includes a lot of our high-level political leaders, business leaders, etc. I am sure if you have money you can find other ways to get the more effective vaccines, possibly in the private system. Others will be stuck with the less effective option. Who knows if we will be headed towards new social unrest due to it? Sadly, lower-income households often live in crowded conditions and have more preexisting health conditions, so they probably have more of a need for a vaccine that gives better results.


Oh, yeah and don't get me started on the people that want to travel here. Again on the forum for expats, after that guy wanted to figure out how to avoid quarantine to go fly fishing with 8 or his nearest and dearest friends, there have been more inquiries from people that want to come here now. One guy wanted to go to a region that is under strict lockdown with limited hospital capacity. Again, he was told by the site administrator it was a bad idea. People can't see beyond their own nose and what they want to do. I don't even think he had been vaccinated yet, and it's not clear yet if vaccination means you can't transmit the virus. The last thing we need is more imported cases. Covidiots and their parties are doing a good enough job spreading it around as it is.

@AzulOscuro. I did the same thing the other day. I went to take one of the dogs out for a walk early in the AM and I completely forgot the mask. It's silly, there was hardly anyone out, just a few people in their cars heading out for work. I could have been fined regardless, since our municipality requires them in all public spaces. Fortunately we are in a small gated community outside of town so the police and municipal security don't come around much.

What the f***? I haven't checked the news in a few days, so this is the first time I hear of it. At any rate, if we are doing that it is entirely unaccaptable

COVID-19 vaccine: EU threatens to block exports over AstraZeneca delivery delays | Euronews

Here's an article that discusses it.

Rechu, it sucks they're going for the less effective vaccine!

To be honest, I didn't think about other counties either The EU isn't getting the doses they reserved though due to shortage.

We now have to wear "medical" face masks on public transport and in stores. Either surgical face mask or KN95 are acceptable. Not sure how I feel about that. The fabric of surgical masks might be better suited for the job but at least the ones we got at work, the fit was terrible - in that regard, my cloth ones fit way better. And they're washable. The surgical masks also smelled horrible. I wore a KN95 one for the first time this morning for grocery shopping and it was definitely more uncomfortable. And such a waste to wear an expensive mask for 10 minutes in the store and it should theoretically be thrown out after one use.

Yes @rechu there seems to be quite a bit of controversy over the Oxford/AstraZeneca. I feel that it may be also to do with the tussle of Britain leaving the EU too, EU are saying they will limit supplies of Pfizer to Britain. It really is awful timing.

I have heard Pfizer works better in older age groups, but much of the trouble is that the trials were limited within older age groups.

I understand about your concerns re volunteering for vaccine trials. I was on the registry to volunteer myself but by the time I got called up (for the Jansen vaccine trial) others were already being given emergency use here. I didn't like the thought of getting a placebo and forgoing my own vaccine chance. I feel guilty saying that but at the end of the day we have to look after ourselves.

My friend is slowly recovering from covid, but she has been very sick. This virus isn't something to underestimate.

@BreakForTheLight, basically it's, as the saying goes here, "es lo que hay" it's what there is. We don't have facilities to manufacture our own and we aren't exactly a world power so I guess they settled with what they could get. Another good saying is "peor es nada", meaning it's better than nothing, which is exactly the reaction of my sister who is a biologist in the US and knows about those things. There's actually a town named that! And, of course "pasar gato por liebre" trying to pass off a cat for a hare, basically promising one thing but giving us another. That's your Chilean Spanish lesson for the day.

Peor es Nada - Wikipedia

My suspicious side thinks there may be more to the situation. It is kind of convenient for our unpopular government. People will still be getting infected, but it sounds like hospitalizations and deaths will be lower. Even so, they may try and use the infection rates to declare quarantines if the protests pick up again.

The person I listen to the most on Youtube for my Covid information is Dr. Campbell because he makes the information so easy to understand. In his latest video (), he was saying that the new UK variant is not only more contagious but also is causing more symptoms (making people more sick). Yes, the virus is quite serious--it has overwhelmed many hospitals and IMO we are still learning about the long term affects and there could be further mutations (hopefully making it less virulent but it could also become even more dangerous--because the UK variant is more transmissible, it will likely eventually replace the older variant ). I hope your friend recovers completely.

Yes they are learning more about the UK Kent variant. It is far more transmissible which one of the reasons why infection rates are taking longer to drop here despite lockdown. It seems to invade cells quicker too and it is sadly slightly more likely to be fatal. In the UK I believe it is replacing the other version which is how viruses evolve I guess.

For other countries I absolutely think border controls are essential to try to limit the variant spreading further.

I've just been reading professor Jonathan Van-Tam saying we should start to see the effects of vaccination over next few weeks. We now have 10% vaccinated at least once. They know the vaccine protects against getting seriously sick but it's suspected it will also make it less transmissible although that is yet unknown. If that's the case we may see a significant drop in infection and hospitalization. I hope so.

It's been scary knowing the NHS has been on the brink of being overwhelmed this month.

Thanks for your well wishes for my friend, she has been quite sick but her husband much less so.

When having panic attacks (mine returned), is it normal that crying helps? Also, when do you go to the hospital? Today, I constantly feel pressure in my chest.

On the other hand, my symptoms could possibly be explained with hyperthyroidism. Wish me luck