I heard a great discussion about this. A comparison was made to the changes post 9/11 or after the IRA bombs. We still live with changes but adapted. We just don’t have any clue what normal will be for our kids. We’ve started PT childcare. I’ll probably change careers. WFH will probably continue. I think active screenings for high risk settings will continue. Our hospitals had gotten lazy but still had them from SARs. I imagine all health settings and education will keep them. Maybe contact tracing is how we lose anonymity (obviously we can lie on pencil forms)
Online exercise classes will continue competing with in person. Same with many services - mental health, mortgage.
The beauty industry is or will bounce back. Low- moderate dining in probably gets more rare. Ghost kitchens, delivery, takeout and mid-high dining flourish.
My life is totally back to normal. I have friends over, go to restaurants, movies, casinos, shopping, etc. I am going to Ireland in June for 11 days. I am fully vaccinated and that’s all I can do.
Husband did it and was down for about 12 to 18 hours. Fever, chills, general awful feeling. However this is in line with his reaction to the 2nd moderna shot so getting flu shot at the same time might not have had anything to do with it.
I would not but it is easy for me to get a flu (at work) and booster (many pharmacies within 10 mile radius). I had an unpleasant reaction to my second shot and I don’t want to add to it.
My flu shot side effects were pretty mild this year though.
Even though I qualify for a booster* I ended up getting one a few days earlier than planned because I was at CVS in Target and asked if they had appointments. They didn’t but she said they were ending up with a few extra doses each day that we’re going to waste. She took down my phone number and called me later that afternoon to come in. Maybe you could stop by a pharmacy and ask if they could call you with any extras? Would that alleviate the moral quandary?
*I signed into my new work email for the first time yesterday and there was one reminding everyone we are eligible because of the industry (education)
Even here, people are kind of talking like things are winding down… but our hospitals are full here in Colorado. It’s tough to know what to do! I am boosted and my kids have their first shots. Tomorrow there’s an in person event at a middle school I’m considering for BB. It seems like a really bad idea… but there is no other way to get inside the building, and how could I send him to a school I haven’t seen?
Aside from voluntarily masking in public, the main thing I am still doing to be cautious is not going to the gym. We occasionally eat in a restaurant. I think the biggest danger is probably parties, but we don’t go to parties.
Ah, this clears up my confusion super well actually-
With FDA auth expected this week then wider recommendation by states, that makes me feel like it’s just a timing game and not a like… particularly viable reason to wait, lol. This alleviates some feelings of guilt at the prospect for sure. Also the realization that I’ll be in doctors offices a LOT as I restart fertility treatments, and that’s with the specific goal of pregnancy, which is a very high risk group.
But you will get covid tests before and after the flight, screen before you do these activities, you mask if the location requires it. Some businesses have gone out of business or changed hours. More people in your community work from home. You have more options for online and delivery even if you never use them. Your life is normal, but a new normal. And you’re still doing health math, it’s just that your math adds up to everything being safe.
My sister’s life has not returned to normal because she is 73 with Copd. She only will eat in outside restaurants and lives in Chicago. Our niece gets her groceries and she only sees 2 friends who have similar limitations. I don’t blame her of course but glad that I am not in her position age and health wise. I consider the masks, testing to fly, etc minor inconveniences versus the year of doing nothing. I also realize that if our hospitals started filling up I might choose to limit my activities again.
I really feel sorry for the kids who missed out on so many things that usually we take for granted. I also feel sorry for parents trying to work from home and educate their children last year all at the same time.
I guess a big milestone for us will be when they allow volunteers in the schools here, as that is something I would like to do. None of us have been inside W’s school, btw, and his descriptions are pretty vague!
The local mask mandate is supposed to expire at the end of next week, and the presumption was that it would not be renewed, but now cases are ticking up again, so that will be interesting.
I have been cautious about crowded indoor activities in the winter for years, though.
I got to go in during Meet The Teacher, they were only allowing one adult and I think that was mainly to help drop off supplies. Oh, and they had us go to the exterior door which is actually the “back” door of the classroom instead of us going through the halls. The first week I could walk him to the door, after that parents are barely allowed on campus - you basically drop your kid off at the curb and no volunteers or in-person PTA meetings. I’ve heard mention of the morning mile but we haven’t started that up yet, that might be due to lack of early morning volunteers though.
This is another thing I’ve been considering lately. Even in the Before Times we were less likely to go to the kids museum during cold/flu season but we’d choose to go to the park instead. I only took Kiddo to the indoor play area at the mall once - for years we referred to it as Ground Zero because there was no sunlight to kill the germs from kids licking the play equipment and there were always a ton of little kids playing there. I eventually took Kiddo once when he was old enough to probably not lick anything but he asked to leave pretty soon because it was too busy even for him.
Oh and that reminds me - the school board is having a drive up vaccine clinic at a central location in town this afternoon (it’s a short day, all the kids are out of school by 1pm). I was hoping it would be at each school so all parents had to do was sign a form, now they need to sign a form and schlep their offspring across town to wait in line for who knows how long. Good luck to those with multiple kids.
I’d have to look for the source, but I saw yesterday that the Chicago health officer said something to the effect of, you should get a booster if you’re doing something that you feel puts you at risk.
I got the flu shot with my booster, but it was the Pfizer. I had a little headache for a couple hours, but that might have been due to my children and not the shots. Unknown.
I think the thing that I miss doing most, and would do first if the pandemic were truly over, is go back to in person yoga and dance fitness classes. I miss them so much but I can’t work out with a mask on. I did beach yoga all summer and that was fantastic but obviously that’s over now.
Boyfriend and I also don’t remove masks indoors, which means no dining out indoors or drinking indoors. We’ve been to a couple of clubs, but no concerts (on account of the yelling and cheering and people pulling masks down to drink). I’d like to go to a concert or club event and be able to have a cocktail.
I’m not looking forward to another winter of takeout only because it’s too cold to eat outdoors, but the thought of removing my mask around other maskless people to eat gives me the heebie jeebies still.
Large crowds indoors or out also still feel gross to me. We’re skipping the Christkindlmarket downtown this year, even though it’s outdoors, because it is literally packed wall to wall bodies on the little plaza that it takes place on and everyone’s eating and drinking and walking around with the little cups of gluhwein and… I just can’t.
At this point I guess I feel pretty safe in a mask? I didn’t freak out nearly as much as I thought I was when I flew a couple weeks ago because I wore an N95. I normally don’t get this woo woo, but I found myself sort of visualizing it as protecting me, if that makes sense. It’s doing things that require taking the mask off indoors that I can’t quite get my head around yet.
“Dr. Fauci says U.S. Covid cases need to fall below 10,000 a day to get to a ‘degree of normality’”
I’m also wondering in years past what flu numbers were like at the height of flu season, but I didn’t think twice about it before going to restaurants or whatever.
My life would look pretty different… I’d go back to working out indoors, we’d attend the weddings we skipped over the last two years, but mostly we’d go back to having people over for dinner and weekend visits a few times a month. My best friend used to stay with us 5-6 times a year for the weekend. Instead I’ve seen her three times since the beginning of 2020 and two of those times have been a 1 hour outdoor visit. She lives a more risky life than we do and with an unvaccinated child I don’t feel comfortable with her staying after traveling on a plane and seeing three other households that I don’t interact with while staying with us.
I guess I’m curious what he means by a degree of normality? I live in a blue city in a blue state, and everything is open. Most places don’t have indoor mask requirements or check vaccine cards. There might be capacity changes some places (e.g. huge indoor arenas might have them in place?) but you don’t really notice them. Of course people can and should make choices depending on their risk tolerance/risk profile, but I just don’t know what would be different in this 10k cases a day scenario.
Not necessarily directed at you, I just don’t get this messaging.
Yeah, I read the article to see if it would answer that and it really didn’t. Then my brain went to the “best I can do” meme, like how about under 10,000 cases for my whole state? Or city? That’s fine right? Everything’s fine.