I’m so happy for your friend!
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I’m doing more in that I am visiting my vaccinated parents, and vaccinated friends, indoors, one household at a time. My brother’s family is mostly not vaccinated and they prefer outside since my husband is teaching in person, so that’s what we planned (and then we all stayed on the deck all day and played with the puppies anyway).
No bars here, and no public transit, so that’s not an issue for me.
I have, as of Friday, eaten takeout for the first time since March of 2020, and then on Saturday I ate my mother’s cooking, so that’s two big hurdles.
I can’t imagine eating indoors in a restaurant here for a while, but honestly not because I am worried about catching Covid but because I can’t stand all these people around here who don’t give a damn about anyone but Q.
I had started doing curbside a few months before the pandemic, but it’s been a great relief the last couple weeks to be able to just run in for a something (bandages most recently).
Driving, though. Still getting used to that again. It’s been well over a year since I drove on an interstate, and don’t expect to any time soon, really. I mostly only do that on work trips, and I may never do one of those again.
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I will be 2 weeks post second dose tomorrow, and am now trying to decide whether to resume taking Uber passengers (I switched to food delivery a year ago because of COVID).
There isn’t really a financial difference for me; tax implications are better with passengers because I drive about twice as many miles, but obviously fuel and vehicle wear are also higher. I’m sure traveling, even masked, in a closed car with another masked person, isn’t a CDC approved activity.
But the need is great. People have been seeing the Uber sticker in my window and literally begging me to take them home, because there are so few available drivers. I haven’t even considered it until now, obviously. Since a lot of the riders here are Medi-Cal and methadone clinic patients without their own transportation (and we have almost non-existent public transportation), they are basically just screwed, waiting hours after their appointments for someone to finally come get them.
Am I totally irresponsible for thinking of doing this again?
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I don’t think so. I think it’s reasonable to consider on your part, and like you said there is a need. It’d be great if it was an ideal world and they had other options but that’s not how things are.
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If I were in your position I’d probably start taking riders again if everyone in my household/bubble was vaccinated and not super high risk. Actually I’ve been debating volunteering to drive people to vaccination appointments but decided to wait until everyone in my bubble has at least their first shot.
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This is legit the thing I am looking forward to most.
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On our ongoing discussion of surface transmission risks:
“ Findings of these studies suggest that the risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection via the fomite transmission route is low, and generally less than 1 in 10,000, which means that each contact with a contaminated surface has less than a 1 in 10,000 chance of causing an infection”
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Mr Pug drives for Uber. He installed a plexiglass divider between the front and back seats which I think helps a lot.
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I got my Pfizer vaccine at Walgreens where they schedule everyone’s 2nd dose 4 weeks out so that all stores can use the same interface for booking appointments (as some have Moderna which is 4 weeks between doses). Now the CDC is telling Walgreens to stop doing that and schedule for 3 weeks out.
Sooooooo, do I try and rebook? Argh. I have read before that 28 days is still within the effectiveness window but if the CDC is saying no… argh. What would you all do? Vaccines are still really scarce unless you go downstate. I could do that but that would be a problem for Boyfriend re taking more time off of work. (He only has to miss an hour of work to get his second dose.)
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If I were in your shoes, able to isolate effectively in the interim, I would go ahead and wait. I think part of the CDC‘s concern is delaying a bunch of people being fully vaccinated when they don’t NEED to delay it. I don’t think there’s a reduction in efficacy seen, based on what we’ve seen in the UK. Since they’re taking the one shot for all strategy before following up with second doses. Especially since it works better with his work logistics, I would probably hold my first appointment.
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I think the CDC just wants people to stop complaining about Walgreens scheduling, as opposed to Walgreens actually doing anything wrong.
My understanding is you have like 3-4 months to get the 2nd shot to have the correct booster effect.
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this may be accurate and it made me laugh out loud.
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Yeah, thinking and reading about this more, I am probably just going to let it ride. I wonder if they will reschedule me on their own though? Probably not, that seems like it’d be a clusterfuck, but, maybe?
I also read some stuff, which I can’t find the link for right now, from tech folks saying that a corporation as large as Walgreens should’ve had IT folks able to code their site to do 21 days for Pfizer and 28 days for Moderna. They were giving pop-up vaxx sites more of a pass. But really, this has been such a mess and was thrown together so quickly, and everyone’s been so confused and overwhelmed, that probably the goal was to keep it simple and just gets shots in arms by any means necessary.
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Ha, this is probably correct!
I heard 42 days? So 28 days should probably be ok.
Yeah honestly when you compare us to where European countries are, we’re doing quite well with our hot mess approach. The EU really tried to negotiate rates and be fair to all countries and all sorts of organized ideal stuff and it’s biting them in the ass a bit 
so while the US approach definitely has some major issues (looking at you, health equity), it’s definitely getting shots in arms, and fast.
*obviously that’s not the entirety of the factors with the EU delays, ex AstraZeneca questions.
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Does anyone know if in the US the “free” covid testing was renewed in 2021?
Last year we got charged for the appt, but then it was pulled back as a mistake. We’ve been charged again and I wonder if it expired or if it’s wrong again.
I think 28 days is fine, and it’s possible that Walgreens doesn’t always know in advance what vaccine will be in what store a week ahead of time?
I thought they were only doing Pfizer/Moderna, but almost son-in-law got J&J at Walgreen’s this weekend.
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I too would stick with the existing appointment.
Technology rant
Sometimes the larger corporations are way worse at making IT changes than smaller competitors. I have no idea what kind of systems and technology Walgreens uses, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve been established with inflexible “legacy” systems tweaked to what they’ve historically believed gave them their “competitive advantage”. Those highly prized business processes may be of little value, but unwinding them is hella complex. Or they replaced their legacy with something new but customized the s*** out of it to behave exactly like their old solution because someone in the business could not accept doing something the tiniest bit differently than the way they’ve always done it. Stupid s*** like this often means that simple changes needed to adapt to seemingly basic requirements take forever to implement and break all kinds of things. Even if there’s something pretty on the front end, the back end might be a cluster of highly customized integrated legacy crap that is fragile as f*ck.
Oftentimes companies fund the new shiny object and starve the old tech instead of figuring out what to do with the old tech to modernize or decomm it. I have seen the most ridiculous of problems persist for years because no one can fix it (or add a new feature to meet changing business requirements) without breaking all of the other things.
I’m actually surprised (and thankful) that many of these companies were able to put forward a solution at all, even as imperfect as some of them have been!
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Snort, considering that I work for a huge company this makes total sense and I should know better!
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