Category: COVID-19

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At work, people are back to stuffing themselves into elevators. I absolutely hate it. That's why if I'm the first one on, I always stand by the door and don't move (yeah, I'm one of THOSE people) so I can get off if too many of those idiots get on after I do. If the doors open and there are more than 4 people in the car, I refuse to get on.

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Quote of the Day

I don't like wearing masks. No one does. I love seeing people laugh and smile. But I will never understand how a measure to protect your health and others became a major flashpoint. The price of freedom is high. And it isn't wearing some cloth over your face." ~ Dan Rather

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Well, Fuck.

We've both been congested and coughing for the past few days. Wednesday night Ben tested himself and it immediately turned positive. He tested again to make sure it wasn't a false positive and got the same result. He went on telemed and was prescribed an anti-viral that he's been on since yesterday He used the last two tests we had on hand, so I couldn't test until last night after I got home from work and we'd gotten more.

It was negative. We breathed a sigh of relief, but it left me wondering exactly what was causing my issues if wasn't COVID.

I had a really rough night, and woke up feeling like crap, so I tested again…just to be sure.

Well, fuck!

So after my own telemed visit this morning, I'm now waiting for CVS to fill my script.

 

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Covalent? Bivalent? Whatever the Fuck It's Called…

You The latest booster knocked me on my ass. I got poked Friday after work and by the time I went to bed my arm was sore. I then proceeded to spend the remainder of yesterday asleep in bed (except for about an hour last night when I had to get up and get some food into me).

Feeling a little better day (I'm at least up and about), but damn…

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It's Not Over Yet. Not by a Long Shot.

Please wear a mask: So the CDC wanted local jurisdictions to make their own call about mask mandates, but local jurisdictions have thrown their hands up and decided that since the CDC doesn't have any firm rules, they won't take a stand. But even in the wild, wild west that is pandemic summer #3, health experts urge you to mask up.

Why wear a mask? Because we are fucked if we do not. Everyone and their mother caught one of those pesky subvariants, and, according to the LA Times, we are looking at a "mass disabling event"—and we all know how the bosses treat people with disabilities under capitalism. Now (and always) is a good time to read up on disability activism before we all have to fight the capitalists to let us survive even if we cannot work in the ways society sees as most valuable.

The other plague: The feds are giving the whole country 786,000 more Monkeypox vaccines. Not to undersell the severity of the Monkeypox situation, but it does give me comfort that we already have a vaccine for this shit. Like, with COVID-19, we just raw-dogged for a year, and honestly when I think of how much painful, unnecessary death the state sanctioned, I want to vomit.

[Source]

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THIS is Why I Still Wear a Mask in Public

From Mock Paper Scissors:

As we say here, we might be done with the pandemic, but the Trump-Virus ain't done with us:

"The number of attendees who have tested positive for the coronavirusafterlast weekend's Gridiron dinner has risen to 67, organizers say, including Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who became the third member of Biden's Cabinet in attendance who was infected."

The subhead of the article says that "More than 10 percent of attendees of Gridiron dinner have been infected with the virus." And as is typical for D.C., the WaPo didn't include the health status of anyone who worked the event. I guess the invisible are truly invisible.

As the Gridiron dinner was announced and the society pages at Der Tiger Beat auf dem Potomac filled with stories of who was going, tuxedo rentals, the bon mots of the guests, I kept wondering if it was going to turn into a super spreader event, and lo! it has.

Look, I get it. I've been hunkered down since March 13, 2020, and so going on 3 years without dining out, going to a concert, no travel, doing much of anything in public has been a chore and always a gamble after assessing the odds. But even a nobody like me,  I knew that this thing was not going to end well, and I wondered why the connected and powerful didn't see it.

Anyway, this is now an object-lesson for the rest of us. Keep following protocols. Stay safe.

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Boosted…Again

Because I'm officially an old fart, I got a second COVID booster on Sunday afternoon. While I didn't suffer any side effects save for a sore injection site for most of yesterday, late in the afternoon the expected (based on previous shots) reaction hit, and by the time dinner rolled around, I was on the sofa bundled up in a blanket with fever and chills, slipping in and out of sleep.

At Ben's urging, I finally dragged myself upstairs and went to bed around 8. I threw an extra blanket on the bed and immediately passed out until his alarm went off at 6. I woke this morning with a horrific headache (I'm not sure if that was vax-related or simply that I'd not had any caffeine yesterday), but I'm happy to report all is pretty much back to normal now and I'm fully caffeinated again.

And my 5G reception still hasn't improved! Hmph!

I'm still going to continue to wear my mask in public and in the office, if for no other reason that I haven't had any of my usual winter/springtime respiratory maladies for the last two years and I'm happy to continue that trend.

 

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The Mask Mandate…

The mask mandate at work has been lifted. I don't care. I'm going to continue to mask up in confined indoor spaces for the rest of my life.

Why?

Because the pandemic isn't over. And I don't trust people. (Yes, I realize that wearing a mask is primarily to protect other people, but at the same time, during the past two years I never got any of the usual winter upper respiratory maladies that used to—pardon the expression—plague me pre-pandemic.)

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What if COVID Happened in the 80s?

It was a question Ben posed at lunch today.

If COVID happened in the 80s, I think it would've been addressed much more aggressively. (Let's leave HIV out of the discussion for now since at the time it affected a smaller population and it was a population of—let's face it—"undesirables" and forty years later there is still no vaccine against it.

The anti-max movement hadn't taken hold in the 80s. Similarly, there was no internet to spread disinformation and conspiracy theories. Surely such things still existed back then; they just didn't have the global reach they do now.

At the same time, since there was no internet, people wouldn't be working from home; they'd wither not be working at all, or they'd be forced to work in person, thereby increasing the rate of transmission until the population had been sufficiently inoculated. In either case I still believe commerce would've ground to a halt much like it did during the first few months of our own pandemic. I won't go so far to say the threat would've been eliminated any more quickly than it is currently happening, but we wouldn't be facing this widespread resistance and denial we are now which  is slowing the eradication of COVID down.

What do y'all think?