What is Covid looking like in your community now?

[Carrie12345]

I’m frustrated. If ds wasn’t finally getting vaccinated (and, you know, homeschooled,) I’d be more upset.  Our graph doesn’t match how people are acting.  In stores, masks are still prevalent, and required in some, but no one cares in other environments.

Kid shots aren’t showing a significant change in our vax rate, at least not yet. We’re at 55% with at least 1 shot. Just over 50% fully.

Our population is small, but we’re still averaging a death about every other day, even with all the advancements. Still a significant number in the hospital, though we’re no longer considered overloaded.

I’ve even gotten lax with rules in my own house, and that’s saying a lot.

[Laura Corin]

Kids are getting Covid at school and passing it to their parents.  Under-12s aren't being offered the shot yet.  Boosters are being rolled out for medical needs, NHS/care workers and over-50s.  Masking in most indoor areas is still mandated - I would say it's about 90% right now.  This is my county; the vaccine graph is for two doses:

Edited November 11, 2021 by Laura Corin

[Guest]

Maryland as a whole is in fairly good shape, but there are stark differences in behavior between areas of opposite political views. If I go in one direction out my door, I will encounter almost 100% mask usage. 30 minutes in another direction is the opposite. Yesterday I walked into a tiny cafe to pick up my call-ahead lunch and was a bit shocked to see 1) how many people were in there seated and eating and 2) no masks. (One older man may have been wearing a paper mask, but no one else but me, including the staff, who are never masked.) One lady seated and eating had oxygen supplementation. (Then again, maybe she is recovering from Covid now that I think about it.) 

So, it’s mixed, but my state is pretty good overall. Vax compliance for the elderly is almost total. Deaths in my county are down, after a bump when schools started. 

[Elizabeth86]

It has looked like covid isn’t a thing for a LONG time with the behavior of those around me. I look at the charts each week and we are still at a high level, but it is decreasing. I’m sure Thanksgiving won’t help a bit. I’m hopeful things might look good again in the summer. 🤣

Edited November 11, 2021 by Elizabeth86

[HomeAgain]

High transmission, low protocols.

Ds's team has 14 kids.  In the past two weeks:

Kid 1: parent exposed to covid, came and told everyone she was exposed to covid, and sat in the locker room with kids while having covid.  Team was not told for a week that she was positive and her kid was now quarantined.

Kid 2&3: parent came down with covid, kids played in a game while mom was feeling off, did not come the next day.  2 days later other parent shows up to be on the ice with the kids because he had no symptoms, but had quarantined kids and wife at home.

 

DS has an appointment tomorrow.  DS has been fully bubbled and masked because trust is very low.  DS is not allowed to hang out in the locker room, do supplemental activities, or be in common areas.  DS is allowed to walk in, finish putting on gear, play, and go out the side door to immediately shower, sanitize gear, and place all washables in the machine.  DH and I are still fully masked, doing the same protocol to keep him from having to cancel that ever-so-hard-to-get appointment that will take an entire afternoon driving.  We are NOT thrilled with the absolute idiots in our community.

[regentrude]

My county is still only 39.8% fully vaxxed. Infection numbers stabilized but not budging much. College has abolished mask mandate on campus. Two weeks later, student infections were rising; three weeks later, they are at levels we never had, even at the beginning of the semester when everybody newly returned to campus. I know, correlation does not equal causation, but Occam's razor says the simplest explanation is usually the correct one.

Meanwhile here in Germany it's disturbing. Seven-day incidence of 500 per 100k in my state. But the compliance with the indoor/public transit mask mandate, with N95s or medical masks required, is phenomenal. Very very different from MO.

Edited November 11, 2021 by regentrude

[Ottakee]

High positivity, hospitals over run.

[teachermom2834]

I live where there have never been many precautions. While things were cancelled here and there for the most part things have been pretty normal since May 2020. Indoor dining and recreation have been in full swing for a long time. Vaccination is under 40%. 
 

Our rates are now what I consider low. We have been through two major surges where things got very bad and then they came back down the curve. 
 

It seems nothing makes a difference here besides time. People behaved the exact same way since the beginning and the curves went up and back down. 
 

I don’t know. I’m not anti- precaution at all. We stayed out of crowds, masked, got vaccinated ASAP and now have boosters. But our curves looks similar to those in areas that did take more precautions. We live close to two larger cities that did and still do have more restrictions. They have been as bad or worse than we have been at nearly every point in this thing. 
 

I feel safer now that our community numbers are down. But for the majority of people I don’t think the numbers have made any difference. People have made their choices and gone about their business and there has been no difference in community behavior regardless of where we are on this thing.

Only wacky people like me even pay attention to the numbers. 

[MEmama]

12 minutes ago, regentrude said:

Numbers not budging much. College has abolished mask mandate on campus. Two weeks later, student infections were rising; three weeks later, they are at levels we never had, even at the beginning of the semester when everybody newly returned to campus. I know, correlation does not equal causation, but Occam's razor says the simplest explanation is usually the correct one.

Meanwhile here in Germany it's disturbing. Seven-day incidence of 500 per 100k in my state. But the compliance with the indoor/public transit mask mandate, with N95s or medical masks required, is phenomenal. Very very different from MO.

My parents are spending December in my mother’s hometown; the news from Germany is making me nervous for them. They just spent a month in Slovenia and while they are cautious, they aren’t as cautious as I am (they mask and will have had their boosters, but they do eat in restaurants). I’m glad they are going— who knows how many more opportunities they will have— but I can’t help but worry, especially as the cases keep climbing. 

[Farrar]

Pretty good vaccination rates, though the neighboring county has us beat (but they have the best in the nation, so la di da). I was pleased to see that the 12-17's have something like 80% with one dose, so that's nice since that's one of the metrics that has lagged in many areas. Falling case numbers. Falling test positivity rate (almost back to 1.0% so woohoo!) with still good testing numbers overall. Mask mandate still in place for indoors. Less mask compliance than at the height of the pandemic (when it was nearly total and was even really high outdoors) but most people are masked inside. A surprising number of people returned to outdoor masking. I see maybe about 25-30% when walking around on the street in my neighborhood. Everything basically reopening without number limitations. I like that better. Keep the masks, ditch the restrictions - at least while numbers are pretty low.

 

[freesia]

My county is over 75%eligible people vaccinated and cases are at about 8 per 100,000 and have been dropping.  Death rate over seven days is 0. Hospitalizations are dropping and are in the green. The towns around me have an even higher vax rate. I haven’t known anyone with COVID for a couple of months. 
 

Mask wearing at stores is very high—I’d say close to 100%. The schools have a mask mandate, so the library does, too. Sports teams don’t require masks. At least half of dd’s soccer team is vaccinated and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s higher. 
Our church has high mask use. The church my kids go to a second youth group at does not. 
 

Things feel more normal than ever. My youngest has started her vaccine course so idk if that has effected me or if it’s the constantly falling case load combined with the climbing vaccine count. 

[regentrude]

19 minutes ago, MEmama said:

My parents are spending December in my mother’s hometown; the news from Germany is making me nervous for them. They just spent a month in Slovenia and while they are cautious, they aren’t as cautious as I am (they mask and will have had their boosters, but they do eat in restaurants). I’m glad they are going— who knows how many more opportunities they will have— but I can’t help but worry, especially as the cases keep climbing. 

OTOH, they have precautions here: indoor dining and activities are permitted only for vaccinated/recovered, the discussion is whether testing should be added. IMO, they should test everybody, whether vaxxed or not. So in that sense it is much, much safer than participating in public life in my state in the US

[Farrar]

Adding... you have to show your vax card and ID together for a ton of stuff here now. Particularly every performance venue for theater, music, etc. and a lot of the bars. So that's a good thing that I really appreciate. Like, kid went to a big indoor EDM concert a few weeks ago and I was like, sigh. But they had to show vax and ID and stay masked. I made him wear one of the KN95's. He drew the EDM artist's logos all over it, lol.

[Lecka]

We had a big delta surge from about July through September.

Since then our numbers are looking really good!

 

[Pawz4me]

Much better than it was a few weeks ago, but probably still much worse than what many of you are seeing.

Our case rate is currently 247 per 100k over the last 14 days. The county to the north of us, where we do everything, is slightly better at 210 per 100k.

In our county the fully vaccinated percentage for those 12+ is 51 percent. In the county north of us it's 66 percent.

I think it's likely the numbers are going to start back up now, given colder weather and holiday gatherings.

[mom31257]

Lower vaccination rates but much lower number of cases than the spike in August. A nearby hospital publishes the number of patients, patients in ICU, and patients on a vent along with vaccination status. It's a 280 bed hospital and only 3 are in ICU with 2 on the vent as of yesterday. Those numbers were much higher two months ago. 

My dh teaches school and they haven't had to go virtual this year yet. We are new here, so social media, his school, and the church we are attending are our only avenues to hear much. I joined a community Facebook group, and there is no discussion of it. I don't hear of cases at our church, but maybe I wouldn't. Very few people wear masks there. 

[TexasProud]

52 minutes ago, teachermom2834 said:

I live where there have never been many precautions. While things were cancelled here and there for the most part things have been pretty normal since May 2020. Indoor dining and recreation have been in full swing for a long time. Vaccination is under 40%. 
 

Our rates are now what I consider low. We have been through two major surges where things got very bad and then they came back down the curve. 
 

It seems nothing makes a difference here besides time. People behaved the exact same way since the beginning and the curves went up and back down. 
 

I don’t know. I’m not anti- precaution at all. We stayed out of crowds, masked, got vaccinated ASAP and now have boosters. But our curves looks similar to those in areas that did take more precautions. We live close to two larger cities that did and still do have more restrictions. They have been as bad or worse than we have been at nearly every point in this thing. 
 

I feel safer now that our community numbers are down. But for the majority of people I don’t think the numbers have made any difference. People have made their choices and gone about their business and there has been no difference in community behavior regardless of where we are on this thing.

Only wacky people like me even pay attention to the numbers. 

This is exactly how I feel. Time seems to be the only thing that makes a difference with the curves. I am masking, but it doesn't feel like it makes a difference.   One county  5.5/100,000 cases, infection rate .75 and 5.7 percent positive test rate. Only 48 percent are vaccinated. In the other county we straddle  40 percent are vaccinated and it is 8.5/100,000, .66 infection rate,  and 6.3 percent positive. The behavior hasn't changed since the numbers were over 200/100,000.  

I was also going to ask the Hive, and maybe this thread is a good place to do so. My husband has been wondering why all of these football games are not superspreader events?  I mean the OU/Texas game alone had 100,000 people with no masks. 

I just do not get this virus. Nearly everyone I know is vaccinated, but no masks. My husband has even stopped wearing the masks in small meeting and such at church. We still wear it in worship and Sunday school, though we are the only ones. But as I said, everyone I know is vaccinated. ( Well, that I interact with anyway. I do know people, including doctors and nurses who are not, but they are not in our social group and were not before Covid or they live far away.)

But yeah, I am with the poster I quoted. I have been cautious, but overall, it doesn't feel like community-wise it makes a difference. Only time. This virus is so strange.

[historically accurate]

We're at 53% vaccinated. 5%ish positivity rate. 150ish/100,000 and have been holding pretty steady right there for a month. Hospitalizations have been rising for 2 weeks, although our ICU is less than 80% full currently. We do have a statewide mask mandate still, but I'd say my area is around 60-75% compliance.

Last night, I was with DD at the ER (she's fine and on antibiotics now), and there were people everywhere - lining the hallways, in every room, no more than 2 seats in 2 waiting rooms at any given time, people lying on the floor in the waiting room sometimes. They were going around the waiting room to take vitals with a mobile cart - I'd never seen that before. DD had chest pains, and we still waited 3 hours before they did an EKG. We were placed in a room attached to the nurses' station after a while, and so we heard the ambulances announcing their arrival on the radio for the 4+ hours we were in there. I'd say maybe 2/3-3/4 of them were Covid related breathing problems. My neighbor just came home from the hospital this week for Covid pneumonia (about a 2 week stay). 

[regentrude]

16 minutes ago, TexasProud said:

I am masking, but it doesn't feel like it makes a difference.   

How would you need it to feel so it feels like it makes a difference?

I am masking, have been teaching in an N95 since August. All I know is that I did not get sick. So, I don't know whether I would have caught it had I not masked or not, but there is a good chance the mask has prevented me from an infection.
(Btw, vaccinated people can be infected, so close socializing with vaxed folks is no infection prevention.)

[Laura Corin]

1 hour ago, regentrude said:

My county is still only 39.8% fully vaxxed. Infection numbers stabilized but not budging much. College has abolished mask mandate on campus. Two weeks later, student infections were rising; three weeks later, they are at levels we never had, even at the beginning of the semester when everybody newly returned to campus. I know, correlation does not equal causation, but Occam's razor says the simplest explanation is usually the correct one.

Meanwhile here in Germany it's disturbing. Seven-day incidence of 500 per 100k in my state. But the compliance with the indoor/public transit mask mandate, with N95s or medical masks required, is phenomenal. Very very different from MO.

I'm glad you have made it to Germany. 

[cintinative]

Our county is about 60% vaxxed.  Very few people out and about with masks, probably 10% in the stores.  At church, less than 10%.  Our numbers did go down for a bit, but they are creeping back up, and/or fluctuating in a weird way between the upper 2000s and 5000 cases/day (statewide). The hospital numbers are also fluctuating. I look at new admissions, and they don't look good, but overall the hospital population hasn't skewed up for our region. It's really hard to say but we might be about to have another rise.  I know anecdotally of a lot of people doing home testing, so I am not sure how that skews things.

Even my COVID cautious friends are fatigued by it all. 

 

[J-rap]

We're really surging here now.  Another hospital has been designated a Covid hospital.  The metro area where I am is still taking a lot of precautions, although if you go out-state to rural areas, not so much.  Kids are definitely being vaccinated, many through schools, and boosters are being given, but it seems like it can't be done fast enough.  I know a lot of people who are getting Covid now who are twice vaccinated, but the shots have waned and they're not eligible for boosters yet.  Otherwise, I think our state has pretty good vaccination numbers.

[mommyoffive]

9 minutes ago, J-rap said:

We're really surging here now.  Another hospital has been designated a Covid hospital.  The metro area where I am is still taking a lot of precautions, although if you go out-state to rural areas, not so much.  Kids are definitely being vaccinated, many through schools, and boosters are being given, but it seems like it can't be done fast enough.  I know a lot of people who are getting Covid now who are twice vaccinated, but the shots have waned and they're not eligible for boosters yet.  Otherwise, I think our state has pretty good vaccination numbers.

This makes me so nervous for my 12 and up kids who got the 2nd shot in June.  When can they get boosted?????  

[Wheres Toto]

As a state, our daily metrics are at 1,354 confirmed/383 probable new cases, 16 deaths, Rt of .97.  676 hospitalizations, 60 on ventilators.  Percent positivity is jumping around between 3% and 5% lately.

My county (of 500,000 people) is 51 confirmed/28 probable cases, no deaths.  54% ICU usage.

Vaccination rate for my county is 78% at least one dose and 70.3% fully vaccinated.  That seems to be for entire population, not just eligible.   I guess we have fewer young children than I thought.

Generally we're looking okay in my county, not as good but not awful as a state.   The majority of people are still wearing masks in stores but not in restaurants or outdoors from what I've seen.   Schools, childcares, and medical facilities still have a mandate.

[J-rap]

9 minutes ago, mommyoffive said:

This makes me so nervous for my 12 and up kids who got the 2nd shot in June.  When can they get boosted?????  

At least in our state, it sounds like they'll be opening boosters up to anyone 18 and over fairly soon, later this month.  Once they get those numbers up, I assume they'll then open it up to anyone who is at least 6 months out.  I think they want to move on this fast, so as long as boosters have been approved for children, I'd guess it won't be too long a wait!

[mommyoffive]

1 minute ago, J-rap said:

At least in our state, it sounds like they'll be opening boosters up to anyone 18 and over fairly soon, later this month.  Once they get those numbers up, I assume they'll then open it up to anyone who is at least 6 months out.  I think they want to move on this fast, so as long as boosters have been approved for children, I'd guess it won't be too long a wait!

I haven't heard anything at all about boosters being approved for kids.  Has anyone?   

[kokotg]

I just checked, and my state is one of the only ones not reporting vaccination data by county on the NYT tracker. So no idea locally what rates are like; I'm in a well-educated suburban area, so I imagine higher here than in the state as a whole. Our county just got rid of the mask mandate for schools a few days before kids were eligible for their first shots. Sure--makes sense. Now, a week and a half later, word is the local elementary school has more than a dozen cases in the 5th grade and two classrooms have had to go virtual (as far as I can tell this is the first week all year this school has had more than 3 cases in the entire school at one time). So that's how things are going here. Community numbers are relatively low again for now (just went under 100/100,000 14 day rate), which means I don't see nearly as many masks in stores as I did a month or two ago (I'd guess it's at around 25% now). 

[TheReader]

My county has the 8th highest vaccination rate in the state of TX, which is good. Masks are becoming almost a rarity, which is not great, but once I learned that our vaccination rate really is that high, maybe it really is the vaccinated folks going unmasked? Most places have gone to "unvaccinated patrons need to wear a mask, it is optional for others" so.....maybe? 

We had a HUGE surge with Delta. Numbers of infections and hospitalizations are down to around where they were before the surge. So we're back at roughly May/June levels, which is feeling a bit better. In September or so, we knew all of a sudden TONS of people with really bad cases during the height of the surge. 

With some trepidation we allowed DS to go to a concert with the youth group; our reasoning was, while the venue was crowded, he was sitting in the big middle of the exact same people he's with weekly anyway, and we knew they were arriving later than the crush of people arriving, and also leaving after the big crush of people exiting was died down some, so his "close contact" with folks outside their group was minimal or non-existent. He is fully vaccinated (none of us have had boosters yet). 

Boosters are readily available for pretty much anyone that wants them (I inquired, as I do teach in person 2x/week, and was not asked at all about medical reasons, etc., and could have done a walk-in that day).  Kids vaccines are readily available, as far as I can tell (we don't have any under 12s in our household, so I've not checked, but know a handful of families who have scheduled theirs for their kiddos, w/o any issue). How many will seek them out remains to be seen, but hopefully it follows the trend of the other age groups in our county. 

 

[ScoutTN]

My county is about 60% vaxed. It’s climbing slightly in the last week with kid vax available. The state as a whole is lower. Positivity is 6% and falling. Nothing is as low as it was in May. 

I see a lot of exhaustion and fading out on covid protocols. 
 

Worried that holiday gatherings will fill the hospitals again. 

[Syllieann]

16 minutes ago, mommyoffive said:

I haven't heard anything at all about boosters being approved for kids.  Has anyone?   

Not here, but Israel is requiring it for their 12+ year olds to be considered fully vaccinated.  Hopefully we can use their data to inform our choices.  For 18+ the myocarditis rate is lower than the second shot but higher than the first.

https://blogs.shu.edu/thediplomaticenvoy/2021/10/12/israel-to-require-booster-shots-for-fully-vaccinated-individuals/

[alysee]

We are in Ontario, Canada. Our community has a few colleges and 1 university so our numbers are high and that age group has a low vaccination rate so our numbers remain high despite the fact that as a whole Ontario is doing quite well keeping it around 400 cases a day. 

I am thankful my kids are homeschooled because I am at high risk and the vaccine hasn't yet been approved here for kids younger than 12. 

 

[Faith-manor]

We do not have a single school building in the county without a significant outbreak. Some have closed because the numbers are so high. The high school in my district as 293 students, and 46 known covid cases. You can imagine the level of exposure. But they refuse to shut down, and there is no contact tracing. They no longer inform the parents. Only 11.5% of eligible teens in the county are vaccinated and the health department estimates that less than 10% of eligible 5-11 year olds will end up vaxed. This is an anti-vax county with actual churches whose leadership preach against vaccines as a mark of the beast. They also preach that about masks too. It is a let it rip county, and routinely overwhelms the nearest city hospitals because our two little county ones are nothing more than stitch and ditch or bandaid stations and have no ability to handle covid much less pediatric cases. Of a population of 52,000 people, yesterday's estimate of probable new cases was 1507. The positivity rate has topped 20% and since most people refuse to test until they are very sick, that number isn't even close to the true picture.

We are fairly hunkered down. We have to grab some wood today for some Christmas woodworking projects, but have ordered it from Menards for outdoor pick up. We will wear KN95 just to roll down the window to talk the the employee because the county we have to go to in order to get the wood is worse off than our county! We will also travel a bit of distance for a curbside pick up of groceries from Kroger because Meijer and Walmart, our closest grocers, have eliminated curbside pick up due to staffing issues. The last thing I want to do is spend time running around a packed out big box store.

Dh gets his dose today. We had to wait for the local pharmacies to get stock and it was slow coming in. He was JnJ back in April and is getting Pfizer. Our son who is JnJ also will be home from college on the 19th, and gets a Pfizer on the 20th while I will also be getting a Moderna booster same day. I wanted to get one sooner, but they just got Moderna in, and I have to do some things the next few days for our elderly mothers, things which cannot be put off. Since I am a reactor, a terrible any vaccine will make me ill for two-three days kind of reactor, I needed to get this out of the way and then be ready to hunker down and be miserable. However, I have to drive to the U. P. the 19th to get our son and can't be sporting a fever while making a 14 hr round trip. So I put it off until the 20th, and we will go together so that I can be jealous of the fact that he gets vaccines and may as well have been injected with tea because they don't phase him, while I look and feel like something the cat barfed up, and my arm will be sore for five days, and burn at times for a couple of weeks. Sigh.

The county is imploding. And we have no county health department director. The county commissioners forced ours out. She could not take the pressure from them. They are all covid is a hoax people, every one of them, and wanted her to lie about the numbers, lie about the disease, lie, lie, lie. She wouldn't. They called her HORRIBLE names in public! It was awful. So now they want to hire someone who was an Army Corpsman, and has a master's degree in emergency medical administration which would be a qualification for being an administrator of EMS, but does not meet the state requirements for public health. The county hired lawyers - don't even ask me how I feel about the use of my tax dollars for this - to sue the state for the right to hire whomever they damn well please to the position. So no one is at the helm. The county medical services director has been doing everything he can to blow the whistle on the county commissioners, but this very right wing area just loves them! And the current "has at least one dose of some covid vaccine" rate is only 39% for the adults.

I live in a f*cking Petri dish in which even the measles and HIB vaccination rate for kids has fallen below 60%. Children are the sacrificial lambs to the political and religious gods, and the parents are proud of it. 😠 I have three great nieces who have not received a single vaccine in their lifetimes. One needed stitches this summer and her parent refused to allow her to even have tetanus anti-toxin. According to the local health department employees, this is becoming a big thing here as they hear from the stitch and ditch that an increasing number of parents will not allow them to give it when minors are injured.

I am so DONE with this place!

Edited November 11, 2021 by Faith-manor

[Faith-manor]

I should state that my college senior is on campus with a college that has a 77% vaccine rate for students (they didn't hand out exemptions except medical so the unvaxed students are off campus commuters), and 91% of faculty and staff. The 9% unvaxed staff were allowed work remote if their job allowed it, or work in the office with a medical exemption, or be fired. Religious and "I don't want to" exemptions were not an option. Unvaccinated students and employees have to test twice per week. There is a strictly enforced mask mandate on campus, very strict, and everyone has been very good about it because so long as they do it without whining at the administration and bucking the rules, life on campus gets to be quite normal. They have gone the entire semester on a campus of 9500+ people, and only seven cases for the entire semester. The quarantine dorm goes weeks without anyone in it. So the thing is, with community cooperation, this virus can absolutely be stamped down. But, this means the community at large cannot be whackadoodle asshats and actually give a frick about it. That seems to be pretty damn rare in my state, definitely in my county.

[kbutton]

3 hours ago, HomeAgain said:

High transmission, low protocols.

Ds's team has 14 kids.  In the past two weeks:

Kid 1: parent exposed to covid, came and told everyone she was exposed to covid, and sat in the locker room with kids while having covid.  Team was not told for a week that she was positive and her kid was now quarantined.

Kid 2&3: parent came down with covid, kids played in a game while mom was feeling off, did not come the next day.  2 days later other parent shows up to be on the ice with the kids because he had no symptoms, but had quarantined kids and wife at home.

I don't know how schools are handling things in your area, but I wouldn't be surprised to find out that when schools don't follow CDC guidance about who is a close contact, etc. it contributes to this kind of bending the rules in other activities centered around kids (more so if it's an expensive activity that parents have invested in).

[Granny_Weatherwax]

Things are 'strange'. At least that's the word I'll use.  We're averaging 140 positive cases a week. The health dept has removed all of the main COVID links from the home page of their site. The links for mobile vaccination clinics and to register your vaccinations are at the bottom of the page. COVID testing is only offered three days a week or by physician referral at the hospital. People seeking a test are now required to pay for it out-of-pocket or through insurance. Companies can mandate a negative test before employees return to work after showing any symptoms on the list but the majority of companies are no longer paying for the test.  Rapid tests are anywhere from $50-85 dollars and many of the smaller communities don't have the rapid tests on hand so employees have to drive to the larger towns/small cities in order to receive a test so they can return to work. There is no guarantee that insurance will reimburse for the tests required by employers. People are dosing themselves with cold medicine and cough syrup to try to mask any symptoms so they can work.

Local government buildings all require masks once inside; this includes the recreation facilities. While signs are posted on doors that masks are required to enter any business, I would say that compliance is less than 50%. Many people 'wearing' masks do the under the chin thing (which drives me crazy) or have their nose exposed. I estimate maybe 30% wear masks properly.

People have pretty much resumed normal life. Movies, church, restaurants, gyms - all are open and operating as usual. People are having bbqs, birthday parties, weddings and receptions, etc without masks or social distancing.

Monitoring of people entering the local hospital is a joke. I had to stop by earlier in the week and had an active cough. I stopped at the desk and told the concierge I was ill and offered to have my temperature taken. She said they no longer monitored symptoms and was there to make sure people were complying with the mask mandate and to make certain everyone entering had an appt as no guests were allowed. The women who entered before me were wearing their masks below their nose, as was the concierge, so I don't have too much confidence in the system.

[Ali in OR]

Happy to live in the only state that still has a mask mandate (read that on CNN last night). We've been slow to come down off the Delta surge, but now dropping quickly in the last week. In my county, we had been around 25 cases per day for weeks and now suddenly averaging 14 cases per day. My high school where I work has had the most cases in our school district--22 since the start of school. But I wouldn't say we've had an "outbreak" in the school. I've had several students out, I've been checked to see if I was in close contact for a couple, and those cases didn't spread to anyone else. I think mostly students are getting it outside of school, or at least outside of class as there has been no obvious spread within a school class or group.

My county has had a total of 5,855 cases and 35 deaths since the start. And we're close enough to 100k people to say that's a rate per 100k. That's better than most places. I hope we keep the mask mandate in the state at least through the holidays. I think we have it at school for the rest of the school year.

Edited November 11, 2021 by Ali in OR

[SKL]

It's trending up in my county again.  They had a mask mandate in schools for the past month or so, so it isn't that.

[TexasProud]

2 hours ago, regentrude said:

How would you need it to feel so it feels like it makes a difference?

I am masking, have been teaching in an N95 since August. All I know is that I did not get sick. So, I don't know whether I would have caught it had I not masked or not, but there is a good chance the mask has prevented me from an infection.
(Btw, vaccinated people can be infected, so close socializing with vaxed folks is no infection prevention.)

Because this just isn't making sense to me. At the height of the Delta surge when hospitals were overwhelmed, my community did nothing. I mourned the fact that no masks at the schools and high schoolers meeting and hugging little elementary kids at the door. Packed high school games. Packed community events and yet our rates have continued to fall and fall until now when the community spread is nearly nil DESPITE the fact that no one took any precautions at all.  I have sat over the last month and watch PACKED college football games on tv in our state with no masks at all and yet our rates continue to fall.  Scientifically, this makes no sense to me. Being as careless as they are, according to this board, and heck according to everything I have read the rates should be horrible. I just don't understand.  I continue to mask, but I am not sure why at this point and my husband has ditched his masks other than in high traffic areas. We still wear them in stores and at big church services, but he doesn't wear them to committee meetings or doing his work in the community unloading and loading stuff.  Because of my mom, I wear them everywhere, but I am the only one and feel rather foolish to be honest.

Edited November 11, 2021 by TexasProud

[Shoeless]

Our case rate is 1.6/100,000 as of a few days ago. Positivity is 1.5%. There are about 80 cases currently in my county. 50% of the population is vaccinated and the hospital now emptying out. 

Masking is iffy. Like, I am in my doctor's office right now and none of the staff are masked. Masking is 50/50 in stores. We don't go to restaurants anymore, so no idea what's happening there. No one gives me a hard time about masking when I am out, which is good. That happened at the start of the pandemic.

I have loosened up our self-imposed lockdown. I don't mask when outside, I go into stores if I need to, we get haircuts and go to the zoo. Next week, we are going to the art museum. 

So, things are looking good here? But it's come at a cost. At least 10% of my county has had Covid. It's likely 20-25% when you add in asymptomatic cases and people that never bothered to test, (I know of quite a few people who were sick with "something" and lost taste and smell, but never tested because Faith not Fear). 

We'll see what Thanksgiving brings. 

[Mrs Tiggywinkle]

Finally on a downward trend.  I just checked the statistics and we’re at a 5.88% rolling positivity rate over the last 7 days.  50.1% of the entire population fully vaccinated with slightly more having their first shot.  We haven’t had a mask mandate in New York since spring and I rarely see anyone masked, even in places like movie theaters.  I know of one restaurant that still requires masks.  
I was hoping for more of a response to the pediatric vaccines, but the first clinic, with around 500 open slots, only saw 120 kids.  Unless it’s required for school I don’t expect there will be a lot of kids vaccinated.  
 

Our hospitalizations are still up, though, with 39 hospitalized in the one hospital in the county. That may not sound like a lot, but consider that our hospital only has 20 ICU beds.

[WildflowerMom]

I don't know statistics (or math) like y'all do, so I may be off some.   Our area is only 25% vaxxed.   Everything is carrying on like covid doesn't exist, except for the fact that a lot of activities are moved outside.   We seem to have low covid rates and our hospitals and doctors offices are fine. (Unfortunately I've been to both places enough in the past few weeks to see that with my own eyes, as well as hear it from workers)  

The only thing that makes sense to me is: 1) it's the deep south and most people are outside all the time.  Even in winter, there's not a lot of indoor, close gatherings.  And 2) people are much more aware of germs, hygiene-wise.  I see it in stores and people with their sanitizer, etc.  I never noticed anything like that before.  Maybe it's helping?  Idk.  
At this point, I can only protect me and I still mask and am vaxxed.   So I'm going to places, doing what I want to do.  🤷🏻‍♀️  

[WildflowerMom]

19 minutes ago, TexasProud said:

Because this just isn't making sense to me. At the height of the Delta surge when hospitals were overwhelmed, my community did nothing. I mourned the fact that no masks at the schools and high schoolers meeting and hugging little elementary kids at the door. Packed high school games. Packed community events and yet our rates have continued to fall and fall until now when the community spread is nearly nil DESPITE the fact that no one took any precautions at all.  I have sat over the last month and watch PACKED college football games on tv in our state with no masks at all and yet our rates continue to fall.  Scientifically, this makes no sense to me. Being as careless as they are, according to this board, and heck according to everything I have read the rates should be horrible. I just don't understand.  I continue to mask, but I am not sure why at this point and my husband has ditched his masks other than in high traffic areas. We still wear them in stores and at big church services, but he doesn't wear them to committee meetings or doing his work in the community unloading and loading stuff. 

I feel the same.   I know vaccines help.  I know masking helps.   At this point, I'm not sure how much it helps.   The more I hear about people who are vaxed and still getting sick (there's a vaxxed NFL player right now who has covid and ended up hospitalized...  I can assure you that guy is in better shape than me. 🤪), the more I think we haven't figured this thing out like we think we have.   

[Mrs Tiggywinkle]

11 minutes ago, WildflowerMom said:

I feel the same.   I know vaccines help.  I know masking helps.   At this point, I'm not sure how much it helps.   The more I hear about people who are vaxed and still getting sick (there's a vaxxed NFL player right now who has covid and ended up hospitalized...  I can assure you that guy is in better shape than me. 🤪), the more I think we haven't figured this thing out like we think we have.   

I agree—my county releases the breakthrough cases as well.  71 out of the 124 positives yesterday were fully vaccinated.  While they aren’t going to die, I’m seeing fully vaccinated people who are still very sick and struggling(“mild Covid” to HCW and the CDC doesn’t mean what most people think “mild Covid” means)

While I appreciate the transparency, I feel like a lot of people on the fence look at those numbers and their sick, double vaccinated friends and think why bother.

 

 

[skimomma]

We are at about 45% vaccination rate and have the highest infection and hospitalization numbers ever.  And that is saying something since testing is very hard to access and many people here will not test even if they have raging symptoms.  The schools have no mask mandates and are not doing contact tracing.  Many kids are out of school or showing up with symptoms.  A child I am close to just got infected and has significant symptoms.  Her parents contacted the school for contact tracing and they told them they were not collecting that info anymore.  Nor do they even have a policy for quarantine because "Covid is no big deal for kids."  She could (but will not) go back to school right now despite being symptomatic and having just tested positive two days ago.  I am deeply disturbed.

There is almost no masking in public.  It is quite rare.  The only exception is the university, which has reinstated their mask mandate after a surge amongst the students.  Somehow, despite much higher testing access, the student population, even during this "surge," is still at a fraction of the public infection rate.  Most students and almost all faculty were still masking at least part time even when the mandate was lifted for a brief time.  I work there and my dd is a student there so that is a relief.  We are all boosted.  I still wear a mask in other public places and I am usually rewarded with the stink eye by everyone I encounter.

[happi duck]

@Ali in OR my state still has a mask mandate.  It looks like six do?  I think Oregon is the only outdoor mandate maybe?

I am so very glad to have a mask mandate!

[MEmama]

42 minutes ago, WildflowerMom said:

I feel the same.   I know vaccines help.  I know masking helps.   At this point, I'm not sure how much it helps.   The more I hear about people who are vaxed and still getting sick (there's a vaxxed NFL player right now who has covid and ended up hospitalized...  I can assure you that guy is in better shape than me. 🤪), the more I think we haven't figured this thing out like we think we have.   

I think a lot of people have simply given up. They are bored of the pandemic—if they cared at all to begin with—and just don’t wanna any more. 

Besides the obvious primary drivers— antivaxxers and children— I think too many people figure once they get vaxxed they can live their lives “like normal”. Of course vaccination is ever just one layer of protection, though; masking is another, social distancing is another. But we have to continue to do *all* of them to fully get this under control. Reducing viral load is key— something a football player or teacher, for example, probably doesn’t have much control over even if they are doing the right things.
 

It feels futile for people like us who continue to do all the things when 1/3 of the country would rather poison themselves with whatever snake oil flavor of the week their favorite entertainment host commands them to take while we are stuck with the burden, though. 

[Shoeless]

47 minutes ago, WildflowerMom said:

I feel the same.   I know vaccines help.  I know masking helps.   At this point, I'm not sure how much it helps.   The more I hear about people who are vaxed and still getting sick (there's a vaxxed NFL player right now who has covid and ended up hospitalized...  I can assure you that guy is in better shape than me. 🤪), the more I think we haven't figured this thing out like we think we have.   

I wouldn't be so sure that football player is in better shape than you. Over 50% of Nfl players have a BMI that makes them obese, and it's not all muscle. A lot of those guys are encouraged to gain weight because being a blunt, immovable object on the field has advantages. 

High BMI is correlated with severe Covid requiring hospitalization.

NFL players and BMI

BMI and Covid

[Bootsie]

Locally, numbers are down quite a bit.  We were averaging about 8 cases per day at my university in August and September.  Cases dropped off significantly in October and we have had 5 cases total reported in the last 11 days.  It is a bit strange because we have a mask mandate for indoors that people were following fairly closesly in August and September--at the beginning of October we had parents weekend and the campus was flooded with parents, siblings, and grandparents who flew from all over the country and the parents were the one's not abiding by the mask mandate.  We had several other large events on campus which brought people from all over into the community and masking was not occurring.  I thought numbers would increase, but they dropped off significantly (and the drop began before boosters were widely available so that isn't the reason).  It isn't just the campus community, the city and county have seen a significant drop, also.   Our new case rate in the county is about 20% of what it was at the end of August.  

[regentrude]

16 minutes ago, MEmama said:

It feels futile for people like us who continue to do all the things when 1/3 of the country would rather poison themselves with whatever snake oil flavor of the week their favorite entertainment host commands them to take while we are stuck with the burden, though. 

Yep. At this point, I only have two goals: protect myself as to not to get sick, and fulfill my moral responsibility not to host events that could put other people in jeopardy. Specifically to the latter: I have not brought back the reading series I host in a small indoor space, and we will not be holding a reception after my dad's funeral (funeral itself will be distanced, attendance limit, and vax/recovery cert required).

I cannot affect other people's idiocy. I can only try to mitigate the damage they threaten to myself and my loved ones.

Edited November 11, 2021 by regentrude

[MooCow]

It appears to be going down, particularly in my subdivision since we had a few moms that almost did not make it. One did pass. 😥 I think that scared a lot of people since there's supposedly no more anti vaccine on our community social media page. 

Eta: it cheeses me off that most don't mask, in our family we always do.

Edited November 11, 2021 by MooCow