I'm sorry; that's awful 😞 . How's your school with precautions? Are they requiring masks?

My mother and stepfather got their first doses today (Pfizer). They had appointments, but still ended up waiting around 3 hours--the first couple of hours in the car and then over an hour inside (not thrilled about that). That was this afternoon; when I asked how they're feeling tonight she just said, "fine." So apparently no significant reactions yet anyway. They can't even try to schedule an appointment for the second dose yet, so who knows when they'll actually get it...but one dose is better than nothing anyway.

Yes. I think it's probably winter that's doing it to me (along with just how very, very long it's been going on, of course). I normally welcome cold weather and an excuse to stay inside watching movies or whatever, but, well...

you should absolutely post it! the rest of us can live vicariously 🙂

I did, too! It was supposed to be our late 20th anniversary celebration. I'll settle for a vaccine before our 22nd in August as a replacement 🙂

I just got my mother and stepfather signed up for appointments this week at my county health center. They live one county over, but it let me sign them up anyway. I could see the appointments filling up while I filled out the form; I felt like I was trying to score Hamilton tickets 🙂

We have a a big RV trip planned; currently we have two versions booked--one that goes into Canada if the border's open, and one that sticks with New England/New York. It's all tentative--I'm not ready to count on it actually happening--but good campgrounds often book up super early, so we don't have much choice but to plan ahead.

My Dad, who works at a nursing home, just got his first dose the other day and reports just a sore arm. He did say a couple of people he works with had worse reactions ("flu-like" he says) and called in sick for a day). I'm very relieved he got it, but it sounds like covid's been tearing through the nursing home lately and that it took longer than it should have to get it to them.

Really wasn't expecting this to turn into a debate about whether a short, isolated interaction with one other person in which both parties are masked is just as dangerous as a large indoor gathering for hours with dozens or hundreds of unmasked people. Yes, there is some risk with any interaction with another human being (and maybe also tigers and pigs and dogs). I believe there is ample evidence that short, masked interactions are much, much safer than long, unmasked interactions.

There's evidence that haircuts with masks are not very risky at all: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6928e2.htm I agree that a LOT of people are doing the best they can with the information they have. A lot of other people are doing whatever they feel like doing and they honestly don't care who gets sick.

If you see a large, unmasked gathering as the same level of risk as a haircut when both people are wearing masks, then I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. I also haven't done either, but I think they have vastly different levels of risk.

It's really disheartening how many people think "old people don't matter anyway" is a winning argument.

I think the best time to ask those questions would be if and when you see someone being called out for taking on a part time job they don't NEED or for getting a haircut. It's certainly possible I've missed it, but I haven't seen much of that here. Quite the opposite--I see a lot of threads where people wrestle with those kinds of issues and want advice on what's safe and reasonable and what's not, and they generally get very supportive responses. Obviously schools are a big issue for me right now. I personally don't feel that it's safe for schools to be open much of anywhere in the US right now, but I also understand that sending a kid to school in person is a really complicated issue for a lot of people, and I don't judge anyone who does it. I absolutely judge people who throw a big party and then send their kid to school the next day, though. And I think responding to "I'm really upset that so many people are having big indoor gatherings" with "but who are you to tell people they can't get haircuts?!" is disingenuous. (now there are like 10 new posts since I started writing, so I'll go read those now).

I think those are important questions, especially given how little guidance many of us have been given by our local and national leaders about what's safe and what's not. And I think it's important that we don't shame people who get sick. But this thread was started specifically to talk about people having large, unmasked gatherings, and I don't think that's a grey area.

Unfortunately for all those teachers who are going to lose their pay, it's the school system in cooperation with the county health department that makes that call instead of you. You're welcome to make some calls to the epidemiologists at the health department to tell them quarantines for close contacts are silly, though.

Yeah. My grandmother spent Christmas in quarantine alone in her room at her assisted living place because people just doing them brought covid in. That's what's happening to the people who DON'T get sick.

Would you like to explain how it works for health care workers, first responders, teachers, people who work at grocery stores and restaurants, and everyone else who doesn't have the choice not to come in contact with the people going to the gatherings? If people didn't want to come in contact with drunk drivers, they could just stay home as well, couldn't they?

Well, here's just one reason why other people's choices about this stuff absolutely affect me. DH (high school teacher) just got an e-mail today letting him know that because the federal act that covered COVID leave wasn't extended, if he needs to be out for covid related reasons, including a quarantine, he'll have to use his regular sick leave. He has 10 days of sick leave a year, so one quarantine because of a close contact would wipe that out. If he got quarantined again, he'd lose 10 days of pay. Over the break, there have been at least two parties in my neighborhood thrown by people who send their kids to school in our district. One of those kids brings covid to school because their parents couldn't skip the annual party this year and their teacher could go two weeks without pay because of it. Selfish actions have consequences for other people; that's why I'm bothered by them.

Thanks! Yep--I felt like all our needs were met 🙂

Ours is in our driveway, and, yes, it means our driveway is pretty crowded. We bought a trailer because we wanted to travel a lot and do very long trips in the summers (husband's a teacher), and the trailer made it financially possible. If we were just doing a couple of week long trips a year and occasional weekends, it likely wouldn't make sense financially.

yeah, I'm probably conflating it with my own concerns, which is more what the world will look like for those of us who CAN'T stay locked down when the vaccine starts to be more widely available but there's still plenty of covid circulating.

It can be a lot more complicated than that, though, especially in the short term. There will likely be a period of time--maybe a pretty long one--when adults in any given group will have had an opportunity to get vaccinated, but kids won't have, for example. And 95% isn't 100% Not the OP, but my particular concern here is that my husband is on an immunosuppressant that will quite possibly (no way to know for sure yet) make the vaccine less effective for him. He'll get it, but it won't necessarily protect him (or he may need to have titers drawn and get more doses than other people). There are a lot of reasons why a successful vaccination program relies on the vast majority of people getting a vaccine.

It's very, very clear when you look at the numbers here in school districts with mask requirements vs. ones without (there are large districts in each category near me) that masks make a huge difference. The contrast is so stark that, if I hadn't just lived through 2020, I'd have a hard time believing anyone in charge could look at the evidence and not start requiring masks. It's the difference between incidence rate in schools being similar to in the community overall in districts with masks and it being 2-3 times higher in districts without. Yet the district north of me just AGAIN refused to implement a mask mandate and instead had a contest for students to make posters encouraging mask wearing. And parents complained about THAT because they insisted it would encourage bullying of non-mask wearers. In my county, the superintendent claims that the incidence rate in school aged kids is the same in our school district as in the separate, city school system in the same county where schools have stayed virtual so far. I don't have any reason to doubt this, and it's reassuring....my quibbles are that 1. school aged kids are, I suspect, tested at a lower rate than adults and under different circumstances, so it's tough to draw a lot of conclusions based on that and 2. my county doesn't break down cases by staff/teachers vs. students. In places I've seen where it is broken down that way, the incidence rate for teachers is generally much worse than for students and much worse than in the community overall.

Most of my neighbors are at a party together down the street right now 😞 ....and we still hear plenty of fireworks

we have a travel trailer, too, and I think being able to travel with your own bathroom, kitchen, etc. makes the question a lot different. That said, we cancelled our planned long trip to Michigan over the summer and stuck with a few short trips in our state and within a day's drive and did only outside activities and takeout food. Hiking to waterfalls is lovely and all, but I got my fill. We're planning a long trip this summer...right now there are two versions of the itinerary: one for if the Canadian border is open and one for if it's not. I'm hopeful that the adults in our family at least will be vaccinated by then and that numbers will be down enough that we'll be comfortable doing some inside things even if there are some restrictions still (I'll still travel if I don't want to do inside restaurants or theaters/concerts, but probably not if we don't feel okay doing museums and tours of historic buildings, for example). I wouldn't be planning any overseas travel right now (but I wouldn't be anyway this year, pandemic or no), but it's possible I'd feel comfortable actually doing it by summer...it really just depends on how the vaccine rollout goes. ETA: my oldest is supposed to be going to Budapest for a study abroad program in spring of 2022...I really, really hope he gets to do that.