How are you all dealing with coronavirus and the restrictions... #2

I really don't understand the fuss around staff refusing vaccination. I already shared here that when I volunteered in a hospital my immunisation record was checked and they screened my blood for antibodies to check if I needed my hepatitis redone (I didn't but would have if I'd had to). It's not new having to be vaccinated to work or volunteer in hospitals.

Vaccination is proven to cut transmission by half for delta I believe.

I think that vaccinations are very good (I have been had both COVID shots, take the flu shot every year and so many others) but at the end of the video below, some of the reasons that some shouldn't be vaccinated are discussed (for instance, if you have a reaction to the first vaccine, I believe the vaccine makers say you shouldn't get the second shot and if you don't--you aren't considered fully vaccinated ). But yes, I agree that too many might be anxious about something that likely (I am not a doctor ) does much more good than harm. It is shame there is so much hype and fear but I wish the discussion was more medical than political. Because COVID is becoming more prevalent again--I am also watching Dr. John Campbell's videos again, having more groceries delivered and wearing a mask in indoor public settings.

Yes I agree, it should be more medical than political in my opinion too.

There are definitely some (very small numbers I believe) who can't be vaccinated, my sister works with one such person - she's had an organ transplant. It does throw up a dilemma in a small minority of cases it's true. Sadly these people are also more vulnerable to covid 19 so it's a horrible situation for them. My sister's colleague cannot return to the office while covid is in circulation, added to this she is aware many in her office chose to refuse their vaccine on non medical grounds. It's such a horrible situation.

I'm glad you got both your vaccines @TunedOut
and that you are able to take the steps you need to to stay safe too. I too continue to wear a mask in my job, I'm not sure how much of difference it makes but for me wearing a mask has never been more than a very minor inconvenience so it's not a big deal. We've all got to do what we feel comfortable with IMO, and be considerate of each other too, some of us are higher risk groups than others.

They are reintroducing mask recommendations now. It's such a mess. If you live in a county with a certain number of active Covid cases per 100k, the state recommends that you wear a mask indoors. This will change every day (and already did within 12 hours of them making the first announcement)! It seems like the majority of people where I live do not want to go back to this. The attitude is either a) I'm vaccinated, the unvaccinated should go get the shot or b) Covid is a hoax, I'm not wearing a mask.


I've decided I'm not going to eat or drink indoors for now. I did this weekend and it just made me nervous. I made us leave the first restaurant because it was really crowded, there were kids, and I could hear someone coughing. The next place was not very full but staffed by teenagers. Were they vaccinated? I think less than 50% of kids 12-18 have decided to get the shot here.

I alternate between feeling protected by the vaccine and feeling paranoid where someone coughs or there are a bunch of maskless kids running around. My husband is in a band and they are going to start playing in bars now that those restrictions have lifted and I am sure he is going to catch it from that.


It seems a bunch of companies in the US are starting to mandate vaccines. It's going to get interesting.

I made a last ditch effort to persuade my brother to get vaccinated. It did not work. I brought up the fear of needles but he said it's not that. I am struggling to accept that he believes the things he was saying.

Our wave has started. I went to a workshop this weekend (outdoors) and got some interesting perspectives. One woman was a nurse who felt like she is seeing the canary in the coal mine, a sudden influx of unvaccinated patients who are very bad off. The way she described it was that people were showing up in the ER and going straight to the ICU and Regeneron whereas before there may have been another stage of treatment in between. She's already stopped going to indoor unmasked events. Another woman is a library director and she is planning to shut down again. I'd hoped we wouldn't go back to that.

I did not expect this to start so soon. It's the middle of summer. People are outside, not inside. School is out. The majority of people are vaccinated with mRNA vaccines. We had single digit case counts this time last year with no vaccines. Delta is ugly.

@hvert Wow, that doesn't sound good, and what about Florida? It sounds even worse there.

We seem to be settling at a positivity under 2% and under 1,000 new cases a day lately nationwide. Hospitalizations are down quite a bit. I think the only way we are going to stay this way is if they keep the strict entry controls and required quarantine for arrivals. They seem, anyways, to have helped limit Delta.

I don't want to go back to lockdowns again.

I also really, really don't want to see anymore lockdowns (although ours were nowhere hear as restrictive as yours @rechu)

Well 2 weeks on after all restrictions ended and cases are down quite a lot, last couple of days 21,000, deaths are still up but it could well still be a lag from the last peak a few weeks ago. It's early days to jump to conclusions but some very well respected scientists are saying we might be past the worst.

I still don't feel like celebrating however and certainly taking care in my daily life. Take care all.

Oh my god. I just saw pictures from Lollapalooze in Chicago a few days ago and I am lost for words.

Yes, I enjoyed my concerts and I'm so happy I got to experience those, but this is on a whole new level of stupid. Those crowds! In a pandemic!

The last concert I went to already felt like the Corona proof plan was a bit of a farce. Security was VERY uptight about people wearing their masks as soon as they got up from their table. Which would've made sense if people were ONLY sitting together in their bubbles. But they also sold single seats at shared tables. I sat with 3 strangers and my dad at a table for 4. (My dad insisted on driving me and then bought a last minute ticket. Instead of assigning him a seat, they told him to just grab a chair and join me at my table. Bye bye 1,5 m to other tables.)

I saw some videos from the same musician playing in Austria a few days later, where there didn't seem to be any seating at all and people were just standing close together. That already confused me. But those pictures from Lollapalooza are 100x worse.

@Discombobulated it would be wonderful if this wave has already passed you by! I am just so surprised at the timing here. I expected this in the fall, when kids were back in school and we all move indoors to stay warm.

@BreakForTheLight I was wondering if you would go to your music festival - I read that some were being canceled where you are? It's great you had the chance to go and hear live music in a fairly low risk environment! The whole 'wear your mask when you leave the table but not at the table' makes no sense to me. I think it misleads people into thinking it is safe to eat inside restaurants or to have funerals and weddings. It's security theatre, like taking off your shoe at the airport.


Those Lollapalooza photos make me think that will be a superspreader event like Sturgis was. Everyone was supposed to show proof of vaccination or a negative test result but I read that they were not that great about checking. Some restaurants here are requiring proof of vaccination for those who want to eat indoors. The state does not make it easy - my only proof is the little paper card they gave me and god knows where it is. I took it with me a month ago to a place that required proof of vaccination (which they then never asked for) and am not sure where it wound up.

I'm really surprised @hvert that proof is by card only. Over here we have an NHS app which you have to register for with your patient ID, apparently you can download/print off too but I've never done that. I'm sure it would be fairly easy to forge/screenshot however.

There is an irony here, we have the technology in place but no where I know of is asking for proof of vaccination except for border entry. No venues are requiring it. Yet I am reading you don't yet have technology in place but venues are asking for proof?

I honestly don't see proof of vaccination ever being accepted practice in the UK, it's something in the British psychology, a personal liberty thing possibly. There would be a backlash I suspect if places introduced it.

My state is so behind technologically If I lose my card, I am not even sure how I can get another, I guess by contacting the provider who sponsored the clinic? There's a centralized database at the state level but I have no access to it as an individual. Also, we don't have centralized medical records here - I have to request my records separately for each provider I visit.


My county has had very high vaccine uptake and the majority support these kinds of measures. An hour north, not so much! So far it is a small number starting to ask for proof but I think more will jump on board. It's sort of a sales pitch - the unvaccinated people here would probably not go to these types of places anyway.


The quick rise and fall of Delta in the UK gives me hope that we will see a dramatic drop also. I just don't see how we won't get a massive rise once the kids are back in school with no masks. Under 12s can't get vaccinated still. They are talking about Lambda here as well now.

Lambda, also known as the Brazilian variant is ours and Peru's contribution to the whole variant mess. I am not sure how bad it really is because it went through here about the same time the Manaus (gamma) strain did.

Here we have what is called a "mobility pass". When we were in lockdown or weekend lockdown you could use that to go out instead of the regular 2-hour permit and you could stay out as long as you wanted as long as you didn't cross into another municipality (not like there was anywhere to go!). I only ever had to show it to get into the supermarket a few times. By the last lockdown, the military and police seemed to be bored with enforcement. There was never anyone out checking.


Now, that we are more opened up, they are checking the mobility pass for other purposes. If everyone is vaccinated, gyms, restaurants, etc. can let more people in than if there are unvaccinated people. I saw in the press that some restaurants are making the non-vaccinated eat outside only.


Punta Arenas, way down south is in phase 4 and they allowed dance clubs to open. Already one has been shut back down again because people weren't following health rules. Of course the people at the club were stupid enough to film their behavior and post it online.

There is an exemption for older people (70+, maybe?) so that they don't need the pass on their phone. They can just show their card, since many do not have smartphones.

Over here, the "digital" proof of vaccination is a print out of a QR code, which you then scan to upload it in the app. And then when needed, the code can be scanned (and should be matched to your ID! That is the step they apparently missed in the Netherlands and how many people were able to enter clubs with fake proof/fake test results.)

But when I came back to Germany from the Netherlands (currently classified as high risk) I had to register my entry into the country and submit proof of vaccination, I had no idea what to use either of course the website didn't have a QR code scanner. In the end I took a screenshot of the code in the app with my name above it. No idea if that was right but I haven't gotten a call from health officials that I should be in quarantine so I guess I'm good??

Speaking of quarantine..... now me and my parents have all been vaccinated so we are exempt from having to quarantine anyway. But if that hadn't been the case, going back to Germany, *I* would've had to quarantine for 10 days (with the possibility to shorten it to 5 days with a neg test result on day 5). My parents, who travelled with me, would have been exempt from quarantine due to visiting a first degree relative in Germany. That relative is me. Who travelled with them. How does that make any sense at all??? (Granted, I don't think they created that rule with this situation in mind where I visited them and they then visited me but a virus doesn't care WHY you are travelling somewhere, it won't hop off you at the border because you're visiting family!)

I think the Netherlands has a slightly different app, where you get a green check with either a proof of vaccination or a (recent) negative test result. The person scanning the code can't see which of the two you have. Still people are very against it but Dutch people just like to complain about everything

Still long hauling, next week will mark 9 months since my infection.

I’ve been numbing myself with benzos and melatonin and trying to focus on losing weight to deal with Covid. People don’t seem to get why I’m so concerned about it since I’m fully vaccinated and I wear a mask and stuff. But then again even the most understanding and supportive people never quite get my anxiety.

It's just gone on for too long for me. I know everyone is sick of it, not just me. But the effect on me is getting bad, and I'm not coping well.

I went from years of being kind of tied down, caring for my boyfriend, who died last year, to being rather isolated due to COVID. Back when he passed away, we couldn't even have a normal funeral or go to the cemetery. I still haven't seen the grave because I live two thousand miles away from where he is buried. After the service, I had to come riight back to empty out his apartment. That meant I spent very little time with my family. My plan had been to go back for a visit, but I didn't because of COVID.

Then my plan was to go back after I got vaccinated and things in society went back to normal. Well, "normal" has yet to be resumed. Now I'm just out of the hospital myself and still being treated for a health problem. So I'm not going to do any flying for a while. Maybe I'll make that trip next spring.

I live alone and don't have much of a support network here. My plan had been to find activities to join where I would be around people. COVID has vastly limited opportunities for that. And it just goes on and on and on. I thought I did good getting through the last year, but this thing is not ending.

I'm depressed. My apartment is a mess. I don't really confide in anyone, except here, because it would do no good. I don't want to worry my far away family. Last year I looked into therapy, but I didn't find much available. I had no interest in Zoom encounters with a mental health counselor. So I'm way too alone for way too long, and I'm going downhill. This isolation has just gone on too long.

It must have been exhausting grieving in and around all these restrictions.

I wonder are you able to join a walking group? It's something that occurs to me because nearby where I live there are several. They are meeting up again now and I see them out and about, it seems a good way to meet people.

Here now it's strange, cases did drop, but now they've settled around 29,000 daily but in this area where they were so high they've really dropped which is good.

My son has just got given a contact tracing alert and is having to come home to isolate, he's going to have to stay in his room and avoid us. He's ordered a full PCR test just in case. He feels fine.

I am trying not to be judgmental, but some friends of mine in the US are off in Los Cabos, Mexico, with their two daughters who are too young to be vaccinated. I had read recently that thy are having a new surge in the more touristy areas of the country like Cancún and Los Cabos, mainly due to people bringing in delta to the US and low vaccination rates (only around 20%, the last I read). It sounds like delta is more risky for kids than other variants.


They aren't anti vax or conspiracy theorists or anything. I think they are just pandemic fatigued, like most of us. It just seems selfish to me, however. When you are a parent, aren't you supposed to put your kids' well-being first? They may want to pretend like the pandemic is gone, but that's not how it works.

Rose, that sounds like such a difficult situation. I am very sorry. A lot of people have been robbed of the opportunity to say goodbye to their loved ones the way they wanted over the past year and a half. It's another awful aspect of this whole situation.

Thanks for the suggestion. I'm still kind of weak, but I did used to live walking.

One of the walking groups I see about looks all abilities, so maybe you could find something similar? The thing I notice is they are always chatting and seem friendly. Good luck!

Thanks, rechu.

COVID has done far worse things to so many people, compared to how it has impacted me. But how MUCH MORE will it do to me . . . to any of us? We don't KNOW. That's a big source of anxiety to me. After Delta, will there be Lamda? Could we be working our way toward an OMEGA variant, when, as Dr. Fauci puts it: "We'll have real problems." Given what I see as Fauci's aversion to over-alarming people, I shudder to imagine what he means by "real problems."

Is this thing EVER going away? I suspect it is not! So - for the rest of my life, will every move I make to venture beyond my front door involve me taking a calculated risk with my health? Think about that!

Fifteen months ago, I watched someone succumb to acute respiratory failure. There are easier ways to go.

Every time I take off in my car, I'm risking getting smashed into by some drunk, as happened to me some years ago. I don't think about it. I just drive where I want, when I want. Can I get that comfortable about inhaling air exhaled by other people that might be tainted with COVID? I hate having to worry about that. I wouldn't drink funny looking water. But air that contains COVID virus looks exactly like air that doesn't. I feel like the worrying will never end. I just hate that.

no offense @rechu
But I am sick of hearing about pandemic fatigue. I get it. no one wants to wear masks or get shots or social distance but its a deadly illness. How about the nurses who got fatigued the first round? My brother working 14 hour days with no lunch or pee breaks. Having to change gear everytime he had to check on a new patient? The face acne and permanent marks from masks? The exhaustion? Poor testing so that he did get covid and the minute his 10 days were up he was told they needed him to work? This isnt directed at you but I am just sick of it. Poor babies who dont want to wear masks or worse- protesting them. How about you protest famine in Africa, or female sexual mutilaton in Nigeria? And plleeassee read the constitution and show me where it says your "rights" extend to mask refusal? My son is a law student and we went through the constitution and couldnt find anything. And Mandates against mask mandates like Governor douche in FL? I get it if he doesnt want a state mandate but why prevent individual districts from making their own? And hes threatening to withhold pay from officials? I'd like to see that stand up in court. Sorry, rant over.

Quote:

Originally Posted by rechu I am trying not to be judgmental, but some friends of mine in the US are off in Los Cabos, Mexico, with their two daughters who are too young to be vaccinated. I had read recently that thy are having a new surge in the more touristy areas of the country like Cancún and Los Cabos, mainly due to people bringing in delta to the US and low vaccination rates (only around 20%, the last I read). It sounds like delta is more risky for kids than other variants. They aren't anti vax or conspiracy theorists or anything. I think they are just pandemic fatigued, like most of us. It just seems selfish to me, however. When you are a parent, aren't you supposed to put your kids' well-being first? They may want to pretend like the pandemic is gone, but that's not how it works. Rose, that sounds like such a difficult situation. I am very sorry. A lot of people have been robbed of the opportunity to say goodbye to their loved ones the way they wanted over the past year and a half. It's another awful aspect of this whole situation.

No offense taken, Sarah. I feel the same way. That's why I said they were being selfish. We have been under some of the strictest pandemic policies in the world in my country.

Even though things here are a lot better, the mask mandate hasn't been lifted and it seems like it will be around for a while. The Health Ministry is keeping an eye on countries like the US and UK that lifted the requirements and for now thinks it is too soon to do so. Fortunately, here, the whole mask thing is not political. There have been a few incidents of people reacting badly to being asked to wear a mask, but it's not to the extent in the US where is has co-opted a whole political party. It's similar with vaccines. We have one of the highest vaccination rates in the world. Much higher than the US.


Travel abroad and inbound travel are nearly impossible due to the many restrictions. The last thing we need is a delta surge and the increased stress on health workers that other places are seeing. Still, on sites related to expats in this country, travel, etc. there are always posts from people looking to come here get around the restrictions. I guess they think they are special. We have gone through hell to get the numbers down and to be able to live more freely. I don't want irresponsible people coming in to ruin it because they just HAVE to travel now.


I would love a vacation, I haven't had one since this all started and don't know when I will be able to. Of course I am pandemic fatigued, but I also realize that this isn't over and I don't think it is the right time, especially when my husband got the least effective vaccine and needs a booster soon.


We finally are at about 1,000 hospitalizations nationwide down from 4,000 a few months ago. Sadly, I don't know how much rest the healthcare employees will be able to get. There is a huge backlog of surgeries that were postponed due to Covid.

I am just amazed by people that your brother that have been able to keep going, working on the front lines with no breaks. I know I couldn't. At the same time it disgusts me that people won't take basic public health precautions to try to stop the spread. I mean how many of those overflowing hospitals now could have prevented it by getting vaccinated and using a mask?