They think it’s overblown? That they’ll get a mild case because they’re healthy? My grandfather isn’t isolating and thinks people are overreacting but he told my mom “I’m ready to go if it’s my time so why should they make me stay home”. Of course, they don’t seem to care about all the other people who are going to get it because of their actions…
Here’s a similar story from California: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-01-02/covid-pandemic-testing-community-spread
I live within an hour’s drive of the border of my state and people have been driving to the next state (with looser restrictions) for indoor dining.
This also happens in the IL suburbs of St. Louis, I am told by my friends there. 
I figure the answer is one of two possibilities.
They are bad at risk analysis. This covers all categories of being stupid, selfish, ignorant, or willful.
They are good at risk analysis, and have decided the marginal risk of the restaurant does not increase their personal risk profile above the red line.
There’s a thing in the human brain that causes us to judge ourselves on our intents, and others on their actions. It makes it hard for us to look at that picture, and think anything besides selfish morons. Still, we have no idea what thought people put into that outing. They could all be profile 1, but they could be profile 2. We simply don’t know.
I am getting SO ANNOYED with my family network for how they present when people have gotten covid. “It’s so sad, we have no idea where he got it, he’s so careful!” Welllll he still does CrossFit and has a board game night so… “oh but she’s so careful!” She literally is still choosing to go to work in person (it’s optional) and all her kids chose in person school and her husband went on a boys trip to Cabo. Ummmm. Wtf do people think “so careful” MEANS? And then I feel like it’s fear mongering for people who ARE being careful because they assume it means the same thing as they’re doing.
Sorry. Just busy being annoyed with everyone in my family right now.
My MIL called Mr. Meer from a furniture store earlier because she said (after she stopped crying because she always cries when she calls these days because she misses seeing us) that she just couldn’t sit around the house any more.
In better news, my mom is scheduled to get her first dose of the Moderna vaccine tomorrow so now we need to research it. To paraphrase Mr. Meer “Is it like the flu vaccine or like the polio vaccine?” Basically could she still become infected and it just won’t impact her as badly/she could still pass it on to us? Because she’s also definitely planning on going to the inauguration. And she went with her husband a month or two ago on two airplanes to get him a vintage car and then they stayed in a hotel in New Orleans for a few days before road tripping home. But similar to @Bracken_Joy 's family, she’s being “so careful”. 
Someone had posted an article about a pharmacist on purpose destroying vaccines (by leaving them out of refrigeration intentionally). Apparently he did so twice overnight, so it was the second overnight that spoiled them. Aside from anger toward him as an individual, I was very upset about a lack of dual control to safeguard the vaccine (or stronger security measures) and the absolute failure to acknowledge or accept any responsibility by the leaders of the healthcare system he works for. But I have a completely different beef with all of this now. 500 doses lost? Wait a damn minute. Why aren’t they running a 24x7 vaccination clinic immediately upon receipt of the shipment? Why is the vaccine even hanging around long enough for this to happen? We’re not talking about storage of a mass amount of Pfizer vaccine. This is the Moderna one. Are we in no actual hurry to get people vaccinated? I looked it up, and the place where this happened is just outside of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. You can’t tell me there weren’t 500 people ready and willing to roll up their sleeves. This is wrong on so many levels!
I mean, people will wait all day for a f****** covid test and be turned away when tests run out. We should literally be running out of vaccine every single day.
I am horrified by the number of people in this airport. I’m here to pick up my kids from their first visit with their dad since summer, which I consider essential travel. But there are so many people here eating leisurely meals and so many visible noses and an entire fucking sports team and lots of skis. I’m so angry.
I should have had us drive again. It’s 13 hours and we meet in the middle.
Failing that, I should have brought my face shield and the real n95 home from work. I don’t trust the kn95 because they don’t have sizes and my face is small. I am sitting on the gross floor to be farther from people because it’s pretty packed in here.
I completely agree that custody travel is essential. It’s super sucky that it also exposes people to risk
To answer your rhetorical question, it seems we are NOT in a hurry to vaccinate people.
I suspect this is political so we can blame the next administration for the whole damn pandemic.
I’m angry because a neighbor who is like radical liberal, and I thought sensible is now in Costa Rica for 8 days.
WTF? You won’t go to a restaurant (she won’t, and they are open here) but international travel… no problem?
I am shocked costa rica is letting people in. I can’t imagine their healthcare system can handle the entire country getting sick.
The risk of asymptomatic transmission is probably reduced after one dose of the Moderna vaccine. Before the second dose in their study, they swabbed everyone in both placebo and vaccine groups and found 38 cases of asymptomatic covid in the placebo group and only 14 cases in the vaccine group, for ~63% reduction in asymptomatic cases. These numbers have to be taken with a grain of salt, though, because they’re pretty small when we’re talking about a study with ~15k people in each group, but it looks like a real effect to me.
In the peer-reviewed paper published a few days ago in the NEJM, Moderna states, “… the data were not sufficient to assess asymptomatic infection, although our results from a preliminary exploratory analysis suggest that some degree of prevention may be afforded after the first dose.”
It’s last call for patient-facing staff to get vaccinated where I work, and they’ve already started to vaccinate other at-risk groups. One of my co-workers is an RN who takes care of patients in both jail and a nursing home(!!). She’s been covid tested 50+ times because the nursing home requires 2x a week testing. The last time I talked to her, she still hadn’t decided to get the vaccine. Doses are still being held for people like her, but the window is closing, and I feel like a mass vaccination program will be underway in the next 1-2 months.
Also, I think that second doses are being held in reserve, so the numbers of doses actually given compared to doses delivered aren’t as bad as they look.
I hope we’ll get to 24/7 vaccination. The US is supposed to get 200M doses of the Pfizer and 200M of the Moderna vaccines by June/July, enough for 200M people. There are 255M people over 18yo, and not all of them will want to get vaccinated. (Additionally, the Pfizer vaccine is approved for 16 and 17-year-olds because they were included in the initial study.) We vaccinate 160M people each year for the flu in about 6 months. I’m optimistic.
The next few months will continue to be bad, though. And the new more transmissible variant(s) already spreading through the community in the US are very concerning. The UK is reporting 50k+ new covid cases a day since ~Dec 30, which explains some, um, rather unorthodox vaccine strategies they’re beginning to deploy.
Currently in Sydney there is a small outbreak, this is the day before the mandatory mask use came into affect (it started midnight)
Australians really arent taking it seriously !
Annotation 2021-01-04 113223|488x500
A friend who is a nurse just expressed concerns on FB that the vaccine has been developed too quickly in a knee-jerk way rather than a nuanced concern way. I guess that’s the privilege of living in a place where we don’t have any cases currently circulating.
If she’d said “because I have other health factors that make me concerned”, that’s one thing, but it was a meme with little context …
Thank you! That’s exactly what I was looking for.
An MP who lost their father and uncle this year missed the death and traveled for a small memorial following all government rules and regulations. She is stepping down or being removed from her position because we are justifiablo angry at the dickwad politicians who went to St Bart’s and other luxury vacation while defying all orders.
Also she’s young, female, pretty and leftwing unlike the vacationers
If I had known that elected officials think travel is fine I could have been there to grieve with my family when my aunt died in June. It’s childish, but I’m furious that she got to go and I didn’t, and it’s not fair. I was following the rules and it was so much harder than a loss in normal times.
