I couldn’t find “N95” face masks here. I finally twigged today that we use different standards. It’s a P2 face mask here.
12 Likes
10 Likes
Well that’s terrible. Ugh!
Just found out my Aunt has been sick more than a month with Covid and pneumonia. She claims she doesn’t/didn’t have Covid even though the hospital tested her and the test was positive because “they tell everyone they have covid”. I’m so glad she lives far far away. I don’t wish her ill, but seriously, the brain washing runs deep in that one!
13 Likes
Yep. SIL is having an issue with a friend who had Covid and now has had issues with pneumonia and intense fatigue and brain fog for months now. And he insists that Covid has nothing to do with it. It’s just the pneumonia making him sick clearly. The Covid is unrelated.
8 Likes
I could have written most of this word for word. I didn’t have an older child already, but was only a few weeks behind in my pregnancy than the author. I also never went into a store my entire pregnancy. We put Pipsqueak in daycare in June '21 with similar thinking only to also pull her out again in September. Thankfully we found a similarly minded nanny (seriously, she’s amazing) and can afford to have her come four days a week.
The guilt trips from my parents have been rough and they feel like we are always moving the goalposts on them. But the silver lining is that we all seem to have avoided omicrom this Christmas because they agreed to isolate and do PCR tests in advance plus rapid tests every day we were together. If they hadn’t agreed, they would have caught it from one of the many extended family members who now have it a d live close enough that they would have interacted the week before Christmas when everyone was exposed but not yet symptomatic.
Blah. I’m so tired. I know all parents are, especially with kids under 5.
11 Likes
my housemate has been exposed to their uncle who tested positive. their family is in Florida for their Christmas trip. their rapid test was negative, but they’ve continued to be exposed to family members afterwards, and no one (but housemate) are taking it remotely seriously.
they come home today and have an appointment tomorrow for a PCR test. my partner and I have decided to drive up to see his mom a day early vs me risking exposure and then staying home.
ugh.
11 Likes
As a parent of a kid over 5, I wish so so so much I could bring y’all with me into the world of having a vaccinated kid. I didn’t have guilt trips from my parents, just thinly veiled judgement that we were being overly cautious. My in-laws have turned out to be antivaxxers, so that’s been fun and not at all adding to our household stress. 
Parents of unvaccinated kids can’t even choose the best from a lot of bad options, it feels like, it’s more like there’s a few covered boxes and you get to blindly grab within a given box that you think is probably better but you still don’t know what you’ll grab out of that box. That was probably a terrible metaphor.
Basically it all sucks, and I hope there’s a light at the end of the tunnel for you soon. Since Pfizer didn’t pan out, what’s the next best one? Pfizer 2.0 or Moderna or something?
8 Likes
Husband is helping with care for his father - he is probably a few months past needing full-time care, and his wife can’t keep him from falling or pick him up when he does (this is all precipitated by a fall Christmas night). They called an ambulance yesterday but the paramedic advised against transporting him because he’d wait hours at best in the ambulance, likely not get care anyway, and almost certainly catch Omicron. So we’re trying to reach the state senior services (currently closed for the holidays). StepMIL’s granddaughter came over to help yesterday, but then her husband tested positive last night, so now both the old folks and my husband who needs to help them are likely exposed. Husband is boosted just two weeks ago, and FIL and StepMIL are vaccinated, but in March, and are not boosted.
It all sucks.
19 Likes
3 shot series for Pfizer may be next, or two shot Moderna.
2 Likes
Do you know if they’re also doing a trial with a higher dose? Maybe the 2-5 year olds need the same dose as 5-11.
Idk how these trials all work. Maybe they’ve tried a higher dose and side effects weren’t good? Or they’d have to start from scratch with new participants and it would take longer than just giving a third dose to the kids they already have?
1 Like
I don’t know, but I wondered the same thing! They were being too conservative with dose maybe, out of concern for side effects. I also don’t know what omicron means for the approval process. Does a data set with all Delta infections even qualify now that omicron is the dominant circulating variant?
3 Likes
I’m having an emotional reaction to this because YES ABSOLUTELY THIS ISOLATION IS AWFUL. And it’s so shitty that everyone’s going bout their lives as if under 5 kids and immunocompromised don’t exist.
But I’m struggling with annoyance at the author because
-
when our young kids are vaccinated we will also all probably be business as usual and forget about the immunocompromised. Because humans.
-
if we get vaccinated dont we still need to be careful around high risk people?
-
I’m shocked the pediatrician said to take their kid out of daycare, is that a Texas thing? Our ped told us daycares have been doing super well and the spread is actually worse in vaccinated kids? By which I mean, schools are getting tons of cases here, but likely just due to the numbers.
I mean I feel for this parent and we ALSO did so much of this but I also don’t know how much of it I am creating for myself because maybe after 1/3 I send my kid back to daycare and it’s fine?
8 Likes
I forget where you are, but if you’re not in the deep South I don’t think I can express how much no one is taking any precautions in any situation or environment over a ~10 state area down here. If anything, it’s worse than it was a few months ago when we were having our Delta spike, and there was roughly zero recognition of a pandemic then.
14 Likes
I think I read that they didn’t see enough of an immune response (and I think it was a lower dose, like 1/3 maybe?), so I don’t think the reason the trial failed was because of side effects. (But not a doctor etc etc, just something I had read.)
1 Like
No I was saying that I think they were overly conservative because of concern of side effects. So they went with an excessively low dose.
3 Likes
Oh I get it! 
Yeah, I agree.
2 Likes
My sister’s husband and his parents have COVID. No symptoms, found out because Sister’s husband had to test negative before coming back to the office today and he popped a positive which led to widespread testing in the family group. My parents (who celebrated Christmas with them) and sister/5 year old not vaxxed nephew are all negative so far.
I had a really hard time talking to my sister today because she was so nonchalant about the whole thing and now I can’t have my parents come up for New Years as planned.
21 Likes
Oh, I see what youre saying. It’s hard to get my head around that. Like if hospital systems are inundated arent tons of people dying? How are people not noticing it in their communities?
We are in Massachusetts. People in my city weren’t wearing masks indoors a week and a half ago and things were starting to relax. Still about 1 in 3 people wore masks. But mask mandates are up again.
Our daycare does do mandatory vaccine, masking, and pool testing and that all likely makes all the difference.
That said people in my apt don’t wear masks in the halls (just us and maybe one other neighbor), so I’m glad that vaccinated people have low viral load and most of the work places in MA mandate vaccines as far as I can tell.
This is a red city in MA.
5 Likes
I’m sorry dude. It sucks. It seems so inevitable no matter rhow hard we try and yet we have no option but to keep trying. I’m sorry.
5 Likes