I totally understand what you are saying @AllHat but I’m still with @anomalily on needing to figure out how incremental information on variants changes my behavior in the short term.
For example, my spouse and I are both vaccinated but my baby is not. My MIL is also not vaccinated due to medical issues and we are planning a trip to see her in two weeks. We had already planned to pull the baby out if daycare for a week before to be extra cautious. We now need to decide if we will still let my (vaccinated) parents come watch her next week or if we need to take extra days off work and truly isolate. My parents live in one of the local pockets where the delta variant is gaining ground. The only socialize with vaccinated people but they work with unvaccinated people. Masks are on most of the time. So…it’s probably fine but I have the vacation days available so maybe it’s better safe than sorry? It would all be more straightforward if everyone I loved and wanted to see in person was able to get a vaccine.
Yea, that is the big thing for me: I was back to being hunky Dory and not taking many precautions post vaccine- I flew last week and took off my mask to eat in the airport and I’ve been unmasked at rides with hundreds of unmasked people. I was following advice of CDC. But I am flying to several foreign countries with less vaccine access and greater chance of the variants.
So, I just want to know how to adjust my behavior given the info I have: I got a vaccine we don’t know how it is doing against the delta variant, it is the dominant variant in many regions I am going to, and I am immunosuppressed and therefore have a higher risk of no vaccine response.
I also had 2 extended family members die from Covid complications. So maybe I am more nervous- honestly I don’t want to worry at all, but because this is a novel virus that is rapidly changing, the guidance is constantly changing
I’m on the Sydney zoo’s mailing list and they sent out an email that looks like it came from last year. They are closing June 26-July 9.
“There is no denying this closure is a devastating blow” - tell that to the zoos that have been basically closed to the public and not had ticket sales/parking fees for over a year.
“Take care of yourself and each other, and thank you for your ongoing support of Taronga during this unprecedented time.” - except the precedent of the last 13 months?
In other news, we’re scheduled to get jab 2 next week, and we’ll be in the group mixing and matching (AZ/Phizer). Hopefully at some point the various places in the US which are requiring proof of an FDA approved vaccine will come to some kind of agreement regarding the vaccines other countries used. Also that NZ travel rules will be adjusted to reflect vaccination status.
Same here. CDC guidelines are written to stop spread at the population level. So a certain (lower) level of transmission and illness is acceptable.
But if you want minimize your risk as an individual or family, especially with immunosuppressed or unable-to-be-vaccinated people? And you have the ability to absorb some additional precautions (like pulling kids out of daycare early or skipping a leisure trip)? Based on the reports about the new variant it seems like some degree of additional precautions are warranted some of the time; it’s just back on us as individuals to figure out how and how much. Which makes my head spin since the science is, once again, a little delayed.
Having received the AZ /Pfizer combo myself, the vaccination ‘receipt’ (Ontario) only says fully vaccinated and that my second dose was Pfizer. I think the AZ hesitancy and mix & match hesitancy in other countries is irrelevant, as your receipt only shows the last.
I know, it is so confusing. We really need to do a recon trip this fall to make sure we want to go forward with moving to NOLA in March 2022, and for Reasons we can’t move that up. Now I am questioning that again but I really do not want to put off the move until 2023.
But I literally have no idea what is safe or not any more. Chicago is in decent shape right now so I am just kind of… going with that? As long as I’m masked? Is that even OK? I guess I’ll find out?
Louisiana is in terrible shape vaxx-wise but I looked it up and NOLA’s county vaxx rate is the same as my county’s vaxx rate. That’s a point in favor of going. Point against going: getting on a plane. But we have N95s. So…???
This whole thing of balancing the science with what I feel is my personal risk is just breaking my brain. I thought that would end with being vaccinated. It makes my head spin too!
I no longer wear N95s ever now that I am vaccinated, even on planes. That would change if cases started rising more or there was more variant concern. BUT–you were waaaaay more cautious than I was pre-vaccine. I had to go to work in person and also went to stores in person, the dentist, the pharmacy, etc.–actually I was doing fertility treatment so I was at the doctor (but not a sick-person doc) quite often.
Anyway, good luck with the decision about going–making decisions for the future is stressful now in a way it wasn’t before.
Yeah, who knows what to do. My personal compromise is that I’m still doing everything I want, but with a mask. I figure mask + vaccination is pretty good protection, even against the delta variant.
Case rate/vaccination rate also make a difference to me. I was in Minneapolis last week, where the adult vaccination rate was like 85% and cases were really low. Most people weren’t masked. I stayed masked unless I was outside or eating, and felt okay with that in that environment. However, now I’m in St. Louis where the adult vaccination rate is much lower and the case rate is higher. Most people still aren’t masked. Now I’m trying to avoid eating inside as much as possible so I can remain masked (with a KN95) myself.
But all of this is just going by my gut, really. Who knows what the real impact is.
Exactly! I am going with my gut too. I mean, science plus gut… but my gut is more conservative than science, I think. And that’s essentially what I’m doing now too - do things, masked if indoors. So I’m not good with eating or drinking indoors yet.
I probably should get to the dentist soon though since I can’t mask there. Though, my dentist office was extremely cautious last summer. Hopefully that’s still the case.
We are going to STL in September for Pride. Which is a festival in a big park and not a parade so should be easy enough to distance. I am a little worried though, I admit. Our friends mask indoors still (in public, not in their house if everyone’s vaxxed) and I will too, while there. Might also mask in the park if things are really bad at that point. I had feared that masking would be low there even though STL proper is blue.
I just ordered some black KN95s for the goth club. I followed a link on this thread that someone posted about where to buy ones that are legit. Prices have come WAY down, it was $6.20 for 10 masks, down from $20.
I had quit masking even inside on the principle that these idiots around here are not going to mask anyway, and I’m vaccinated. But I caught some other kind of cold, and remembered I don’t like being sick, plus now with Delta I’m masking indoors again. Beyond that though I’m not overly concerned.
I even ate inside restaurants a couple of times before I caught the cold, but I don’t know that I’ll do that again for a while.
I am wearing N95’s (also black) because they’re the only masks that don’t make my glasses fog up. The half face respirator doesn’t make my glasses fog up, but I think it’s overkill at this point.
Yeah Our local grocery store stop sanitizing carts, and they stopped having the sanitizing wipes out for us to use, and I’m pretty sure that’s where my daughter caught a cold that she promptly gave to us. So I’m back to extra cleanings, just because I don’t wanna deal with another head cold ha ha.
Do masks prevent colds? I always heard that those spread mostly by touching things. I don’t like getting colds, so I’ve been sanitizing things, trying not to touch my face in public, keeping hand sanitizer in my car, etc.
I never figured out how to wear a mask and glasses comfortably and functionally at the same time, so I rarely mask anymore. Mostly only if I am talking to children.
DANG IT we were down to an infection rate of 0.69, lower even than the middle of last summer, and now we are back to 0.98.
We are one of the top states for vaccinations, closing in on 80% of adult (18+) with at least 1 dose, 60% of adults (18+) fully vaccinated, and almost 67% of the entire population with at least 1 dose, and this is still bothersome. (It will be quite a slog, I believe, going forward to convince the remaining population to get vaccinated.)
I’ve been doing inside a few places while my parents have been here without masks. The garden center this morning had a sign that said masks are optional, and it’s a very big space and open to the outside on two sides (giant doors open) - it wasn’t crazy busy so we didn’t don our masks. We also ate outside last week once without masks. But every time I’ve gone into the grocery store (which is a smaller space) or Ace Hardware I have masked except for one time. I feel weird about it. They are also visiting LOTS of friends this week, indoors, presumably vaccinated (almost all of their friends are very liberal) but who knows what they are bringing back from them into my house. (I joke, but a small part of me is also like… it’s a lot of potential strangers germs in a small timeframe.) I would not begrudge my parents their very limited visiting time with old friends, nor would I berate them for not knowing vaccination status of these people. My parents are in their 70s and so are the vast majority of their friends. There are very limited opportunities for them to see these people, and at their age, each time might be the last time, regardless of covid.
I followed a link on this thread that someone posted about where to buy ones that are legit. Prices have come WAY down, it was $6.20 for 10 masks, down from $20.
bummer.