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Default Nov 26, 2021 at 06:09 PM
  #641
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Originally Posted by LonesomeTonight View Post
D got her second shot today, which is good (and she handled it really well). But now there's news of a new "variant of concern." And I'm really struggling to focus on the positives of D being vaccinated vs. thinking maybe it's all completely futile (including the booster I'll be getting Monday), if it turns out this variant can get around immunity... Like, can't we just have some time to celebrate a victory and some relief and a sense of maybe returning to semi-normal for a brief while before the next thing hits?

Hugs, LT. I was feeling something similar last night - a bunch of doomsday thoughts tumbling over each other in my head. As soon as it was daylight though I was able to battle back the thoughts thankfully, and was back to feeling hopeful again before L texted to cancel.


Now I'm just worried that she has covid again...


Back to my hat, so I can not think about anything but my crocheting!
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Default Nov 26, 2021 at 06:35 PM
  #642
Hugs back, Artie. Sorry you're also dealing with some doomsday thoughts... I hope that L just has some other illness (there are plenty going around) or ate something that didn't agree with her. I know you're in a weird place with her now--but could you maybe email her in a couple days to say you hope she's feeling better? Assuming she is, that could potentially give you some reassurance. But I'd also understand your not wanting to check in (I feel like I was really annoying Dr. T when he got back from his trip, had some symptoms, and worried he had Covid, but he seemed fine and understanding about it).

But perhaps best to focus on the hat! I need to find other things to focus on...I feel I should go back to painting (and have discussed it with Dr. T--he's greatly in favor of it), but it just seems like so much effort to get all the materials out, to know I'll likely get disrupted by D (she doesn't go to bed much earlier than me), to know I'll have to clean it all up, etc. I suppose I could go back to working on my therapy memoir. It came up recently with Dr. T that I hadn't been working on it, and he said he was disappointed because he was looking forward to seeing his name in the acknowledgments.

Maybe I should try to learn to crochet? I've also thought about drawing, which doesn't require setup and cleanup. Or maybe going back to poetry?
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Default Nov 26, 2021 at 07:48 PM
  #643
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Originally Posted by LonesomeTonight View Post
D got her second shot today, which is good (and she handled it really well). But now there's news of a new "variant of concern." And I'm really struggling to focus on the positives of D being vaccinated vs. thinking maybe it's all completely futile (including the booster I'll be getting Monday), if it turns out this variant can get around immunity... Like, can't we just have some time to celebrate a victory and some relief and a sense of maybe returning to semi-normal for a brief while before the next thing hits?
I think we're at the point where "normal" is what we make of it and it might have to be redefined. I feel pretty normal right now, except for 1) teaching rooms full of masked students and 2) getting called a ridiculous number of times for random COVID testing at my university (I'm up to 5 this semester, in a 15-week semester where they randomly call 28% of the campus population/week).

I'm not going to worry about the new variant yet. It was only found on Tuesday. It seems more transmissible so far, but that doesn't mean more lethal than the original COVID, and it's not yet known how well the vaccines work against it. No one seems seriously ill from the new one (yet), and the idea behind mRNA vaccines is that they can be adapted pretty easily, within months if need be.

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Default Nov 26, 2021 at 08:15 PM
  #644
Hat is done! That was fun. See how curly my hair gets when it's short?
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Default Nov 26, 2021 at 08:16 PM
  #645
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Hat is done! That was fun. See how curly my hair gets when it's short?

Cute hat!
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Default Nov 26, 2021 at 08:26 PM
  #646
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I think we're at the point where "normal" is what we make of it and it might have to be redefined. I feel pretty normal right now, except for 1) teaching rooms full of masked students and 2) getting called a ridiculous number of times for random COVID testing at my university (I'm up to 5 this semester, in a 15-week semester where they randomly call 28% of the campus population/week).

I'm not going to worry about the new variant yet. It was only found on Tuesday. It seems more transmissible so far, but that doesn't mean more lethal than the original COVID, and it's not yet known how well the vaccines work against it. No one seems seriously ill from the new one (yet), and the idea behind mRNA vaccines is that they can be adapted pretty easily, within months if need be.

I agree on the normal being what you make of it thing. I've already come to accept that Covid is likely not ever going to completely go away. And hopefully it will become more like the flu, where it is around seasonally and is dangerous for some people and unpleasant to catch, and maybe we have to get a vaccine every year, but there are hopefully better ways of treating it.

I'm hoping that even if the new one is more transmissible, the vaccines will still be generally effective in preventing hospitalization and death. And we also now have new antivirals heading for approval (though Merck just said theirs is less effective than they originally thought).

But it's still a case of, as I was just talking about with H, can't we just get a little break here, where D just got vaccinated, couldn't we have had a little bit of time to feel good about that before having to wonder what will happen with this new variant? (He's the one who said that, too.) I know we can choose to feel good about it because, as he also said, if nothing else, it's still protecting her from the other variants. And I'll try to do that (especially until we know more about how transmissible and deadly this variant truly is). But it's still just really discouraging and disheartening.
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Default Nov 26, 2021 at 08:42 PM
  #647
I'm hopeful that science will continue finding better ways of treating it, as like you LT I've finally accepted that it's never going away... I'm going to take melatonin tonight so I can hopefully sleep without waking up in the middle of the night and going all doomsday on h again. L tells me to stop reading so much covid news but how can I? I told her I can't just stick my head in the sand and pretend it's not a thing.
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Default Nov 26, 2021 at 10:33 PM
  #648
If you have taken reasonable precautions, I think over worrying about it is a bit of a self indulgence. Which is fine if it is what you want to do -but I think sometimes it takes the focus away from other more real things. People die from stuff every day. I think the regular forms of dying are more likely for most people - heart disease, car accidents, falls in the bathroom (really-I represented a few traumatic brain injury people who fell in the bathroom), cancer, and the like - the usual suspects.

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Default Nov 27, 2021 at 11:19 AM
  #649
Regarding Covid, well, there's only really four ways out:
1 we get into a situation like with measles, where the vaccien plus treatments make it a non-issue for most people
2 we get better treatment and prevention and don't have to worry about it anymore in a bit
3 we somehow manage to increase the amount of people in the medical field dramatically
4 we continue to struggle with measures and impacts for a while

I don't fully agree with worrying about it isn't focusing on 'a real thing' like cancer. I don't think I'd be likely to die from covid or even having to go to the hospital, I'm pretty young, my weight's fine, my nutrition is pretty good, I work out, I don't worry about myself... the thing I worry about when considering the risks is more like: this weekend I will meet 5 relatives that are almost 60, none of them are as rigid with precautions as I personally am, but since they are my closest relatives, I will most probably also not be as rigid with them. They are in a reasonably good category in case I manage to infect them, but they all work and have lots of contacts, including my grandma who is 80 and so on. Now, if somebody like her has to go to the hospital and take up a slot, by now there are so many people there only for that one illness and it's related risk factors, that somebody with cancer or that slips in the bathroom will get less decent care, if they have space for them at all. Instead of there being 20 patients with such issues, there's 20 more that the same amount of staff have to care for, increasing the issues of all the 'real things' like cancer, accidents and other heart disease.
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Default Nov 27, 2021 at 11:58 AM
  #650
I am not saying covid is not real. Nor did I say that cancer is more real (I do think it is a more real concern for more people as a possible way to die - but we are all going to die from something at some point). My point was that focusing on something like covid and imagining that every little thing is covid or that people you are fond of are all going to keel over from it - is a convenient way of keeping one from focusing on other things in one's life that might be a more productive use of time and energy.

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Default Nov 27, 2021 at 12:04 PM
  #651
That is true, I guess most people don't consider those dangers... I've always been very aware of these risks so maybe I'm a bit biased now.
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Default Nov 27, 2021 at 12:12 PM
  #652
The difference between Covid and "the usual suspects" is that the usual rules of an individual's disease do not apply to a pandemic virus which relies on public health measures and the responsible actions of others in order to curtail it. The actions of others are (generally speaking) outside of our control and things which we cannot control are inherently stressful and anxiety provoking. Worrying seems rather reasonable response when you, your loved ones and everyone else in the world is at risk of death because of the risks which *other people* take.
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Default Nov 27, 2021 at 12:17 PM
  #653
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That is true, I guess most people don't consider those dangers... I've always been very aware of these risks so maybe I'm a bit biased now.
I have my whole final exit worked out for several scenarios(I have about 4 copies of the book stuffed around my house). I don't particularly want to be dead just now, but I am not leaving it up to western medicine. I am definitely biased in favor of death not being the worst that can happen to a person.

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Default Nov 27, 2021 at 12:59 PM
  #654
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One administrator's response to my school not fulfilling an accommodations request for me: "This was a temporary non-optimal outcome."
I cannot get this line out of my head. It is so lawyerese (no offense, SD) and it doesn't even begin to describe failing to honor someone's civil rights or even admit a problem or take into account the human effect.

I mean, it's not such a big step from that to describing someone with a disability like me as a non-optimal outcome, or thinking about hiring someone with a disability as a non-optimal outcome.

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Default Nov 27, 2021 at 01:00 PM
  #655
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The difference between Covid and "the usual suspects" is that the usual rules of an individual's disease do not apply to a pandemic virus which relies on public health measures and the responsible actions of others in order to curtail it. The actions of others are (generally speaking) outside of our control and things which we cannot control are inherently stressful and anxiety provoking. Worrying seems rather reasonable response when you, your loved ones and everyone else in the world is at risk of death because of the risks which *other people* take.
This is a good point and an accurate (at least for me) description of the difference. For example, I don't have to worry about catching cancer from eating indoors at a restaurant (or going to a concert) because someone else there might have it. Or if I have it, I can't pass it to my daughter or parents.

Driving is perhaps a good comparison, as you can't control what other drivers do--but, as I've discussed with Dr. T before, and similar to what SD said, we've become used to those risks and don't consider how high they really are. Whereas Covid is still relatively new and constantly in the news.

And it's not just about possible death, but also long Covid--I know someone who experienced that, and it sounded really miserable (like she couldn't work for months).
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Default Nov 27, 2021 at 01:18 PM
  #656
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I cannot get this line out of my head. It is so lawyerese (no offense, SD) and it doesn't even begin to describe failing to honor someone's civil rights or even admit a problem or take into account the human effect.

I mean, it's not such a big step from that to describing someone with a disability like me as a non-optimal outcome, or thinking about hiring someone with a disability as a non-optimal outcome.
"Mistakes were made."

Seriously, I gasped out loud when I first read that line in the first post and thought "Are you f-ing kidding?" It is so reasonable to just treat you like a human being and make sure that you can direct your full attention to the topic at hand just like everyone else. They are giant a-holes, @@.

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Default Nov 27, 2021 at 01:59 PM
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I cannot get this line out of my head. It is so lawyerese (no offense, SD) and it doesn't even begin to describe failing to honor someone's civil rights or even admit a problem or take into account the human effect.
I am sorry you are going through this.
That is some good legalese going on there

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Default Nov 27, 2021 at 02:18 PM
  #658
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This is a good point and an accurate (at least for me) description of the difference. For example, I don't have to worry about catching cancer from eating indoors at a restaurant (or going to a concert) because someone else there might have it. Or if I have it, I can't pass it to my daughter or parents.

Driving is perhaps a good comparison, as you can't control what other drivers do--but, as I've discussed with Dr. T before, and similar to what SD said, we've become used to those risks and don't consider how high they really are. Whereas Covid is still relatively new and constantly in the news.

And it's not just about possible death, but also long Covid--I know someone who experienced that, and it sounded really miserable (like she couldn't work for months).
Actually I do think that any number of foods are so bad, so pesticide infused and so prevalent in our society that eating (in or out -it doesn't matter) is dangerous.
But there is only so much you can do.
You can catch stuff from others at the best of times - usually it doesn't kill you but it can. Chicken pox/strep throat can kill you or leave you with lingering side effects -"People who die from this infection often have perfectly normal immune systems," she said. "We still don’t know why an occasional person can develop a catastrophic illness with Group A strep while most other people don’t."

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Default Nov 27, 2021 at 02:21 PM
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I am sorry you are going through this.
That is some good legalese going on there
I thought you might appreciate it.

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Default Nov 27, 2021 at 02:27 PM
  #660
Yeah for a while there, people were getting all kindsa flesh eating diseases from their dogs licking them. Wtf.
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