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

@hvert Yes our PM is quite unbelievable in many ways, not unlike your former president he had the popular vote but the shine is wearing thin and he’s down in opinion polls recently.

I’m hoping the trouble you’re having getting an appointment for 3rd dose means lots of people are taking it up, no comfort though for you wanting your booster.

Over here they announced over 40s will get a booster so I’m glad I’ll get mine, probably January.

The UK data from boosters is very promising- for Pfizer 94% protection from symptomatic infection, 93% for AstraZeneca. No figures for Moderna or J&J as not big enough numbers used here.

I’m glad we have the vaccines and very grateful so many of my family are protected as well as possible.

@hvert - Interesting that you are finding it difficult to get your booster. I mentioned the problems I have been having to a few people in the US and they said they were pretty easy to get. But, then, the US is such a huge country, I am sure availability varies between areas.


I was successful getting mine today, but it took four hours. I got there at 6:36 AM and got in line. There were probably 40-50 people ahead of me. They started giving out numbers at 8:30 which is when the vaccines were supposed to be starting. The woman with the vaccine coolers was kind of late. She got there at 9:00 and they started soon after. My husband showed up at 10:35 to pick me up. I had been vaccinated and waited to make sure I didn't have a weird reaction.

I heard one of the women giving out numbers mention that Mondays are quieter. Tuesday and Wednesdays are the worst. So, I guess it was a good thing I went today. I got a 3rd Pfizer since AstraZeneca is only being used for 55+ and Moderna was never approved here.


I was looking at the NY times tracker and we are now 3 in the world overall for vaccinations and first for boosters at 38%. That is why the lines are so long, I imagine.

@Discombobulated - I'm glad you will able to get your booster relatively soon. My husband and I watch football and rugby from the UK and he is always asking me why no one is wearing masks and the stadiums are so full. Here the stadiums are open, but there are still capacity restrictions and masks are required. He thought it was because cases are way down, but from what you have said here and what I have read, you guys are having more cases and deaths per capita than here right now.

The week-on-week comparisons have started to trend back down, so maybe this latest mini-wave is subsiding.

I'm not dealing with this pandemic well at all, and mean people everywhere keep trying to rub it in my face how it doesn't affect them, how they never got sick - as if it were all in my head or all my fault. They want to rub it in more and more and more and more and more, by saying how mental I am for being affected by the pandemic when they are not. As if it is okay for me to be punished for having a friend die of Covid-19, or for having experienced Asian-based racism, or having experienced worsening mental illness, or having experienced worsening physical illness. Because they hate me; they hate people like me; they don't want me to live healthy; they want me to be gone; and they shove it in my face over and over and over again whenever they kick me when I'm down and hurting and say, well, they are okay, as if to imply that I should be okay and bow down to their rule, as if a slave to them and their rule. It hurts me how much the alt-right remind me of ritual abuse, spiritual abuse, childhood abuse, bullying, and more.

I’m sorry people are mean to you@SprinkL3 and I agree the alt-right are very aggressive in their language. Racial abuse or discrimination is never okay.

@rechu I can’t explain why things are as they are here, it was like in July a certain proportion of people just wanted to get back to life as if there was no covid. Of course there is a political dimension too in that our government have also been urging people to get back to normal and until recently no one in the Conservative party were wearing masks in parliament. It’s kind of interesting why Britain (England particularly) chose this route.

@BreakForTheLight Are you off on your travels yet? I wanted to say to you my sister was in London last week and says there is more mask wearing in London than here. Maybe because there are more foreign visitors in London?

Thank you, Discombobulated. I think I'm triggered by my mind-control stuff from the past and I keep seeing it in the present. It's hard to know what is real and what is not. I don't know if people are being intentionally mean or not, but it feels like mind control. We get triggered with mind control triggers.

Yes that makes sense - I know sometimes people have said some harsh things, I think sometimes it’s because they’re scared and lashing out. Everyone has reacted differently to the pandemic. There’s been a lot of kindness shown too.

I just read something which was genuinely news to me

http://https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/nov/18/rollout-third-covid-jabs-england-condemned-shambolic?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

I did not know at all the difference between boosters (given routinely 6 months after 2nd dose) and 3rd doses given to immune compromised people which is given much sooner, and that many immune compromised people should be onto their 4th dose by now.

I’m shocked that many professionals delivering the vaccines didn’t know this either.

@rechu the booster roll out is pretty bad here. I'd call it non-existent. There's no coordinated distribution effort. The state has a list of 100 places in my county which offer vaccines. I have to go through each one individually to see if they also offer boosters, who they will offer them to, and then to see which brand they have. I am kicking myself for not making an appointment when I was looking last week because they just opened it up to everyone. I have my annual physical in a few weeks and asked if they could add it on to that and they said they were still trying to figure out how to distribute. That place did a good job with the vaccine roll out so I will probably wait for them.


Four hours is a long time to wait, but there's something nice about being able to just show up, stand in a line, and get it over with. That's awesome you guys are so high on the vaccination list! I am not sure we are anymore. There's less interest in the boosters than there was in the vaccine. Part of why I don't feel in a rush to schedule is because I was so miserable after that second shot. I am not looking forward to the third. How have the third shots been?


There is an outbreak where my grandmother lives. It started a few days before they all got their boosters. It seems limited to one floor right now and I hope they caught it in time to contain it. On a positive note, I know of several vaccinated people now who have caught Covid and not suffered badly, including one 77 year old. Maybe we still catch Covid with the vaccine but it really seems to help prevent a more serious illness.

@Discombobulated They started offering third shots to immune compromised people here some months ago. Even when people were eligible, some pharmacies would not do third shots. People would have to lie and claim they were coming in for their first shot. So stupid.

@hvert - Wow, that does sound really inconvenient that you have to check every place individually. I hope you are able to arrange it at your doctor's office.


Yeah, there are advantages to be able to just show up like that. I am lucky that my freelance client in the US is 2 hours behind us, so I was back when they were starting work. It seems like there are sufficient vaccines. They still had some available numbers when I was leaving. I think if they were able to reopen one or two more centers, it would help speed things up a lot.

I was just reading that they are making inroads in the groups that were vaccine hesitant, especially the 18 to 29 age group. I guess the vaccine passport plus some employers requiring vaccines is pushing people to get the shot finally. There were a few people that looked to be under 30 waiting for second doses when I went. So, new vaccinations haven't totally dropped off as they seem to in some places.

My husband works for the federal government and there is talk of a vaccine mandate for federal employees. His boss is antivax. I wonder what she will do if that takes effect. She is actually the only individual that I know in person here that has not been vaccinated.

That's great the under 20s are starting to take it up. Is it all Pfizer now or are they still using the Chinese vaccines? It will be interesting to see what his boss does if there is a federal mandate. The national vaccine mandate for employers with more than 100 employees was just suspended here and apparently will go to the Supreme Court.


I am actually pretty angry at the way the state handled this booster issue. The places that sponsored the vaccine clinics are now 'current patient only.' It looks like the only booster options here are Walmart, the grocery store, or the drugstore. None of those places are set up for huge numbers of people, especially when you have to wait 15-30 minutes. I got a vague mass email from my provider's office suggesting people look elsewhere for the vaccine. I finally found an appointment at a grocery store for next week, but it's only because I randomly decided to check again - 3 hours ago, that place had no appointments at all. If it's so hard to do this, people aren't going to bother.

OMG, I just realized the appointment I booked is in a town 30 minutes away - but by the time I went to make my husband an appointment, even those were disappearing! What a mess.

I was recently informed of this by one of the vaccination sites who gave me the full-dose Moderna #3. They said it is NOT a booster, but rather a third dose in a series, and that I'll likely need a fourth dose at least 6 months after this third dose, since I'm immunocompromised.

Now, they are opening up boosters (full dosage for the rest of the vaccines, and only 1/2 dose for the Moderna) to all adults 18 and over in the U.S. It would appear that they are doing that anywhere between 6 months and 12 months of them getting their first two jabs in the series.

Children are also getting their first doses of vaccine, but booster for those 12 and over have not yet been discussed - at least not in the U.S. They're still doing extensive research around the globe to see if the boosters will be needed and safe for children under 18. The important issue, however, is making sure the unvaccinated get vaccinated. Otherwise, it would appear that the majority of the unvaccinated are not only superspreading to all, but also the ones most likely to die off with the immunocompromised breakthrough cases and/or the other high-risk population who are either under-vaccinated (received only one jab in a two-jab series of mRNA and/or never took the booster) or they got severe breakthrough cases due to their lack of being diagnosed with some even higher risk situation such as being immunocompromised. The problem with these vaccine distribution paradigms is that they assume that people are being diagnosed correctly, but they negate the fact that (a) not everyone has affordable healthcare in order to get properly diagnosed with a high-risk or immunocompromising situation, (b) not everyone's physician is a good one who will diagnose you properly, and/or (c) many people are often misdiagnosed and therefore at even greater risk for preventable disease and premature death because their physicians didn't give them the proper diagnosis. Not everyone knows they are high-risk for premature death. This is why there should really be vaccinations provided to ALL PERSONS, especially given the millions in waste because expired vaccines had to be thrown away. Those could have been efficiently put into the arms of anyone who wanted it.

From what I can tell, Sinovac is being phased out. The contract was completed and I haven't heard of more orders. Kids at the vaccine center the other day were getting Sinovac, it's the only one approved for under 12s, so I guess they are using the remaining doses for them. When the Health Ministry announces the arrival of vaccines, it is all Pfizer these days.

The day before I'm traveling to the UK, a friend tags me in a post about a more contagious delta variant popping up over there. Thanks!

To be honest, I probably wouldn't have booked the trip if the situation had been as bad then as it is now. But it's booked, I spent a lot of money and I want to go to London, damn it! Of course I'll be careful, try to avoid masses of people and still wear a mask.

I filled in my passenger locator form just now - that's a lot of information they want! And I paid for the bloody day 2 test even though I will leave the UK again on day 1. By day 2 after arrival I'll be on another train back to the city

The numbers in Germany are ridiculous. I'm happy to be going home but a 7 day incidence of 346 per 100.000 in my city.... YIKES! That's actually higher than London! How, I do not understand, when in Germany there are still restrictions. But the numbers are going up in London as well :/ It's not exactly going to be a carefree trip to forget about all these problems for a while.

So I was super prepared for my trip to the UK, filled in all the necessary forms and paid for a test I didn't get to take.

Then almost forgot to check anything for my trip back filled in a passenger locator for Belgium late in the evening after the gig. Good thing I did because Belgium actually checked them upon arrival, unlike the UK. (Although train staff checked on both sides on check-in).
Forgot to take the test which is required for entry into the Netherlands ssst, don't tell anyone
I'm no longer in the country! absolutely pointless anyway. I could've taken a PCR test 48 hours before departing the UK. 48 hours before departing the UK, I was still in the Netherlands

Then another form to fill in when returning to Germany. It's such a hassle! IF I got infected with corona anywhere, it most likely happened on a German train Once upon a time, they recuced the ticket capacity to reduce risk. Now they're selling as many tickets as possible again. Masks are still required but I did feel uncomfortable sitting next to a stranger who was constantly sighing and sniffling for 4,5 hours.
I actually originally had a reservation on a fairly quiet train with a free seat next to me (and right next to the luggage storage so I wouldn't have to lift my heavy suitcase into the overhead luggage rack!) But then my train got cancelled, I missed my connecting train and had to buy a new seat

I have an on site job interview tomorrow and they did request I take a test before, which I was planning on anyway. But I am a tiny bit nervous that it might turn out positive so fingers crossed, please! No symptoms or any reason to be nervous other than my anxiety.

Well, they are saying we won't see the expected wave. It was just a short upsurge. We never had over 3,000 new cases a day and today we saw the lowest number in 36 days. The last waves had between 8,000 and 9,000 new cases at the peak. Hopefully, this means that the boosters and mask wearing are doing their job.

Fantastic news!

Fingers crossed for negative test results and a good interview!


I got my booster Monday. It wasn't as bad as the second shot, but I was glad I didn't have much to do. I hope this third shot makes it permanent!

Let’s hope so! I got the go ahead for my 3rd but the only appointments were in the week before Christmas, I work in retail so I can’t take the chance it might give me a reaction (although with AZ I was fine after 2nd it was the 1st I was off colour) so going to hang back until afterwards.

Glad people are getting access to their 3rd shots, from what I’ve read it massively bumps up symptomatic protection. So let’s hope we’re getting on top of this.

Most of my trouble with Covid/ vaccination news revolves around strong resistance to common sense advice. I suffer from a strong urge to grab people and shake them hard. I get very alarmed by the numbers of people WHO SHOULD JUST PLAIN OLD KNOW BETTER, who refuse to either mask-up, or get vaccinated. (Of course, I make exceptions for folks who have valid medical reasons for not doing so. ) I reserve my angry angst for the inconsiderate, politically-motivated refusers.

Friends remind me that the human race actually is becoming more enlightened---but you wouldn't know it by people's behaviour, lately.