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

@SprinkL3 yes that does sound confusing! Idk but your friend might be in a good position to have had that J&J shot 1st as hopefully he’s got the benefit of T-Cell response from what I’ve been reading.

Okay so looks like I’m the first to post about Omicron here. Here we go again. 2 cases here already. Masks back on in stores (probably they should never have been off). Just hoping this one isn’t going to be as bad as feared.

OMICRON UPDATE - Per "Your Local Epidemiologist":

Cases reported in their tabular:

South Africa = 99 confirmed, 990 probable

Botswana = 6 confirmed, 9 probable

England = 2 confirmed

Hong Kong = 2 confirmed

Italy = 1 confirmed

Israel = 1 confirmed, 7 probable

Belgium = 1 confirmed

Czech Republic = 1 confirmed

Netherlands = 61 probable

Germany = 3 probable

Denmark = 2 probable

Austria = 1 probable

Global Totals = 113 confirmed, 1,073 probable

@Discombobulated - Yes, my friend is in a healthy position. My nephew has had a breakthrough case and survived. He has an autoimmune disorder, so his condition and his medications prevent him from absorbing the vaccines fully, but he nonetheless was fully vaccinated when he had a breakthrough case. He was just in the hospital for surgery a month prior, and then he celebrated his birthday with other young persons in their 20s and early 30s, who accidentally gave him Covid-19 (since many of his friends weren't vaccinated). He wound up in the hospital again, but not in ICU. He was just there for observation for maybe one or two days. He claims that the vaccines saved his life from severe disease or death. Many of the deaths from breakthrough cases are among the unvaccinated, partially vaccinated, or immunocompromised persons (the young disabled, the middle-aged disabled, the elderly disabled). It is therefore imperative that all persons get the vaccines unless there are allergic reactions to all vaccines. Some people may be allergic to some vaccines but not others, so they elect to take the vaccines that won't give them an allergic reaction. My nephew had the Moderna vaccine - which is notably the vaccine with the lowest rate for breakthrough cases among healthy persons WITHOUT immunocompromised conditions.

Vaccine hesitancy is largely due to the following reasons:

1. Safety and efficacy concerns

2. Preference for physiological immunity

3. Distrust in government and health organizations

4. Autonomy and personal freedom

But to dispel any rumors/misinformation/disinformation and allay any concerns, Johns Hopkins Medicine has stated the following science-based information:

*****

Even with new Variants of Concern (VoCs), vaccines still protect you from the other variants of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that can lead to the disease COVID-19. Like the influenza vaccinations, it is important to protect yourself and others from spreading any communicable diseases during a pandemic, due to possible "crisis standards of care" that could pose a threat to getting care in emergency rooms and intensive care units when Covid-19 cases are too high and thus may take precedence in some hospitals and treatment facilities.

Additionally, vaccines also help prevent hefty hospital bills due to long hospital stays, long-term rehabilitation for the unvaccinated who do survive with severe Long-Covid disease (which may be permanently disabling, thus causing more than hefty hospital bills, but also unemployment, career loss, possible relational loss, and definite financial loss), etc. Who needs $1000 to over $1,000,000 in hospital bills that could be prevented with vaccines?! When it comes to the economy, it makes more financial sense to use preventative measures rather than risk your own pocket book and the taxpayer dollars of others'. The vaccines are a win-win situation, even though certain disinformation campaigns will continue to spread lies based on political extremism and religious extremism. Lies do not equate to true religious practices, for one, so this is how easy it may be for cults to terrorize and cripple economies, infrastructures, groups, and individual human lives. Also, political extremism has also become blended with not only political-based disinformation campaigns, which includes extreme versions of lies intended to harm (not help) both individuals and groups, both the poor and the rich, and mostly the unvaccinated from their own parties and families - just to prove a political point and "to be right." They are far from "right."

For these reasons and more, there are many people who are now getting vaccinated for the first time, and there are many people who are getting boosters. There are many people who are doing what they can to spread truth (like I am doing here), which is NOT POLITICAL, NOT RELIGIOUS, but rather TRUTHFUL HEALTH-BASED INFORMATION BASED ON EVIDENCE-BASED PRACTICES AND SCIENCE, AND CAN ALSO IMPROVE BOTH (DIRECT) PHYSICAL HEALTH AS WELL AS (INDIRECT) MENTAL HEALTH, insofar that fewer loss/grief traumas, fewer medical traumas, and fewer related traumas from avoiding severe or fatal illnesses are preventative measures supporting mental health.

There are way more benefits and fewer risks to getting vaccinated, when compared to those who aren't getting vaccinated or who only get partially vaccinated.

Yay, more doom and gloom! So sick of it all. I'm sure the entire world is. Just don't know what else to say anymore.

And sick of the sob stories from the side who shouldn't be complaining. I read a story yesterday about a family who had just come back from South Africa and had been stuck on a plane for 4 hours. I listened to the interview with the dad and he actually didn't seem to be that upset about it, but the article was written so dramatically, like it was some traumatising experience, and oh no now all these people will have to go into isolation and this dad can't see his other two daughters and it's such a horrible thing to happen to them! Yes, it absolutely does suck and the organisation was a mess at the airport and should've done better. BUT these are the risks you take when you travel across continents in the middle of a pandemic. It's not the first time people have been stuck abroad. If I would have had to quarantine after coming from the UK it would have sucked, but I knew it was a risk I was taking and I wouldn't expect a newspaper to turn it into a story

All these stories from people being a tiny bit inconvenienced by the restrictions annoy me so much. It's like people still don't understand that we're in an exceptional situation - a freaking pandemic - and things sometimes just suck. I'd much rather be stuck on a plane than on a ventilator in a hospital! Sure, complain to your friends and family because it IS a ****** situation, but do we really need to turn every tiny thing into a "news" article? Life isn't all smooth sailing, sometimes things go wrong and it's not nice and I totally understand people get upset, but we shouldn't be giving more fodder to the anti-everything crazies.

My sympathy goes out to the people who did all they could to protect themselves and still got sick. To all the people who have had important surgeries postponed because the hospitals are overrun by covid patients. Someone who's had to miss ONE party because they couldn't get tested in time and don't want a vaccination? Stop whining and just get yourself vaccinated.

1. They shouldn't have traveled in the first place, unless it was for work. They know that there are surges and mutations, despite the vaccination rates increasing. The pandemic is a global responsibility, so the entire world has to reach at minimum 75% vaccination before herd immunity is possible. Until then, we should all be only traveling for essential reasons or keeping it local travel so long as your group is fully vaccinated or meeting outdoors if mixed or unknown.

2. Given two years of this pandemic, you would think that people would abstain from international travel around the winter months, when cases are likely to tick upwards. Although mutations can occur during any time of the year, it appears that the worst cases occur during the winter months. They knew the risks of potentially being stranded if the virus mutated into another VoC or worse. They need to accept the consequences because their choices may cause more global and domestic spread, disease, long-term disabilities, death, medical traumas, grief/loss traumas, and otherwise.

3. Many elderly persons and disabled persons and immunocompromised persons have been consistently isolating in place. It's been very traumatic for us when the world doesn't care about us; they just want us to stay home and endure the trauma instead of their able-bodied, likely younger, likely more affluent selves. Welcome to our world, I say! But they only have to endure through a short amount of isolation, whereas our isolation is long-term and likely pre- and post-pandemic, too. It's not that we're "used to it," but rather, we've been struggling with that trauma - the "isolation trauma" - for many years, and it's gone ignored until the able-bodied, younger, working-class-and-above groups take issue with what we have experienced for the greater part of our lives! I agree, this boo-hoo, I have to isolate is an insult to those of us who had no choice because of the ongoing pandemic that just never ends.

4. I'm sick of doom and gloom, too. I'm sick of preventable situations continuing. I'm sick of all the divisions and politics infiltrating everything, but I'm even more sick of the type of censuring that is keeping us reacting instead of proactively discussing, advocating, and making affective change. When left to their own volition, a great percentage of the world will not abide by recommendations or science, so there needs to be laws and law enforcers to make this pandemic stop, and to prevent an ongoing endemic (including funding loss from it no longer being an emergency-based pandemic).

Let's hope omicron is the common cold variant, contagious but mild, so this thing can just freaking end already. I am so over it, like everyone else. I'm sick of wearing a mask everywhere, sick of the shots, sick of staying home all the time, sick of not seeing people, and tired of all the insanity. We continue to do worse here locally than we ever did before. The test results are quite backed up. One place did surveillance testing for a potential outbreak nine days ago and they STILL do not have the results. By the time they get them, it will be useless anyway.


What the heck is with the 61 people testing positive on the flight in the Netherlands? Were the pre-flight test results fake? The post flight results wrong? Do the rapid tests even work well enough to be useful? I am aware of too many false negatives for me to have any faith in those.

I'm with the rest of you. Completely sick of it all. Everything feels like one step forward, two steps back. My husband is heading back to being very cautious. We were invited to an outdoor event yesterday and he didn't want to go.


We have been doing relatively well, but now I wonder what the new variant will bring. Here we went from closed borders to few limits on people coming in who are able to validate their vaccines. It happened too quickly in my opinion. December-February is high season for Patagonia. Reading travel groups/forums, there are a lot of people planning trips and I can imagine there will be a lot of opposition from the tourism industry if the government tries to reinstate travel restrictions.

@Discombobulated - The Chinese vaccines Sinovac and Sinopharm are inactivated viruses, which is traditional vaccine technology. Here we also bought some doses of another Chinese vaccine, Cansino, which is like J&J, one-dose adenovirus. I think the plan was to use them in less accessible rural areas in the south.


I am pretty sure that Sputnik is adenovirus too. The tricky thing with Sputnik is that dose 1 and 2 are different formulations. Argentina ordered a lot of Sputnik and got the first doses as planned. Then Russia had delays with sending them the second dose formulation so people couldn't finish their vaccine sequence. I read that the US donated vaccines to Argentina, Moderna, I think, and they were going to use those as a second dose. It seems like no one knows how effective that will be since Sputnik only has approval in a limited number of countries and no one had tested it in conjunction with Moderna.

Here one 30-year-old had a clot reaction to AZ, so they restricted its use to people 55 and older. When I went for my booster, they were checking peoples' ages to make sure that only that age group got AZ as a booster. If it is true it gives more T-cell protection, then it may turn out to be a good thing that it is being used in older populations that are more at risk. At least with the boosters, the doses aren't going to waste as they might have otherwise. When it was initially restricted to 55+, most people in that age group were already vaccinated.

That's what a lot of people are wondering. A possible explanation is incubation time as it's quite a long flight. A less sensitive rapid test before departure and a PCR test after arrival? Unfortunately the quarantine enforcement in NL is highly lacking. People who arrived on earlier flights are being "advised/requested" to get tested and stay in isolation. Is anyone checking they actually do? Probably not.

13 cases of the new variant have been confirmed now.

I heard there were also 1 or 2 cases in Australia. I assume those people are now in strict isolation but I still wonder how. Wasn't Australia the country with some of the strictest rules, not even letting their own citizens come back into the country? How do they suddenly have people returning from Africa with a new virus variant?

I posted this on the current events Covid discussion, but I thought it might be interesting to share here too. The government has issued some data on the boosters here:

They looked at the period from August 11th (when boosters started) to November 20th.

A bit over 8.2 million people received boosters during that time.

Over that period, we had 1,956 Covid deaths nation wide. Of those deaths, only 45 were people who had gotten a booster (2.3%).

Total infections during that time were 118,639 new cases. 4,607 of these cases had gotten the booster (3.9%).

During this time a total of 50 people with the booster ended up in the ICU.

The information comes from the Ministry of Science and Technology's official data.

Did they indicate that those 50 people with the booster shots were immunocompromised, >65 years old, and/or high-risk cases?

That information was not available in the article, unfortunately. There may be more information on the Ministry's site, but that would be in Spanish.


I do know that the program started by prioritizing those 55 and over, the immunocompromised and people with other health conditions that put them at risk. So, they probably make up a significant percentage of this data. People that got Sinovac (Chinese vaccine) were the first eligible, but the program was soon expanded to those who got other vaccines, based on the date of their second shot.

Some ways to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic:

That sounds interesting, especially given the different vaccines in other countries. I hope everyone is safe.

I wished that there weren't any deaths from vaccines though, even though the percentages seem small - even just 1 death is enough for either the booster or the actual Covid-19.

I wished we just lived forever and had no suffering. That's where I'm at.

They’ve just announced that boosters are to be brought forward from 6 months to 3. Not sure when this will become operational, I’d already booked mine, not sure if I’m able to bring it forward. Technically this means my son is also eligible now too and a whole load of other people all at once….

Is that in the U.S. or a different country? Here, they are still saying 6 months, even though the vaccines are known to wane as early as 4 months. That would make sense to get boosted at 3 months to cover the overlap before vaccines wane.

I’m in the UK, sorry SprinkL3 I should’ve said, it’s a response to omicron because up until today it was strictly 6 months, so quite a change in policy.

So far I'm hearing the omnicron variant seems highly contagious but causing less symptoms. Although in the video I saw this lady was talking about how a lot more kids seem to get it but it's very mild. Isn't the "original" covid much less severe for kids as well?

I can't quite keep up anymore, though. The new variant was only reported last week, they don’t even have any longer term research? "So far" No one in the EU has been severely ill from omnicron. They have all been in Africa. If they're traveling for fun half-way across the world during a pandemic, they probably weren't very high risk for a severe case to begin with.

Or there's this:



It's working for me. I have to wear a mask at concerts and at work. It's kind of tough climbing stairs that way though.

I read the article about the omicron causing mild symptoms so far among some people in South Africa. However, we need more data than just a few people to be sure. I just hope it winds up being a contagious but mild mutation, as opposed to the Delta that seems to be both contagious and deadly - esp. among the unvaccinated.

Also, I just read an article somewhere about how 1 in 10 lung transplants are controversially going to COVID-19 cases, and that some of those cases are unvaccinated (the decision for transplants only consider future vaccine obligations, not past, or something like that). Do a google search and you'll find the article(s) somewhere. 1 in 10 is a pretty high number, which means that 1 in 10 people with other respiratory illnesses will now not get a lung.

Everything is so scary these days. My therapist told me I have OCD, and she says that is how I seem to be coping these days. She understands my fears, but yes, I go overboard. I freak out over all these things. I don't ever want to get Covid and have to deal with all these things. But I'm also sick of being isolated and and having to do all these things every day to keep me safe. Everywhere I look, there's this stressful decision I have to make about Covid risk. It's taking up all of my time and thoughts. I'm tired.

@Discombobulated that is a very big shift in vaccine policy, a little alarming, in fact. It seems very smart with omicron and Christmas on the way. I hope you can get your appointment moved up and what a relief to have a slot already booked now that it's being opened up to everyone. The booster roll out here continues to be a mess. A couple of pharmacies ran out and just put up signs instead of canceling people's appointments.

@BreakForTheLight That's a good point that the flight is long, I forgot about that. A crappy rapid test pre-flight and a more sensitive PCR test afterwards could also explain it. Months ago, I'd read that fake test results before flying were pretty normal in some countries and wondered if that could be the case in SA. I saw a headline this morning about people faking vaccine cards and test results to get into Canada. The quarantines are a joke here and have never been enforced. Just about everyone I know who has thought they had Covid went out to the grocery store to stock up while waiting for the test results or before they got the test. It's crazy.

My husband just had to have an infected wisdom tooth pulled. He knew it could eventually be an issue and was talking about going to have it seen by a dentist right before Covid hit. Before he could set up an appointment, Covid arrived. Some dentist offices closed completely and others were only seeing limited emergency cases.

So, like a lot of people, he put going to the dentist on the back burner, assuming that the pandemic wouldn't last too long. Even in the best of times, he is kind of a germaphobe, so he was really nervous about going to the dentist when Covid cases were high, even once offices opened again.


Towards the end of last week it started hurting and by the weekend he was in a lot of pain. Fortunately, our case levels are still relatively low and he has had his booster, so he felt comfortable enough making one of the first dentist appointments of the day. The tooth was infected, so they pulled it. The dentist said it was good he came in when he did, before the infection was able to spread to his jaw or other surrounding areas.

I should probably see about going in for a cleaning and check-up at that clinic. My husband said he felt comfortable with the precautions they were taking, and I haven't been to the dentist since before this all started.

I scheduled my dental appointments at the VA, where they are (a) required to wear masks and (b) required to test all dental patients the day before for Covid. So I have two appointments for the dentist (periodontal disease cleaning or checking) in January 2022 - one to get the Covid test on the day prior to the dental appointment, and the other to attend my dental appointment. I might chicken out. I'm scared. But I'm boosted. So I don't know.

My T told me yesterday that I have the symptoms of OCD, but she told me not to pay attention to labels. But still, it's another mental disorder.

Anyway, I don't know how to not do these rituals of isolating, reading up on the latest news about Covid, washing my hands, avoiding touching many things, wearing double masks/double gloves/goggles/hair coverings whenever I have to open my apartment door - even for a second, etc. I don't have the energy to clean and disinfect all the time, so I don't do that, but that is why I use washcloths to open up my cupboards and apartment doors inside.

My hands are now bleeding and cracked because I've washed too much, and had to deal with packing my entire apartment up because there will be about 3 to 4 people in my apartment tomorrow - likely unmasked - to do a fire sprinkler inspection for about 15 to 30 minutes. They told us they have to inspect all rooms and all closets, so I decided to safeguard my stuff, and I have enough air purifiers to circulate while my patio door will be open so that fresh air can get in. I'm a mess and freaking out.

I want to do things like walk and go to the dentist and even get the braces I have been putting off for years now. But I can't seem to do anything I enjoy anymore.

One of the 61 positive cases was arrested for fleeing the quarantine hotel. They (it was a Spanish/Portugese couple, only the wife tested positive) went to the media to complain about how they were treated and the wife claims it was a false positive. I guess false positives *can* happen, but 61 times? That's unlikely.

But their entire story doesn't really add up - they say they bought rapid tests after being advised to do so and both tested negative twice - HOW? They were supposed to be in quarantine, you do not leave your hotel room! You cannot go to the drugstore to buy a test and you cannot go down to reception to chat with security as they also claim to have done! (Sorry, their interview really bugged me.)

I have OCD now. That's apparently how I've been dealing with the pandemic.

I hate this pandemic. I can't stop worrying. My hands are so cracked and hurting. I'm tired, and my CFS/ME is worsening. My sleep is worsening. I packed up my entire apartment because I'll be invaded tomorrow by 3 to 4 inspectors looking at the sprinklers for a deathly 30 minutes - enough time to inject me with the plague, the flu, the 'Rona, and much more. I don't know if they'll be masked. I asked the landlord, but who knows if they will remember or even wear it properly. None of my neighbors wear masks, and many remain unvaccinated. If they do wear it, it's always under the nose or at their chin.

I'm feeling really defeated.

People keep trying to candy coat things with happy news or this or that, but it's hard to trust the news or anyone. People have downplayed things, and then people have scared us into things, and then there's all this disinformation. It's hard to figure out who to believe, and I'm struggling here.

I agree with your therapist about the label - that is not the most important thing, but is she helping you deal with it at least? Maybe in small, baby steps?

Wow, would an inspection really take that long? How many sprinklers do you have?! I would just open up all windows if possible and try to stay a safe distance from the people (surely it doesn't take 3 or 4 people to inspect sprinklers?)

Genuine question, why do you wash your hands so much if you never go outside without gloves and don't touch anything inside with your bare hands? I'm sorry I don't know much about OCD, but I would try to challenge your beliefs that you NEED to do these things. Figure out which things make sense to keep yourself safe and what doesn't.