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

Thank you. Of course if I really wanted to go and didn't care about anything I could - traveling abroad is only advised against, the borders are still open. If I were a covidiot, I could just hop on a train or plane. But I don't want to take the risk with my parents' health. I would only go if I could travel safely.

@AzulOscuro - Belated happy birthday!


Well, our Health Minister finally had to admit what we already knew - that the vaccine being used here is mainly useful for limiting severe cases/hospitalizations, but doesn't give you immunity from infection. I guess they kind of had to say something since a lot of people will be receiving their second doses in the coming weeks and need to understand that they will still have to be cautious. This, after weeks of saying it's not possible to discuss the efficacy of different vaccines and criticizing anyone that complained about the bait and switch.

My husband drove into the capital for a few errands on Friday. He went to a supermarket attached to a mall in the area where we used to live before moving here. They are in phase 3, but really during the week phase 3 and 2 are about the same. Strangely, though, he said it felt like the pandemic didn't exist. He had to walk through the mall to get to the supermarket and it was packed with people. Quite a few people weren't wearing masks. They weren't limiting capacity in either the supermarket or mall. It's so different from where we live. The supermarket has signs at the entrance saying masks are required and I've never seen someone inside maskless.They also control the number of people inside. The guard has a counter and once it hits the allowed maximum, you have to wait in a spaced out line to go in. If two people exit, then they let two more people inside. Now, of course, I am wondering how they supposedly have fewer cases than here when people are acting like that. It's a big supermarket and he had planned to buy some housewares that we need. However with the crowding, he just bought the bare minimum and got the hell out of there!

If you would be able to go to see your parents after so much time, well for you. You deserve a little of freedom. You are not a covidiot. You are being very responsible. Olé, you!

P.S.: Break, did your parents received the vaccine yet, at least?

Thank you but indeed you didn’t delay, You got the head in wishing me a Happy Birthday, it will be on the 20th of March. The last day of Winter. (I didn’t decide to show my mug until the Spring, with the warm weather, lol)

Going to the topic, It’s clear that not all the vaccines have the same effectivity. But, at least, they lower the risk of having deep effects of corono virus decease.
Here, we are still far from vaccinating all the elderly people who has a lot of risk. And to be honest, I’m very worried about them because it’s known they are paying the worse part of this pandemic.

@AzulOscuro - Ahh, okay. I thought it was last weekend.

What bothered me was that the government was refusing to even discuss that the vaccines have different efficacy levels. It was misleading to do so on their part. Now they kind of had to come clean, since people with the 2 vaccines are probably going to think they are more protected than they are.

The government just announced a new wave of lockdowns, many in major cities around the country. Over a month into the mass vaccination program and cases are as high as last June. The protests are cranking up again too. 61 people detained and buses and a monument burned in downtown Santiago last Friday. Today there's a big women's march. So, now, we wonder. If the vaccines help keep more people out of the hospital, will they keep the lockdowns or just use the case numbers to keep many areas in quarantine and limit protesting? That remains to be seen, I guess.

They just announced that people flying in from Brazil are subject to hotel quarantine due to the Brazilian variant. The Health Subsecretary says it's because it's more contagious. Of course, no mention that preliminary studies in Brazil are showing that Sinovac has an even lower efficacy against the Brazilian variant than it usually does.

I don’t want to seem a grumpy person but I can’t believe how some people can have some charges being so incompetent.
The main authority in Health Emergencies in my country gave an interview in a very well-known program. He was asked why when seeing what was happening in Italy, they didn’t take the decision to lock Spain. He replied it was because people wouldn’t understand it. I say, please, tell this same to the people who are deceased now. Stupid asshole!

I’m so fed up with politicians and a group of other peoples treat us as kids.

Let’s see, if you have a job and you donMt accomplish your labour because of a political decision. Resign your charge. Don’t give chance to politicians to do what they only know to do “politicing”.

So we've got another vaccine approved over here..... but even before it was approved they already announced they will deliver less than expected. So still don't see things moving any more quickly.

Honestly if this goes on much longer, I am going to become one of those idiots who doesn't care. Give me an opportunity and I'll take it. Because I will soon no longer be able to care about anything at all.

I wish I could've gone to the test festival back home. Don't even care for any of the musicians playing but I am longing for live music and being around people.

The thing is being very hard in Germany, isn’t it? News are telling this here about Germany.

@AzulOscuro, you will just love this one (sarcasm). As you may know, our president is a multi-billionaire businessman. Supposedly his money is in a blind trust to avoid Trump-style conflicts of interest. However, a little while back, they changed the rules for phase 2 (second strictest tier) to allow casinos to open during the week. I guess the trust is not too blind after all. It has been revealed that one of the banks that manages part of his trust holds 50% of the US$ debt of Enjoy, the company that owns many of the casinos here. Another bank that manages his money has secured some of that debt and is one of the main owners of Enjoy stock. The second bank also manages his the money of a family holding company too. Hmm, not suspicious at all.

Unfortunately for the rest, I can only find an article in Spanish.


Alejandra Matus revelo el nexo entre Pinera y casinos Enjoy, con una investigacion que pone en <<Jaque>> al Jefe de Estado | The Times en Espanol

Meanwhile, we were close to hitting 6,000 new cases today nationwide. The whole Metropolitan Region will be back in phase 2 as of tomorrow and many cities are going to be phase 1 (strict lockdown). They just announced yesterday that casinos can no longer operate in areas in phase 2. the Medical College, which had given their support to the vacation permit plan is now blaming the vacations for the case numbers.

Thank you @rechu for telling us about what is happening in Chile. It is very wrong and corrupt. It needs to be talked about!

I wonder if this will be the final nail in President Piñera's coffin. My husband was telling me that there is no impeachment process included in the constitution as there is in the US, so he'd probably have to resign. His popularity has been low since the protests in 2019, often in the single digits. The pandemic response has had its ups and downs. His popularity is up a bit now, because they've been rolling out the vaccines pretty quickly. However, all bets are off if the vaccine being used here isn't very effective, as many suspect.

Another expat I know here that likes to crunch the numbers said yesterday that of the larger countries that are vaccinating a lot, nearly all - US, UK, Israel - are seeing new cases level off or decline. The two exceptions are Chile and Serbia, the two countries that are mainly using Chinese-made vaccines - Sinovac here and Sinopharm in Serbia. They both use the older technology of an inactivated virus. Interesting.


Weird, I thought my husband would be trying to convince me to get the Sinovac vaccine once I qualify (probably next month). However, yesterday he said he understands if I want to wait a bit and see what the situation is as far as the other vaccines that have been ordered or for which they are negotiating purchases. I imagine that production has to ramp up soon and it may not be all that long that we will finally start getting more Pfizer shipments and possibly J&J (being negotiated) or AstraZeneca (ordered). Right now, Pfizer is only giving us crumbs - less than 500,000 doses in all. I work from home and don't need to go out too much, so I am pretty low risk.


I think he will also have to get revaccinated eventually so we can do that trip to Portugal once the situation improves. I was reading that the EU is considering requiring a vaccination passport to travel there and it will most likely not accept vaccines that are not approved for use there as valid.


I find it interesting that there have been a lot of articles written about how fast they have been vaccinating here, but they are written as if we are already have received a lot of Pfizer, AstraZeneca, etc. That is simply not true. Ordered or being negotiated does not mean they have arrived and are in use. I wonder if the government is feeding them that narrative.


96% of the population here is now in one of the two most restricted phases as of today.

It’s clear we don’t deserve what being a politician means nowadays, we need another kind of politicians who cares for their citizens’ interests and not their own ones. Unluckily they perverted what Politics is.

I feel confident I am safe from COVID. I have not eaten inside or outside a restaurant in over a year, I stayed in the house for the 3 month lockdown. I double mask. I’ve been super careful and I can hang on for another couple months until I get my vaccine. But then I do plan on going out to eat again and going back to work.

My parents got their booster and I am very relieved- both of them are in their 80s and don't handle illness like they used to. Their neighbours currently have covid and dad recently lost a friend to itso the risk has been a significant.

Apparently many people who have been vaccinated have stopped following guidelines according to a survey (40%) but my parents haven't, although we can see them outdoors. I can see why some older people may really want to see their families again. It's been such a long year. But I hope people will still be careful and not get too lax.

At work it feels like normal, it's been pretty crowded in the store, people are probably desperate to get out. Mostly they're wearing masks fortunately. So I feel like it's a limbo at the moment, normal and not normal at the same time.

We are going to have a minutes silence for all those who have lost their lives during the pandemic, next week at midday on 23rd. I have mixed feelings. It's important to honour these people but in the UK the minutes silence (we have one for armistice day and have had others for terrorist atrocities) have become meaningless. It doesn't sit well with me personally but I'll comply, I'll be at work and the store will no doubt schedule it.

Sometimes I feel like this last year has been so weird I haven't processed much of it. I've sat on the emotions. If and when this is suppressed enough not to be a problem I wonder if I'll process it then or how will I process it.

I'm glad to hear your parents are fully vaccinated @Discombobulated. What a relief. My parents are in their 70s and also got their second vaccines recently too.

I hope people are also taking into account that it takes some time after vaccination before it's actually effective? 2 weeks I think. And there's no certainty yet that you can't still spread the virus to others if you're vaccinated. (Which of course the covidiots are using as a reason not to get the vaccine, saying it only protects the person vaccinated. That's not necessarily true, we just don't know yet!)

More and more countries in Europe have stopped vaccination with AZ for now. As if it wasn't going slow enough already.

True, BreakForTheLight that it the vaccinations do need some time to reach full effect. It's still a jarring contrast that other countries vaccinating at similar rates to here that started at about the same time are starting to see new cases decline and no such trend can be observed here.


Today we had another day of over 5,000 new cases. 9 municipalities in the Metropolitan Region will go back into quarantine as of Thursday. We were spared for now. Most were densely populated urban areas. However the rural community just to the west of us was on the list.

Has anyone else gone from an early riser to dragging themselves from the bed to their desk 5-10 minutes before starting work? I hate how much this has changed me

I used to get up at 6 - or earlier if I wanted to go for a run - and be at the office at 8. Now I just wonder how the hell I managed? And I like early morning. But I can no longer get up early

Today is especially annoying because I'm still super tired so I decided to skip the run today, but the noise from the construction work started before 7 AM and is quite loud so I can't get any more sleep either :/

I add myself to your words for @Discombolutated and you for your parents.

Here, only 3% of the population has been vaccinated.
I think snails going up a hill are faster.

@BreakForTheLight


*Raises hand!* Almost every day. I have good intentions. I set the alarm early thinking I will do my work early and have some free time in the afternoon to get some things done around here. Instead, I hit the snooze a bunch of times, start late, end up working into the evening because I feel like what is the point of it all.

I admit I didn’t do so badly today. I managed to drag myself out of bed at 7:30 mainly because the dogs wanted to go out. Sometimes they are happy to laze around until later. I was able to get most of the plant watering done, wash dishes from last night, clean the cat box and do half an hour on the stationary bike. By 9 I was ready to work.

Other days, I’m in bed until 8:30-9:00 thinking I just can’t do this. I agreed to take on extra work for my client last weekend since they are busy. I got through Saturday okay. Sunday I worked a bit in the morning and just hit a wall. Mentally, I couldn’t continue. I’m lucky my client said it was okay to finish it yesterday , but that ended up being a long work day.

On top of everything I had contact with an old friend from Brazil. He lives in the US, although he spent some time in Brazil last year. I know his whole family. I’ve stayed with them when I’ve been in Brazil. His sister and her husband came here on their honeymoon and my ex and I showed them around. They’ve been so wonderful to me; I consider them family. Anyways their state has been hit really hard lately by Covid, as has most of Brazil. So, discussing that and how it has hit his family just made my mood take a turn for the worse.

Then, it’s so dark in the AM, so that doesn’t help at all. For some reason, during the last Bachelet presidency we didn’t change the clocks in fall one year, so we kind of got “stuck” in the same time zone as Argentina for most of the year. Winter time is only about 4 months here, we usually change in May and then again in August. It’s not light until about 8 AM right now.